Creflo Dollar's board is purchasing a $65 million jet because God told them to. Apparently, it must be a different Jesus from the Bible since the Jesus of the Bible commanded us to live simply.
This board was faced with a fundamental choice -- helping people get out of poverty, or buying luxuries that they didn't need. $65 million, at $30,000 annually, could have hired 2,166 people out of poverty and paid them a living wage for a year. But apparently, material possessions were more important to this board than lifting people out of poverty.
While the right whips up hysteria against Muslims, it is people like Mr. Dollar who are the ones who are really screwing up the economy. By extracting as much money as possible from the 99%, they are not salt and light of the earth. Instead, they are part of the very corrupted world system that Christianity spoke out against in the 1st century.
Mr. Dollar's behavior reminds one of the behavior of Senator William Borah, Republican Senator from Idaho during the 1920's. During the height of the debate over whether to join the League of Nations and aid Eastern Europe following World War I, he said, as quoted in the May 21st, 1920 issue of the New York Times, that before the US was willing to help out the people of Eastern Europe, they had to "settle down and go to work." For obvious reasons, the Times Editorial Board of the time wondered what he would have told the man lying in the road had Mr. Borah come along instead of the Good Samaritan. We wonder the same thing about Mr. Dollar given the fact that he chose to buy a $65 million luxury plane instead of lifting 2,166 people out of poverty. The question is, how are people living in poverty supposed to make ends meet if someone like Mr. Dollar won't even offer them a chance to work in the first place?
We note that if Mr. Borah or Mr. Dollar had been in charge following World War II, they would have told Western Europe to "settle down and go to work," leaving them to the tender mercies of the Communists.