Just because they say their Christian...

In 2000 a new bank opened in the state of Georgia. Named Integrity Bank the institution promised to be better than the rest because you see, Integrity Bank was "faith-based." I mean come on, this bank was based on "true Christian principles." You probably know where I'm going with this story. In 2008 the bank defaulted and closed it's doors and just a few weeks ago two former top bank officers have been charged with fraud. One Christian banker was in cahouts with a developer and walked away with more than $80 million while another committed insider trading.

I have real issues when anyone plays the Christian card - especially in business which time and time again appears to be far removed from the designs of Jesus Christ. It doesn't take a genius to notice that frequently men and women label themselves as true Christians in an effort to sucker some poor soul into investing money in some scheme. Man, if I believed in hell these scumbags would be going there.

Would you believe this is also a problem in the Mormon faith? In fact, I noticed recently on lds.org a warning about "Affinity Fraud" by quoting the SEC:

Affinity fraud refers to investment scams that prey upon members of identifiable groups, such as religious or ethnic communities, the elderly, or professional groups. The fraudsters who promote affinity scams frequently are — or pretend to be — members of the group. They often enlist respected community or religious leaders from within the group to spread the word about the scheme by convincing those people that a fraudulent investment is legitimate and worthwhile. Many times, those leaders become unwitting victims of the fraudster's ruse.

But my favorite take on this issue was written by one of my favorite LDS academicians. Hugh Nibley was a paratrooper during WWII and educated at UC Berkeley. His opinions fascinate me and I can't read enough by him even if he spent most of his professional career at BYU. Here is what he had to say:

As the Great Apostasy progressed, the Christian world got ever more mileage out of the name of Christianity. As the apostolic fathers and the early apologists observed, the farther they fall away from real Christianity, the more loudly they proclaim and the more enthusiastically they display the name and the banner of Christ...all you had to do to be righteous was to wave the flag of Christianity...the word Christian completely lost meaning.

Today the beautiful word Zion, with all its emotional and historical association, is used as the name Christian was formerly used, to put the stamp of sanctity on whatever men chose to do. The Hebrew word for financial activity of any kind is mamonut...financing is quite frankly, in that honest language, the business of Mammon.

From the very first there were Latter-day Saints who thought to promote the cause of Zion by using the methods of Babylon...What do we find today? Zion's investment, Zion Used Cars, Zion Construction, Zion Development, Zion Bank, Zion Leasing, Zion Insurance, Zion Securities, Zion Trust, and so on. The institutions of Mammon are made respectable by the beautiful name of Zion. Zion and Babylon both have their appeal, but the voice of latter-day revelation makes one thing perfectly clear as it tell us over and over again that we cannot have them both.

So that is a bit on that. I don't like it but apparently it is the way the world works and always has worked since Adam and Eve. Mankind is tempted by money and will do whatever they can do (including exploitation) to get their hands on it.