Do Terrifying Giants Stand Among Us?

 The Bible certainly speaks of giants, does it not?   Amorites, the Zamzummin, the Anakites/Anakim?  We don't even know how tall they truly were, but they were compared to trees in places in scripture.  Was it more metaphor than fact?  Were the trees simply shorter then? (Humor)

   But in these days when income inequality is much spoken of, when wealth redistribution at the point of the legislative sword is being looked at quite seriously even in America, we could use 'giants' as a way to get a mental picture of the scope of these so called 'inequalities'.  I would like to say that I think sharing should be optional, though I hope many of those who have much choose to explore this 'option'.  Sharing shows love for our neighbor and gratitude for the blessings God has allowed.  Frankly, it also shows fear of God.  Both rich and somewhat poor people should probably ask themselves regularly "Have I done a respectable job of giving out some of my extra?"  God watches.  God knows.  But what a person earns is theirs, not mine or anyone else's usually.  That's just the truth in a free nation.  That's how we're trained to believe.  Yet, the sheer scope of the inequality can, no matter your political opinions, become sort of ludicrous.  Consider this visual picture:

  A 6' tall man or woman eats 5 pounds of food per day and possesses $50,000.00 let's say.  And your height and your food consumption are always dependent on your income or wealth in this scenario.  So, a more financially fortunate person possessing $100,000.00 will be 12' feet tall.  Their height doubled, but height is only one of three dimensions (height, width, and depth) which doubled, so their food consumption and body mass went up by a factor of 2 x 2 x 2 which equals 8.  Every time height doubles, food needs will go up by a factor of 8 I will say for the purposes of this example.  So the 12' tall person eats 40 pounds of food per day.  That would all be quite eye catching in our current world, right?  But not in this imaginary world.  

  A millionaire walks by.  They are barely a millionaire, so they have exactly $1,000,000.00. That is a mathematically convenient height to calculate, being so perfectly sized, so we look up at their tall figure knowing that they are 120' tall.  They are taller than even most tall trees by a substantial margin.  And they eat 10 x 10 x 10 x 40 pounds of food per day because if their height went up by a factor of 10 then their width and depth did also, so they need about 1,000 times as much food.  (40,000 pounds each day) so the grocery store loves having them as a customer!  There are literally millions of millionaires in the United States according to statistics, six or seven million of them maybe, so despite how freakishly tall these people may seem at first that impression won't last.  Go to any large metropolis and there are hundreds of 'barely millionaires'.  But they will only amaze you for a short time, because there are taller types yet of course.

  A woman walks by you that has recently sold her successful business, and she has $10,000,000.00 set aside now.  She certainly had to do some emergency clothes shopping on the day of that sale, for she is now a 1,200' tall woman.  And she eats 20 tons x 10 x 10 x 10 pounds of food per day!  (20,000 tons) That is about the weight of 61,500 entire cows, bones and hide and all if I count a cow as being a 650-pound animal.  Her dating options have shrunken, yet the bachelors that are in her financial league can certainly take her out to a fine, fine restaurant.  They can afford it, I mean.  And that's good because a couple that enormous can certainly put away a pretty shocking amount of food.  When they stand up afterwards, they are seen to be just a little shorter than the Empire State Building which is 1250 feet tall if you ignore its roof-top antenna.  

   Down the street walks a celebrated actor.  They are smiling, because just today their wealth reached the $100,000,000.00 mark.  Their parents are pleased at their son's success, but his new height and size are another matter.  He is now 12,000' tall, eats 20 million tons of food per day (At 650 # per cow that is 61.5 million cows per day to keep himself at prime fighting weight - whole cows, once again, hooves and all!) and he will feel pretty well satisfied.  The parents live in Idaho, and their state's highest mountain...Mt. Borah, at 12, 662 feet above sea level...is just barely taller than their son when he wades around in Puget Sound near Seattle as he sometimes loves to do.  Whenever he takes a long stride, he covers over 1 mile.   He's impressive alright, but....

  There is a 'barely billionaire' living in Texas who is 120,000 feet tall.  That is 24 miles tall, or nearly so!  That is one impressive Texan, and he isn't even wearing a hat!  It's good that he lives in Texas as there is a lot of beef raised there.  He, being a red-blooded Texan, is certainly going to want to enjoy the fine taste of a perfectly cooked steak when he eats.  That will require an almost unimaginable number of cows each day to leave the table satisfied, not that he will easily find a table that is his size!  Think of the trees that would be required to craft such a table!  His every stride is around 12 miles long and requires careful foot placement as each foot is about 2 1/2 miles long.  His missteps have erased entire small towns, so he must walk carefully.  Commercial jet liners cruise at around 35,000 to 40,000 feet, so he sees them passing by just above his kneecaps sometimes.  He is four times as tall as Mount Everest.  

  Now in real life there are quite a few of our billionaires on this planet flirting with the $10,000,000,000.00 mark.  This makes them about 1,200,000 feet tall.  At over 220 miles tall their nostrils are far above the atmosphere of the Earth (outer space is considered to begin at about 60 miles!) and so they must be supplied with oxygen or lie down with their noses pressed close to the ground. And getting enough to eat is a constant chore indeed.  He, like so many billionaires that have 10 billion dollars, will be consuming a planet-destroying amount of food per day.  It is a bleak future indeed that the cows of Texas can look forward to, as Texas has quite a few rich people!  But they are amazing to see, these deca-billionaires!  Simply astounding!

  I'll stop here though we are actually getting to the point where our first centi-billionaires are showing up.  But if you consider the scale of the planet's economic disparities in these visual terms there obviously is an immense variation in wealth, which again is not my business.  But I hope that those among the rich who fear God will seek the welfare of their soul, which cannot be redeemed from damnation except through Jesus if the Bible is telling the truth of it (and it always does!)  The rich truly escape only a fraction of the woes of life by being rich; they still have illnesses, divorces, failures, deaths, depression, betrayals...they are still completely vulnerable to a large swath of the host of miseries which can beset humanity.  Yet they will apparently inherit all of the woes of hell if they miss out on salvation.  It's therefore a good area of their life in which to employ some wisdom I would conjecture.  As a man of limited well-hidden talent and admirably restrained ability I have only those other various pitfalls and snares of the devil to overcome...not so much the trap of great wealth.  But, for those who do possess wealth...be wise and tread carefully.  Jesus warned the wealthy about the special hazards they face.

  As a finishing thought, I would bring up that there are still nations where a year's wages add up to about $500.00, and there are also some people in nearly all nations that only have saved that much.  So, let's say they save a year's pay.  They save about $500.00.  That fortune is about 1% the size of the $50,000.00 fortune saved by the 72-inch-tall man (the 6' man) that we spoke about in the beginning.  So, using the same math, they are not quite 3/4 of an inch tall and eat but a nibble each day.  They could ride a mouse like it was a horse, literally.  A sobering thought, isn't it?  Most of us are honestly so ungrateful for all the blessings we possess, aren't we?

  So, I think that yes, the wealth of 'the rich' is their business for the most part - almost entirely.  As for Christians, we are told to share generously and not to envy.  We aren't to covet what belongs to others.  But as far as the perceived disparity of wealth goes...well, there truly is one, it truly is there and maybe there should, somewhere down the line, be a place where nearly all kind people agree that 'enough is enough'... time to quit pointlessly pursuing more wealth.  A stomach can only hold a certain amount of food, a roof only needs to be so well built to keep the rain off, the walls only so thick to keep us warm.  And the smiling face of someone you love or someone whose great needs have just been met is of very great worth wherever and whenever it is encountered.  And to have our Maker and Judge say, "Well done, Servant, now enter into Heaven for eternity!" constitutes a verdict of immeasurable and incomparable worth.  It is worth so much more than any other thing.  It bears repeating:  Salvation is worth so much more than any other thing.

  He is no fool that gives up what he can never keep in order to obtain that which he will never lose.  Dollars are of no worth in the eternity spoken about in the Bible.