Christians have increasingly recognised the need to address these questions. The widely-respected evangelical, John Stott16 says:
We cannot maintain a good life of extravagance and a good conscience simultaneously. One or other has to be sacrificed. Either we keep our conscience and reduce our affluence, or we keep our affluence and smother our conscience. We have to choose between God and mammon.
Paul VI's encyclical17 made it clear that such an approach is not an optional extra for believers:
Countless millions are starving, countless families are destitute, countless men are steeped in ignorance, countless people need schools, hospitals and homes worthy of the name. In such circumstances we cannot tolerate public and private expenditures of a wasteful nature: we cannot but condemn lavish displays of wealth by nations or individuals: we cannot approve of a debilitating arms race. It is our solemn duty to speak out against them. If only world leaders would listen to us before it is too late!
The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales put it like this: 'Action on behalf of justice, and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race, and its liberation from every oppressive situation.'18 As developed nations we can never be sufficiently on guard against the temptation to enrich ourselves at the expense of others. We are not making a gift of what is ours to poor people, but giving back what is theirs. We have appropriated many things provided for the common use of all mankind. The earth belongs to everyone, not just to us. It does not accord with our innate genius to live by simply gathering more to ourselves in the relentless pursuit of a prosperity gospel and market place economics. But for Christians there is another reason yet for seeking a more truly human and socially just approach. If Lazarus is symbolic of all who live in poverty and Dives is representative of all of us who are privileged to live in wealthy