Don't the poor have a spiritual advantage over the rich?
Jesus said,
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
Shouldn't we feel sorry for the 1% who have the hardest path of all to find God? Should we perhaps thank them, for keeping the rest of us poor and therefore closer to God?
Matthew 6:19–20
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
I'll leave it to you imaginations on whether capitalism and slavery are morally equivalent. But here is what I'd say regarding slavery:
No. Slaves should not pity their Slave owners. They are slaves because God doesn't exist or else doesn't care for them to be free. God may even be on the side of the slave owners and certainly slave owners will use God to justify the perpetration of slavery as the "will of god" or as "natural law".
In the case of African Americans, the black slaves worship the same god as the white slave-owners. The Christian God is the god of the Southern slave owner, standing in defence of slavery as an institution and Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the Confederacy. And insisting that "blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth", the Slave-owners indoctrinated their African slaves in to Christianity to keep them in their chains, to make the obedient, to deny them their right to independent thought and therefore their capacity for independent existence.
And so, as devout Christians, the slave owners will proclaim that "God is on the side of the Confederacy", your chains are "sacred" and the Union will be defeated for interfering in Slavery as God's commandment. This is the same as the Feudal Lords, Monarchs and Popes who proclaimed that Feudalism was God's will and that Serfs rebelling against their masters was a violation of God's laws. When the people rise up against their rulers, they rise up against God they claim protects that rule as well.
Now, Slaves may debate amongst themselves whether there is a moral ambiguity over the distinction between the "good" slave owners who treat their slaves well and the "bad" slave owners who treat their slaves badly. However slaves may be treated, the point of agreement must be that slavery itself is immoral and wrong and that, regardless of their intentions, designs or behaviour, the position of slave-owner must be abolished whoever holds it.
Obviously, god has not intervened to break their chains and has abandoned the slaves to their suffering and cruelty at the hands of their "masters". But, derived from the Southern's belief in Jesus and in God, slaves debate amongst themselves whether they shouldn't wait until the afterlife for a remedy. If they are not powerful enough to end slavery themselves, then perhaps they should wait for God to punish the slave owners on their behalf?
No. Their lives have value. It is a life that is worth fighting for, they deserve their freedom and it is better to die in the pursuit of freedom and to remain a slave and to be an object, to be mere property to be bought and sold and owned. They should resist and hasten the abolition of slavery, even in defiance of the will of God. If God defends and protects slave owners, this is a god that must be annihilated.
If it is fiction and indoctrination, "Christian love" is nothing more than the white slave owner telling their black slaves to "love" them as they whip them, kill them and force them to rape each other in the name of "good breeding". If Christ lived life believing in the "sins" of his oppressors and preaching "love" and "forgiveness" for them, only so he could die on the cross for the "sin" of inconveniencing the Romans.
When slaves
are their own masters and are at liberty to determine their own fate, then they can debate the value of pity and whether the slave owners should be punished or rehabilitated in to society. But until then, hatred of oppression and of the oppressor is entirely justified. The love of life and the love of freedom commands it. If God hates life and hate's freedom and makes excuses for the oppressor, then he is not your god and is not in your side.
