An absurd form of disdain

When people extracted gold, silver and precious stones from the earth, and when they’d made more soft clothes than they needed, and when they’d got a lot of other such things, which are the causes of wars and revolutions and tyrannical regimes, they were overwhelmed with an absurd form of disdain.

So, they don’t show any kindness to their unfortunate fellow human beings, nor do they even want to give of their excess wealth to provide the necessities of life for others. What callousness! What harshness! If nothing else, they don’t even think that poverty and riches, freedom and slavery and suchlike made their appearance in the human race only after the Fall, as sicknesses which are manifested together with evil and are actually expressions of the latter…

» Saint Gregory the Theologian