Why Can’t We Say Our Denomination Is O&A? | [D]mergent

The question that our denomination will continue to contend with is the extent to which we can claim to be “a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world” that welcomes “all to the Lord’s table,” when in practice we defend a brokenness that excludes people from that table.

via Why Can’t We Say Our Denomination Is O&A? | [D]mergent.

Jesus and the Plutocrats

plutocracy: a state or society governed by the wealthy

Like many people, I’ve been following the political donnybrook that masquerades as our national discourse on the disparity of wealth. (It’s as bad as it’s ever been.) There’s a lot of talk about “job creators” and “fiscal responsibility” by those on the right, along with healthy doses of whining when such lofty sounding phrases are questioned.

The argument by those who contend that the wealthy must be protected from the suggestion that they don’t already give enough, an especially nimble plutocratic dance move, goes something like this:

“The wealthy earned their wealth through hard work. Moreover, the wealthy create jobs with their wealth. Therefore, everyone who’s not wealthy has a vested interest in the wealthy accruing as much unfettered wealth as possible. So, let’s don’t make them feel bad for being so successful.”

Leaving aside the myth of the “job creators,” it’s important to articulate the assumptions that underly this sentiment. At its base, the “don’t tax the wealthy” approach to governance assumes that society will be better off in the long run if wealthy people not only get to keep all of their wealth, but are appreciated for the mere fact of being wealthy. On this account, not only is wealth a communal good in the abstract, those who possess wealth, unless proven otherwise, also find themselves on the noble end of the moral spectrum in virtue of their wealth.

Of course, this conflation of wealth and honor isn’t new. The whole idea of describing character and behavior as noble comes from its historic attachment to the nobility (L. nobilis)–that class of citizens who were “well-known or prominent”–which class, generally speaking, also implied an association with wealth.

However, the equating of virtue and wealth doesn’t just have implications for how we view wealth and wealthy people and their responsibilities to society; it also affects how we view poverty and poor people. If being wealthy is understood to be a communal good, then being poor cannot help but be understood as a communal vice–a status to be avoided. Poor people have not only themselves to blame as individuals, perhaps just as importantly, the implication is that they’re not pulling their communal weight. The idea that poor people, as Stephen Schwarzman says, don’t have “skin in the game” is worthy of comment.

Asking those who have very little if any skin left to put in the game strikes me as not only outrageous, but as something that people who claim to follow Jesus have a stake in denouncing–loudly. This cultural pressure applied to the poor, grousing that the poor need to do more, reminds me of the story that opens Luke 21.

Pretty famous story, actually. The widow’s mite. In the story Jesus has just finished a rather heated exchange with the scribes, a group of well-heeled professional theological pundits, whom Jesus has warned everyone to keep an eye on. Immediately preceding the story of the widow’s mite is an especially pointed exhortation to watch the scribes, because “they devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

And with that cautionary admonition about the way the scribes treat widows, Jesus looks up to see some rich people putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He notices a widow adding her two small copper coins, and remarks, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on (21:3–4).”

Traditionally, this passage has been used as a way to spur giving in church. The message is something like, “You can give more–even if you think you can’t. Sacrificial giving is a privilege you don’t want to deny yourself.” Or, in a more popular–though, I would argue also more facile–rendering: “Give until it feels good.”

And while I consider “sacrificial giving” an honorable act, I think that is only a secondary point here. Given the way Luke sets up this story, I think he has his sites set a bit higher up the socio-economic ladder.

What do I mean?

I would like to suggest that this story in Luke’s hands is a way of challenging a system that pressures a poor widow (arguably the most vulnerable class of people in the ancient Near East) to forfeit her last two bits so that she too can have some “skin in the game.” That is to say, the wealthy (identified as “rich people”) and the powerful (identified as “the scribes, who ‘devour widows’ houses’”) contribute to a set of power arrangements whereby they sacrifice a small percentage, while getting to feel superior to the poor and the powerless, whose contributions in real wealth are tiny by comparison.

In other words, Jesus’ scorn is aimed not just at the fact that the wealthy contribute relatively little as a percentage of what they own compared to the poor (who contribute at an extraordinarily higher percentage relative to what they actually own), but that the wealthy and the powerful help to perpetuate a religio-political structure that leaves the poor and the powerless feeling like they must surrender every last cent in order to be full participants. Making those at the bottom feel less than human so they’ll cough up more to keep those at the top from having to “sacrifice” more is an abomination according to Jesus.

In fact, read this way, the next two verses about the destruction of the temple suggest not just some prophecy about the devastation of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., or a supercessionist end to traditional Judaism, or even an oblique reference to the resurrection, but a commentary on how the current system of power arrangements that revolves around a structure that pressures the poor to sacrifice even more to be considered participants will be overthrown in the coming reign of God.

The assertion that we in America live in a plutocracy, where the wealthy and the powerful get to call all the shots, seems to me not even worth arguing. Anyone with even a little sense knows who’s in charge.

All I’m arguing is that people who follow Jesus–a man killed by plutocrats for challenging a similar system–don’t have any real stake in propping up a plutocracy.

Reading the Bible through the Eyes of the 99%

Like just about everyone else I watched in horror this past weekend as campus police mercilessly pepper-sprayed student protesters at UC Davis. Juxtaposed with that image of brutality was the comment made by Republican Presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, that Occupy Wall Street protesters should “go and get a job, right after you take a bath.”

What struck me about Gingrich’s comment was not that he made it in the first place–his moral illiteracy should surprise no one–but that the audience applauded the assertion that those who protest the rising income disparity in this country and the emboldened plutocracy that disparity makes possible are merely lazy whiners. The idea that those who speak out on behalf of some reasonable standard of political and economic justice are too lazy to go out and make their own fortunes seems to have taken hold among a significant portion of the body politic. That this applause, which signals the equating of the pursuit of fairness with whiny laziness, occurred at a gathering purporting to advance religious values, only serves to underline the moral confusion inherent in a system that rewards the “haves” and treats the “have-nots”with suspicion and disdain.

The Gospel of Matthew contains a well-known parable about a master who, in preparation for departure on a journey, turns over control of varying amounts of money to three slaves. The first two slaves, who’ve received the largest sums of money, invest what they’ve been given, while the last slave buries his money in the ground. When the master returns, he finds that the first two slaves have doubled their money, which, of course, pleases him. The last slave, however, turns over the original sum with a less than flattering explanation, which paints the master as an ancient Near Eastern Tony Soprano: “Master, I knew you were a hard man, taking what is not yours. So, I was scared, not wanting to risk coming back empty-handed” (Matt. 25:24). The master is furious. He takes the slave’s money and gives it to the one with the most money, and kicks the least productive slave out.

The “Parable of the Talents” has been viewed by some on the right as an endorsement of the kind of risk-taking speculation that animates capitalism. On this popular reading of the parable God is an impatient master who requires productivity, spurred by a bold investment of resources, and is intolerant of the lazy and unresourceful. Viewed this way, God sounds eerily like a Republican Presidential candidate, looking to establish Tea Party bona fides: “Don’t blame Wall Street. Don’t blame the big banks. If you’re not rich, and you don’t have a job, blame yourself.”

There is another way to interpret this parable, however, one that takes seriously the insights provided by a broad reading of critical theory, specifically that all texts are political. That is to say, texts are always situated in the midst of socio-ecomonic systems of organization where some have power, while most do not. On this account the master isn’t a stand-in for God, but the beneficiary of a system that rewards those in power by maintaining arbitrary and unjust socio-economic arrangements. The master in the parable, after all, is described as a crook–a designation it is difficult to see Matthew applying to God.

Moreover, the last slave who buried his money, rather than lazy and unresourceful, is viewed as the bold subversive who opts out of a game rigged against those at the bottom of the economic food-chain. In other words, it’s possible to read Jesus here, not as offering implicit approbation to investment capitalism, but as condemning a system that punishes people at the bottom, a system that believes the “have-nots” to be lazy whiners. In the Parable of the Talents Jesus offers up a vision of what it might look like to live as his follower in a system designed to reward those who already have wealth and power, while keeping in place those who have little of either.

One of the complaints I hear most often about Christianity centers on its failure to produce Christians who actually look like Jesus. Christians, this argument goes, are merely shills for a political and economic system that seeks to protect the rich and keep the poor docile by distracting everyone with grave sounding discourse about the moral threat of gay marriage and teenagers’ access to contraception. The Parable of the Talents, the Urtext of “Christian capitalists,” has been one of the passages used to underwrite this narrative.

But if Christians are ever going to establish credibility with anyone besides themselves, they’re going to have to start reading the bible through the same eyes as the people with whom Jesus spent most of his time. The Gospels refer to them as the poor, the sick, as prostitutes, tax collectors, and slaves. Some quarters of the Republican party refer to them as “lazy whiners.”

I like to think of them as the 99%.

Taming the Chihuahua Brain

As I sat at the kitchen table yesterday, reading the paper, I heard one of our dogs barking outside on the deck. We have five dogs, so hearing a dog barking just outside the kitchen is not particularly noteworthy. Our dogs are so sensitive, they bark at cross-eyed gnats. It is, however, annoying to the neighbors.

I got up to let the dog in, so he’d stop ruining everyone’s leisurely Saturday morning. As I opened the door, though, I noticed a man I didn’t recognize walking away from our neighbor’s garage. I found our six-pound chihuahua delivering, what I’m sure he intended to be, a bracing message of warning. The strange man, looked back over his shoulder at me, and hurried down the driveway. Something didn’t feel quite right about the stranger’s presence.

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On Having Something to Say

I find it very easy to feel as if I have nothing of value left to say.  I’ve been writing and preaching and talking about all manner of things—religious and otherwise—for (what seems to me, at least) so long now.  Whenever I open my mouth or put pen to paper, I want to say something intelligent, important.  Perhaps even more than that, and I am almost embarrassed to say it, I would like to produce something original.  That is to say, I would like to say or write something that is unique to me, something that no one has ever said or written before.  Why do I have this great need to be original?  Pride, I suppose.  We all want to leave our mark on the world, to leave something to prove, not only that we were here, but that our existence made a difference, that it meant something more than the amount of Doritos we consumed or the total hours we spent sitting in front of The Biggest Loser.

Ministers are just as prone to that sort of preoccupation as everyone else—maybe more, because most ministers enter the ministry as a way of being involved in matters substantive (perhaps even eternal), as a way of being God’s agent in bringing about transformation, as a way of making a difference.  Most of the time, though, ministers—like everybody else must content themselves with the mundane, peripheral things of life (i.e., what we shall eat, what we shall drink, what we shall wear, etc.).  It’s easy to believe, after having seen the same faces week in and week out, that what happens in church makes little difference at all in people’s lives.  The everydayness of it lulls us into thinking that the words we say, the songs we sing, the baptisms we perform, the Eucharist over which we preside, has so little power or relevance in our age.

We’re wrong, of course.  As Annie Dillard writes in her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions.  Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely evoke?  Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?  The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.

Anyone with any sense knows that what we do as a church, the rituals we practice, the words we use have in them (due to their proximate relationship to God) the power to heal the sick and raise the dead.  It is no empty thing to say to a person during communion: “The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.  The Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation.”  People have died for uttering words like that, and, just as importantly, the dead have been raised with words like that.  And if things like that aren’t intelligent or important enough to distinguish us, not original enough to help us make our mark—nothing is.

A Bit of Humility for the Journey

Instead of complaining that God had hidden Himself, you will give Him thanks for not having revealed so much of Himself: and you will also give Him thanks for not having revealed Himself to haughty sages, unworthy to know so holy a God.

            Two kinds of persons know Him:  those who have a humble heart, and who love lowliness, whatever kind of intellect they may have, high or low; and those who have sufficient understanding to see the truth, whatever opposition they may have to it.

            Pascal, Pensées

I find it fascinating that in a faith, as complex and ambiguous as Christianity can sometimes be, there are people who are altogether too eager to claim that they have cornered the market on God.  Even more fascinating, and perhaps more disturbing, is the grand certainty with which people make claims about that God—who God hates, for instance.  There are people who can give you five steps to a better prayer life, eight steps to reaching the lost, three principles for ethical living, and ten days to a deeper faith.  There are people that are too quick with an answer to tough questions:  Why did my child die?  Why do I need to pray?  Why has Jesus not returned?  Why are there hungry people in a world that produces more food than it can consume?

For Christians, faith is paradoxical.  On the one hand, we find simplicity:  We were separated from God because of sin, and God took pains through Jesus to reconcile us to God’s self.  On the other hand, the way that that faith plays itself out in everyday life is vastly more perplexing:  How am I to live as a Christian in the context of a cut-throat business environment?  Are my loyalties to God or the country of my birth?  How do I cope with the feeling that God is somehow absent?  How do I hold love those who are different from me?

For those of us for whom it is not always possible to affirm that faith just “gets sweeter and sweeter as the days go by,” for those of us who don’t have the handy theological slide-rule that much of popular Christianity seems always at the ready to produce, providing a snappy answer to the faith’s toughest questions, for those of us for whom faith is oftentimes more a “Jacobian” struggle with God than a tender walk “to the garden alone,” we must remember that our job as Christians is not to produce trite sayings in the face of difficult questions, but to struggle together in humility toward the truth.

Humility and truth—it is next to impossible to find the latter without the former.  Perhaps the three most important words in theology are “I don’t know.”  Faith is an arduous journey, often through deep darkness, which frequently provides more questions than answers; it is not a sunny jaunt that requires nothing more of us than to memorize a few trite sayings.  Don’t be overly alarmed, though, because the journey upon which we embark has as its solace the fact that we do it together, hand in hand, with Jesus ever near.