The $10 In My Pocket

I have $10 in my pocket. It might as well be $1,000,000. I have that much of a clue as to what to do with it. It doesn’t seem like a lot of money but it is heavy with meaning and generosity

I’ve had a rough, well, let’s say year and a few months. I’ve been quiet over here because I am more of an internal processor when life goes south and in many ways it has. But in many ways, it’s pretty great. I am on the verge of a new chapter and over the last few months, I have spent a lot of time practicing the disciplines of trust, silence, meditation and prayer.

This morning I had the privilege (and I actually mean that) to lead worship at a service that is held weekly at Justa Center in downtown Phoenix. Justa is a day center for homeless senior citizens that is a ministry of the United Methodist Church. There were only a handful of people there but God was there, and the room was full.

The last couple of weeks has been pretty hectic for me, including an out-of-state job interview, final projects for a class, leading music at City Square and starting a business. I’m not going to say I phoned in planning the service at Justa Center, but it didn’t get my full attention until the night before. I had been reading the lectionary passages but nothing really struck me. As I went through past messages, I pulled out some thoughts on hope from John 20, which seemed appropriate as Thursday was Ascension Day and this was the last Sunday of Easter.

In John 20, the disciples have locked themselves in a small room, but even though the doors were locked, Jesus showed up. We talked about the importance of being hopeful and not allowing our perspectives to get small and trust that Jesus will show up. After the service, they asked me to do another song, so I pulled something out of my back pocket and sang for them for a bit.

It was so lovely and there was such a great spirit in the room. My heart was full and I was so happy to have been there. Then Nola came back into the room and pressed an envelope in my hand. She said had been blessed by the service and wanted me to have the donation she had put in the offering plate. She was thankful to have good news about possible permanent housing and felt God told her to give something to me. It was $10. A five and five ones. From an older woman who is in recovery, living in a shelter, one rung above homeless. I froze, thanked her, and then went to find the coordinator.

“What do I do with this?” I asked him. “I can’t take money from a homeless woman.” He said that she had felt very strongly that God wanted her to give that to me and that I should take it in the spirit it was intended, from a pure, generous heart.

So I have this $10 in my pocket. It’s the heaviest paper money I’ve ever had in my possession. I cry every time I think about it. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but I am going to spend a lot of time praying and meditating over it. She is the woman who gave all she had. To a woman who has stuff and who just this week was expressing anxiety about being unemployed. I am humbled and thankful. Nola is not a lazy taker. She is a woman with a generous spirit despite her circumstances who wants to contribute and has a heart to worship God. I have been taught a great lesson and will use my $10 wisely.

 

A Global Apology

The apology is (usually) a powerful thing. Sometimes it falls on deaf ears, but when it is sincere and contrite and is met with grace, it can change the world.

I have been in conversations both past and recent about what the church has done to people in the name of the gospel and it just makes me so angry. It’s abuse. Grand scale church leadership abuse has been in the news lately but the smaller, subtler, more nuanced cases are what’s on my mind today.

A few years ago I hosted a group of folks from the LGBTQ community and World Vision in my home to talk about a partnership with the WV AIDS Village experience. I’m not sure that much came of that, but what did come of that was much more beautiful and fruitful than I could’ve imagined. As we were having our conversations, some of the people in the room began to talk about the pain and rejection they’d experienced at the hands of the church and as they told their stories, I looked them in the eyes and apologized. I apologized for their pain, the feeling that they were less than the rest of us, and the message that God couldn’t love them. They were shocked. They didn’t know what to do. They wept. It’s not that I was doing anything remarkable, just doing something that should have been done a long time ago, and probably should still be happening on a regular basis.

Recently I’ve dealt with people, specifically women, who are dealing with more subtle, insidious types of abuse meted out by the church. The tough part about this is that these women are the victims of a cultural view of Christianity perpetrated by people who think they are honestly doing the right thing. As progressive as some of my friends are, they’re realizing some of the misogynistic crap that has seeped into their own psyches. Some friends are just now realizing the bill of goods they’ve been sold and are running in the opposite direction.

I’ve been processing what I’ve heard and experiencing genuine sorrow on behalf of my friends who are so hurt and damaged by what they’ve been told by the church about who they are and about about who God is, and I feel my best response can come in the form of an apology. If moderate Muslims are constantly called upon to denounce the behavior of the craziest members of their group, then I can do the same.

I’m sorry that through the use of masculine language for God we told you that you were not quite made in God’s image. Language is the key to culture, and our language says that God is all things male, so since you’re not, you must be missing something. You must be less than. You must be destined to be a second class citizen in church. You must cover your head, be silent, play piano, teach only children and clean up after pot luck meals. Using masculine language for God limits God. It puts God into our more manageable, patriarchal cultural box but it’s not who God is. God transcends gender and we all contain the stamp of God’s image in us. All of us.

I’m sorry that you were told that your body exists to serve your husband. I’m sorry you were told (either explicitly or implicitly) that you really weren’t a full member of the community unless you had a husband. I’m sorry that you were told that faith was something to be endured rather than relished. I’m sorry you weren’t told that God has such crazy, irrational love for you that God can’t contain it and it spills over in the form of beauty, and friends, and great food, and art. I’m sorry that you heard that you had to work more than you could celebrate. I’m sorry you were told that the kingdom of God is something to be achieved after you die and has nothing to do with the world now. I’m sorry you weren’t told of the gospel as a loving, courageous person who restores the outcast to full spiritual participation. I’m sorry that God’s desire to change the world through the church was sold to you as a burden, an obligation, and only for the select few who were in the right crowd.

I’m sorry. I want better for you, for the church and for the world. I will support you. I will listen to you, pray for you, sit with you and walk with you as you become who you truly are. You are beautiful, you are loved and you are valued. You matter. And I love you.

Why Yoga is Better than Church

Recently I’ve gotten back to yoga after almost a year away and given my current ministry sabbatical, I couldn’t help but compare the yoga studio community to the state of the church. Not surprisingly, I found the church lacking. In this particular context, I’m talking about “church” as in my experience with more evangelical church and some mainline churches as well. I feel like this may be true of the majority of churches, but there are definitely some out there for whom this does not apply. Still looking for one of those.

1. The focus is on what you’re doing, not what everyone else is or is not doing. I was very fortunate to have Dr. Paul Hiebert as my uncle and got to spend time with him as a great guy who would play on the floor with me before I ever knew that he was kind of famous. In his book Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues, he proposed the idea of the “bounded” set vs. the “centered” set. In their book, The Shaping of Things to Come, Alan Hirsch & Michael Frost use this analogy:

If you are a farmer with a 3-acre ranch so to speak, you can build a fence to keep your cattle in and other animals out. This would be a Bounded Set. But if you are a rancher say with a huge amount of land and acreage you wouldn’t be able to build fences around your whole property. Instead of building fences, you dig wells. It is assumed that animals won’t go too far away from the well because their life literally depends on them not wandering too far away from their water source. Visually, it looks like this:

Most churches are a Bounded Set. They are very clear, both explicitly and implicitly, on who is in and who is out. Many churches are all about looking externally at other peoples’ behavior. And if they don’t fit the list, they’re out. I guess since they can’t see the Holy Spirit (and, let’s face it, probably haven’t heard from Her in a while) they’ve decided She needs some help. Not so in the yoga studio. Everyone focuses on their own progress and development. The instructor will go around and help and make adjustments

2. It’s an environment of unconditional acceptance. Students are appreciated for where they are and the phrase “if it’s available to you” is used often. Everyone engages in each pose where they can. Pushing yourself too hard results in injury.

3. It’s a safe place to try stuff and to screw up. Doing things outside your comfort zone is encouraged. Perfection is never expected because it’s actually not even a goal. Each pose has another level, and then another level, and so on. All you do is move through each level and it’s just expected that you won’t get things right the first time.

4. It gives energy rather than taking energy.  The point of yoga is to give energy to those practicing it so that they can go out into the world to contribute positively. I know that churches say they want to do that, and many do. But many of them don’t actually do it because they’ve made it so culturally necessary to pretend to be more together than you are in order to fit in, and that’s exhausting.

5. Instructors participate alongside the students. Other than moving through the space to make adjustments to students who are risking injury, the instructor is practicing with everyone else. The instructor is ahead of the students, of course, but doesn’t make that a focus in the classroom. We’re all students, we’re all practicing.

6. Instructors encourage rather than condemn. All progress is applauded because all progress is positive. No one is asked to leave because they get something wrong. No one is publicly shamed. As a result, we all want to work harder. Study after study on positive reinforcement shows that when you offer positive reinforcement to someone you are guaranteed to get back positive behavior 100% of the time. When you offer negative reinforcement, you can get anything from the same negative behavior all the way over to positive behavior. You have no way of predicting the outcome. Churches should really read these studies.

7. The focus is on the benefits of yoga in all areas of life, rather than the benefits to the physical studio by you being there. Yoga instructors clearly tell us that what we’re doing in the studio is all about positively impacting our lives outside the studio. Churches rarely give us the tools to make a difference in our lives outside because they are so busy using all their energy and resources to perpetuate their weekly event and keep their buildings running. Churches need to make a real connection between saying you follow Christ and what it means to live like a follower of Jesus.

8. The encouragement is to make your life bigger. I’ve mentioned before that my spiritual journey has led my view of God to continually expand. So many churches don’t want their people’s views of God to expand because if it did, they might realize that what their church is teaching is crap. The need to make God small and manageable and dignified is rampant in all denominations, from conservative to progressive, Pentecostal to Presbyterian. In my opinion, you should run from anyone who claims to know how God behaves in any situation. God is good, but God is not safe. It comes back to the bounded vs. centered set. We don’t get to say, “God only acts this way, therefore you can only believe this about God.” Let God get bigger and things will get bumpy, but they will also be awesome.

Philomena

Yesterday my mom and I went to see Philomena, the film based on the true story of Philomena Lee, an Irish woman who spent 50 years looking for the son who was taken from her when she was a teenager. Because of lack of sex education and available birth control, there were a number of teenage girls who found themselves pregnant and alone in mid-20th-century Ireland and ended up in Magdalene Houses for lack of other options. Philomena was essentially enslaved in one of these houses from the ages of 18-22 where she worked in a laundry 7 days a week and was permitted to see her son for 1 hour a day until he was essentially sold to an American family and his mother never saw him again. Her son, Anthony, was never out of her mind for a moment as she left the house, became a nurse, married and had other children. On her son’s 50th birthday she tells her daughter about the existence of this son and that she’s always wanted to find him. Her daughter by chance meets Martin Sixsmith, a cynical journalist who has recently been sacked from a position in the British Prime Minister’s office. She asks him if he’d help her mother and he rather pointedly explains that he doesn’t do “human interest” stories. Sixsmith ends up changing his mind and the two end up on a rather winding journey to find Philomena’s son and resurrect Sixsmith’s career.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The journeys of these two individuals are somewhat disparate, as Sixsmith goes on this journey motivated by his atheism and his disdain for the Catholic Church and Philomena, a devout Catholic, goes to prove God’s hand in her experience. During the search for Philomena’s son, now known as Michael Hess, the name given him by his adoptive parents, Philomena & Sixsmith discover that Michael was a successful attorney who worked for Presidents Reagan and Bush 41. They also discovered that he died 8 years earlier. This is a heartbreaking moment in the film that momentarily derails Philomena’s resolve and she almost returns to England. Knowing that there are people she can talk to who knew her son she and Sixsmith continue to seek out people who knew her son and who could tell her what she wanted to know – did he think of her?

Philomena and Sixsmith finally get Michael’s partner Peter to talk to them and show them pictures. Philomena explained that he had been taken from her and that she had wanted to find him all along. It turns out, Peter and Michael had gone to Ireland and visited the convent where he had been born andin a shocking twist, learned he was in fact buried there. Their initial visit where they had been told all records were burned and no one knew anything of Michael was a lie. Philomena was baffled, as one imagines a naive believer might be, whereas Sixsmith was enraged, feeling justified in his disdain for the church. When they returned to the convent, he confronted the old nun who had been around when Philomena had her son and the nun was recalcitrant. She angrily proclaimed that these girls had gotten what they deserved. Philomena heard the commotion and interrupted, chastised Sixsmith for his rudeness and offered the nun her forgiveness.

I’ve recently been thinking about forgiveness and wondering if I truly have forgiven a couple of people. I’ve had recurring dreams about them in which they are trying to reconcile with me and I won’t have it. Then I’d feel guilty in my waking hours and trying to figure out what was going on and why I couldn’t let go of this. Turns out I’m ok. I feel like God said, you’re good and you’re being fooled. So my dreams, which have often been a tool of oppression for me, had once again been used to make me think I was not as far along on this journey as I actually was. That was a relief. Forgivenss is hard. Philomena said that when Sixsmith accused her of taking the easy way out. It’s not easy. But it is right. In that moment, Philomena was Jesus and it was beautiful to see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG3QP8foCvg

Strange Bedfellows – You’ll get that joke in a minute

Recently there have been a rash of state laws that are attempting to guarantee “religious liberty” to business owners who want legal protection when they want to discriminate against the LGBTQ community. Apparently, making a cake for a gay wedding means you are automatically invited to be in the wedding party, obligated to buy an expensive gift, and be first in the receiving line. I’m curious if the makers of these wedding cakes give their customers some sort of questionnaire regarding their lifestyle in case they are living together before marriage or involved in a poly-amorous relationship so they know not to make cakes for them either. I’m assuming this questionnaire includes questions about whether any potential cake-eaters gossip, lie, are disobedient to their parents, or cheat on taxes. Those people don’t get cake either.

These 21st century Jim Crow laws have brought out a lot of protesters from all sides and I’ve actually found articles that make me agree with Fox News contributors and Andy Stanley, of all people. The end, dear readers, is very near.

Kirsten Powers, the aforementioned Fox News person, wrote:
“It’s probably news to most married people that their florist and caterer were celebrating their wedding union. Most people think they just hired a vendor to provide a service. It’s not clear why some Christian vendors are so confused about their role here.”

Couldn’t agree more. With a Fox News contributor. I’m already freaked out about my next birthday and my job and what I’m going to be when I grow up, ministry-wise, but now, I’m agreeing with someone from Fox News. It’s a sign of the apocalypse.

Then we have Andy Stanley. He said: “Serving people we don’t see eye to eye with is the essence of Christianity. Jesus died for a world with which he didn’t see eye to eye. If a bakery doesn’t want to sell its products to a gay couple, it’s their business. Literally. But leave Jesus out of it.”

Seriously. An evangelical making sense? Again – the end. Near. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

There are also people who are using platforms to say that their religious liberty is being threatened. There are lots of pastors, mostly evangelicals, who believe their religious liberty is being threatened. It’s totally not. No one is going to take away their churches, make them say things in sermons or make them marry gays. They can still do/say/preach whatever they want without being persecuted by the government. Evangelicals cry religious persecution when they’re asked to treat people of all faiths fairly and when they are no longer in power. White male evangelicals are the worst about this. It’s highly disrespectful to the Christians who are actually being persecuted around the world.

I’m not exactly sure what these state legislators in KS or AZ are thinking they’re going to accomplish by bringing back pre-Civil Rights era legislation and allowing businesses to target the gay community. They will hurt the economies they’re trying to protect. They will limit tourism, commerce and incomes. They are pandering to the far right of their bases and will ultimately lose the middle and somehow, in a mid-term election year, thing that’s a good idea. The mind boggles on so many levels. The KS law has been abandoned but the AZ law is still in play. There’s a protest on Monday that I’m going to try to make, and I hope that our dumbass governor keeps her law-signing pen sheathed.

Update: Our two Republican Senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake have asked Gov. Brewer to veto this bill. As have Mitt Romney and a group of 3 of the state legislators who originally backed the bill. It’s a world gone mad.

May Have Also Left My Ministry Mojo in San Francisco

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going through a ministry mid-life crisis. Maybe it’s 20 years in ministry fatigue. I’ve just found that I don’t at all feel comfortable in a traditional church any more. I can visit, but at this point I don’t really want to be heavily involved. I am anticipating some major transition in the next few weeks (fingers crossed) and until then, I see myself on a sabbatical from all things church.

The thing that did it was the weekly newsletter from my church in San Francisco. I’m still on their mailing list, and I think I may even still technically be a member. Anyway, I saw in the newsletter that the church is doing their Ash Wednesday service in the 16th Street BART station in San Francisco and that’s sort of the straw that broke it for me. That’s the kind of thing I want to be involved with. No offense to churches that aren’t there, but that’s where I want to be. I don’t want to be preoccupied with buildings. I don’t want to be worrying about entrenched ministry teams not communicating with other ministry teams. I don’t want to be part of a denominational structure that hamstrings ministry efforts. I don’t really even want to be part of a church that talks about doing ministry in BART stations. I want to be part of a church that does it. I don’t want to talk about it. I want to do it.

I would think that there must be more disaffected church people around, here and in other places. How does one find them?

A Return to Traditional Values (No, not those), part 5

So, our system is broken (big shock) and the government is trying but not succeeding to help. Churches should be doing more, but aren’t (when was the last time your church took up a collection to help someone pay medical bills?). Non-profits are doing what they can. What do we do?

It’s easy to argue that we are in a system that rewards the industrious and wealthy and that we have to accept it. Give two people each $1,000,000 and in a year, one will be rich and one will be broke, it’s just how it is. In my view, these aren’t God’s values. This doesn’t represent the God I read about in scripture and it’s not anything like what I see in the life of Jesus. We aren’t called to be a slave to “the market”, but rather we are to care for the poor and fight against injustice. Yes, I guess I am calling for a redistribution of wealth, but not one that is mandated by the government, rather one that is demanded by people who believe that everyone has a right to the dignity of feeding their families and seeing a doctor.

I guess what I’m saying is that I see the whole traditional values conversation entirely differently than just outward behaviors that don’t match an inner reality. I believe that as followers of Christ we are to be continually re-made inwardly and that will change our communities, our cities and the world.

Isaiah 58 (The Message)
^1-3 “Shout! A full-throated shout!
Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout! Tell my people what’s wrong with their lives,
face my family Jacob with their sins! They’re busy, busy, busy at worship,
and love studying all about me. To all appearances they’re a nation of right-living people—
law-abiding, God-honoring. They ask me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’
and love having me on their side. But they also complain,
‘Why do we fast and you don’t look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice?’

^3-5 “Well, here’s why:

“The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard. You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
You fast, but you swing a mean fist. The kind of fasting you do
won’t get your prayers off the ground. Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after:
a day to show off humility? To put on a pious long face
and parade around solemnly in black? Do you call that fasting,
a fast day that I, God, would like?

^6-9 “This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.

What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

A Full Life in the Emptiest of Places

^9-12 “If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims,
quit gossiping about other people’s sins, If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight. I will always show you where to go.
I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
firm muscles, strong bones. You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again.

^13-14 “If you watch your step on the Sabbath
and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage, If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy,
God’s holy day as a celebration, If you honor it by refusing ‘business as usual,’
making money, running here and there— Then you’ll be free to enjoy God!
Oh, I’ll make you ride high and soar above it all. I’ll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob.”

Yes! God says so!

A Return to Traditional Values (No, not those), part 4

Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Values.

As a person who falls slightly to the left of center on the political spectrum, I’ve struggled for years to reconcile my view of the role of government vs. the role of the church. Politically, I believe that there needs to be cooperation between the private and public sectors. I do not believe government is the enemy nor do I believe that it has all the answers. It functions as a fairly efficient delivery system in some areas (Medicare) and not so much in others (DMV).

However, I have this pesky Bible thing over here on the side that speaks very clearly about the role of the church in taking care of the poor. We need to be doing WAY more in this regard and for a long time I’ve thought that in some way, the government taking over that role has been something of an economic equivalent of the “rocks cry out” thing, and the reason that it’s not going all that well is that the wrong people are doing it. I was right on one count. The wrong people are doing it, but it’s more that just church or government.

There is a third entity that I have not given enough weight to in years past but as I began to think more about traditional values and their perceived decline, it occurred to me that there is one major cause for the behaviors associated with the demise of these values and that is economic injustice. Please don’t think I’m saying that all poor people commit crimes and if we would just give them money they would stop. It’s not that simple.

It turns out that God cares a lot about how we operate our businesses. I did a search for businesses and employers and turns out there are some things we need to look at again. Here are a few examples:

Deuteronomy 25:13-16
“Don’t carry around with you two weights, one heavy and the other light, and don’t keep two measures at hand, one large and the other small. Use only one weight, a true and honest weight, and one measure, a true and honest measure, so that you will live a long time on the land that God, your God, is giving you. Dishonest weights and measures are an abomination to God, your God—all this corruption in business deals!”

Proverbs 11:1-3
11 God hates cheating in the marketplace;
he loves it when business is aboveboard.

2 The stuck-up fall flat on their faces,
but down-to-earth people stand firm.

3 The integrity of the honest keeps them on track;
the deviousness of crooks brings them to ruin.

Proverbs 16:10-12
10 A good leader motivates,
doesn’t mislead, doesn’t exploit.

11 God cares about honesty in the workplace;
your business is his business.

12 Good leaders abhor wrongdoing of all kinds;
sound leadership has a moral foundation

Ezekial 28
You had everything going for you.
You were in Eden, God’s garden.
You were dressed in splendor,
your robe studded with jewels:
Carnelian, peridot, and moonstone,
beryl, onyx, and jasper,
Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald,
all in settings of engraved gold.

In much buying and selling
you turned violent, you sinned!

By sin after sin after sin,
by your corrupt ways of doing business,
you defiled your holy places of worship.
So I set a fire around and within you.
It burned you up. I reduced you to ashes.
All anyone sees now
when they look for you is ashes,
a pitiful mound of ashes.

Hosea 12:6-8
What are you waiting for? Return to your God!
Commit yourself in love, in justice!
Wait for your God,
and don’t give up on him—ever!

7-8 The businessmen engage in wholesale fraud.
They love to rip people off!
Ephraim boasted, “Look, I’m rich!
I’ve made it big!
And look how well I’ve covered my tracks:
not a hint of fraud, not a sign of sin!”

Acts 16:18-22
16-18 One day, on our way to the place of prayer, a slave girl ran into us. She was a psychic and, with her fortunetelling, made a lot of money for the people who owned her. She started following Paul around, calling everyone’s attention to us by yelling out, “These men are working for the Most High God. They’re laying out the road of salvation for you!” She did this for a number of days until Paul, finally fed up with her, turned and commanded the spirit that possessed her, “Out! In the name of Jesus Christ, get out of her!” And it was gone, just like that.

19-22 When her owners saw that their lucrative little business was suddenly bankrupt, they went after Paul and Silas, roughed them up and dragged them into the market square. Then the police arrested them and pulled them into a court with the accusation, “These men are disturbing the peace—dangerous Jewish agitators subverting our Roman law and order.” By this time the crowd had turned into a restless mob out for blood.

In the last 5 or so years we’ve talked a lot about whether or not we should regulate businesses, particularly banks. I won’t bore you with a whole history of the banking system but I will tell you that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 was the biggest blow to the regulation of the banks and led to the financial crisis in 2008. It repealed much of the Glass-Steagall act from 1933 that kept us from having any major recession for almost 50 years. During the same time as banks were being deregulated, the Moral and other conservative evangelical groups were beginning to align themselves closely with the Republican party, mostly over the issue of abortion. The Republican party is also the party of deregulation. Small government, or little to no government involvement in business, is the goal of conservative politician and coincidentally, they are the ones who have benefited financially. 

Large banks and businesses have become deified as “job creators” and if you want to regulate them or make them answer to any government agency, you are considered unamerican. The truth is, we have tangled up capitalism with democracy and Christianity and the Church has bought into this lie that businesses don’t have to be accountable.

The thing is, these businesses aren’t creating jobs. Oh, things are getting better, for sure. But the same businesses who are asking to be called “job creators” are doing what they can to cut jobs while making record profits and paying no income taxes.

Large corporations are making more money than ever before but are doing whatever it takes to avoid paying taxes and taking care of their employees. According to Bloomberg:

“The largest U.S.-based companies expanded their untaxed offshore stockpiles by $183 billion in the past year, increasing such holdings by 14.4 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg .

Microsoft Corp. , Apple Inc and Google Inc each added to their non-U.S. holdings by more than 34 percent as they reaped the benefits of past maneuvers to earn and park profits in low- tax countries. Combined, those three companies alone plan to keep $134.5 billion outside the U.S. government’s reach, more than double the $59.3 billion they held two years earlier.

The build-up of offshore profits — totaling $1.46 trillion for the 83 companies examined — is increasing because of incentives in the U.S. tax code for booking profits offshore and leaving them there. The stockpiles complicate attempts to overhaul the tax system as lawmakers look for ways to bring the money home and discourage profit shifting.”

In 1980, CEOs typically  made 42x the income of their average worker. In 2011 it was 380x. As illustrated in the above graphs, lower wage jobs have grown the most over the last two years, the majority of which pay minimum wage or barely higher. Minimum wage has not been raised in years and has not kept up with inflation. People who work full-time at minimum wage live well below the poverty line and must still get government assistance to put food on the table.

Here’s some info on the minimum wage:
$10.74 – How much the federal minimum wage would be if it had kept up with inflation over the past 40 years. Instead, it’s $7.25.
$15,080 – The annual income for a full-time employee working the entire year at the federal minimum wage.
0 – The number of states where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment working a 40-hour week.
3 – The number of times Congress passed legislation to increase the minimum wage in the last 30 years.
19 – The number of states (including the District of Columbia) which have raised their minimum wage above the federal level of $7.25.
10 – The number of states that annually increase their state minimum to keep up with the rising cost of living.
67 – The percentage of Americans that support gradually raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to at least $10.00 an hour, according to an October 2010 poll.
64 in 100 vs. 4 in 100 – What are the chances an adult minimum wage worker is a woman vs. the chances a Fortune 500 CEO is a woman?
76 – The percentage of Missouri voters that voted to increase and index the Missouri minimum wage in the 2006 ballot initiative.
$2.13 – The federal minimum wage for tipped employees, such as waiters and waitresses, nail salon workers, or parking attendants.

We’re told that this is all about “the market”. We pay CEOs crazy amounts of money because “that’s what the market will bear”. And that’s supposed to be the right answer. It’s fine. You know…the market.

I love this new pope so much that I might convert. Recently he said:

Condemning the “new tyranny” of unfettered capitalism and the “idolatry of money,” Pope Francis argues in a newly circulated apostolic exhortation that “as long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.”

The pope has taken a side, not just in his manifesto but in interviews, warning: “Today we are living in an unjust international system in which ‘King Money’ is at the center.”

He is encouraging resistance to “the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation” that creates “a throwaway culture that discards young people as well as its older people.”

Yeah. What he said.

A Return to Traditional Values (No, not those), part 3

So what am I talking about when I say that I agree that we need to return to “traditional values”? As I said, I don’t think that the values held by those who espouse what they call “traditional values” are bad, I just see things differently.

1. God is much more concerned about who I am than what I do.

My big issue with what are defined as “traditional values” is that they only deal in superficial, external behavior choices and don’t deal with real inner identity and transformation. This is a value that covers our individual responsibility. As Christians we are to pursue God with all our hearts and allow the rest of life to take care of itself. Not that we should abdicate all responsibilities but that we should be much more aware that all of life is a formation process and allow God to do God’s work in us. When we are listening and responsive to God’s activity in our lives we become more Christlike versions of ourselves and we behave differently in the world.

Tim Kimmel’s book Grace Based Parenting uses the example of endoskeletal and exoskeletal creatures to describe the internalizing of values and the subsequent influence of behavior. As humans, we are endoskeletal creatures, meaning that our skeleton is inside our bodies. If we break a bone, we have it set and it heals and we move on. Exoskeletal creatures, such as a lobster, doesn’t have that luxury. If its shell is broken, it dies. It doesn’t have the internal structure to withstand external pressures. When we are internally transformed, our character is shaped and we can more easily withstand pressures to do things that are counter to our values.

Paul says in the New Testament that while on the outside we may be wasting away (some more than others) inwardly we are being renewed – actualy the Greek word is renovare, where we get our word for “renovate”. We are being re-made, improved, updated, made new. We should not be capable of having an encounter with the living Christ and not be changed for the better.

2. God is much more concerned with compassion than with convention.

The best example of this internal motivation I see is in John 13 when Jesus makes the decision to wash the disciples’ feet.

John 13: 1-5

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  ² The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper ³ Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, ⁴ got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. ⁵ Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.

Because of his constant connection to God, Jesus had a strong sense of his identity and mission. Because he knew that he had come from God and was going back to God, he was able to take a towel and perform the lowest household task. Because he knew that he had come from God and was going back to God, he said to the Samaritan woman, “Give me a drink.” Because he knew that we have come from God and are going back to God, he said, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you have done to me.”

3. God’s values are counter to our culture, not integrated with our culture.

The pope sort of stole my thunder on this one today, and I’ll address this in a day or so, but my point with this one is all about how American culture has deified business and capitalism and has come to equate financial success with God’s blessing. I love how Christians call the success of something they agree with God’s blessing but the success of something they don’t agree with the devil doing his work. Here’s an example:

Christian Person: Our church is debt free/we have record offerings/our business is thriving/we made _________ dollars, therefore God is blessing us.

Me: What about the Mormon Church? They have assets totaling over $30 billion. Is that God’s blessing, too?

CP: Ummmm….uhhhh….well…….uhhhhh….the devil…..ummmm……Satan……Billy Graham says they’re not a cult anymore…..ummmm

What I’m getting at here is that financial windfalls for individuals and businesses may or may not be from God, but what God is interested in is what we do with them. When we get more, do we give more, or do we hoard more? Again, I speak not against the common sense of saving. But I speak of really listening to what God wants you to do with your money, both as an individual and as a business.

What does it  mean to be a business and to follow God’s values? Does it mean that you have to be a Christian business or that your business has to have a Christian CEO? Do you have to not be open on Sundays?

A Return to Traditional Values (No, not those), part 2

In my last post I talked a bit about the history of American culture in the last 50 years and some of the changes that we’ve gone through because of major political and historical events.

I’m going to say right here that my dad is one of those guys who wants to go back to how things used to be. I love my dad more than anything and would never disrespect him. We see things differently on this issue, but I wasn’t there during the 1950’s so I don’t know his perspective. When he talks about things being better then, I ususally say, “Yeah, you were a white guy during Jim Crow. How hard could it have been?” My dad is in no way a racist and sees that element of our history as the shameful plight that it was. What he means is the friendliness, honesty, perceived integrity, no need to lock doors, lifestyle where he grew up.

Why did it not last?

If things were so great in 1955 and people were so happy and crime-free, then why did things change? Why didn’t we hang on to that utopian ideal and why don’t we all still live in an episode of the Andy Griffith Show?

1. Morality of the time was about external appearance, and did not stem from an internal transformation.

I went to Christian schools my entire life. The first time I set foot on a public school campus was when I started teaching at one when I was in my 30s. I can beat you at Bible Trivia but it didn’t make me a better person. Within a few years of my high school graduation a good portion of my class had completely turned their back on the faith we were taught in school. They kept up the appearance when they had to, but it wasn’t part of them. They behaved with integrity because they were supposed to, not because it was who they were.

2. “Separate but equal is inherently unequal.”

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court handed down the rare unanimous decision known as “Brown vs. The Board of Education.” This decision overturned the 1896 decision “Plessy vs. Ferguson” which made legal the segregation of schools. Now with school segregation overturned based on the 14th Amendment, the tide of desegregation that eventually led to the Civil Rights movement begun.

The utopia of 1950s America didn’t last because it wasn’t fair, and therefore couldn’t possibly be real. The patina of an idealistic society had underneath it the scourge of social and economic injustice. The tension was bound to boil over and it did. Selma, Stonewall, etc. It all came crashing down because it was built on a false foundation.

Take a look at this series of graphs, some of which have information that go back to 1960. Over the last 20-40 years things have not gotten markedly better for people of color.

3. God’s values have been tangled up with American values

Americans have long been confused about the role of religion. The Founders intended for the government and religion to be separate but they couldn’t possibly envision how complicated that could get. I’m glad that American doesn’t have a state church. I’m glad my taxes don’t support the maintenance of someone’s house of worship. But I believe very strongly that America is about freedom for people of all faiths and one faith shouldn’t have greater public display or advantage than any other. Frankly, I think the Founders would’ve been more specific about some stuff if they’d known just how many religions there are.

When we got it in our head that God had somehow blessed America above all other countries, we began to believe that everything we did, our form of government, our economic system, our massive businesses, were blessed and preferred by God. Therefore, anything that was “American” became “Christian”.  If we prosper, we’re blessed by God, and if we stop prospering we’re no longer blessed by God. This prosperity gospel has permeated the Church in America so that when bad things happen to people or to our country, we cry “Unfair!” since we’ve supposedly done everything right. But have we really?

Another question I have is:

Were things really all that much better?

Depends on who you were/are.

In 1955, homicide rates were 4.1 per 100,000. They peaked at 10.2 in 1980 and as of 2007, they were 5.9. Compare that to the rate being 5.4 for white men an 39.7 for black men.

Between 1990 and 2009 the rate of forcible rape went from 80.5 per 100,00 to 100,000 52.3. While horrifying, it’s still an improvement.

I’m not going to go too deeply into statistics here. We all have the Google machine. I browsed through a bunch of stats and it looks like the most dangerous time in the US in the last 50 years was 1980-1984. Glad I made it through grades 3 – 7. Whew.