The SoSA Perspective

Another inevitability

Why do you suppose our fearless leaders can’t bring themselves to do things that they will inevitably be forced to do? For instance, we have nearly 50 million people in this country without health care because they can’t afford insurance. We have another very large number of people who have lousy health care because the insurance they can afford is basically a rip off.

So ask yourself, ‘are we going to allow people to die of treatable diseases on the doorstep of the hospital?’. The answer is obviously, no. That means we’re going to have health care for everyone, whether they can afford it or not. The only question is; how’s the best way to do it?

Because our leaders won’t face up to the above stated reality, we are relegated to suffering the worst, stupidest universal health care system imaginable. The fact is, everyone in this country has access to health care. Our present system calls for treating those who can’t afford to pay at our emergency rooms when their illnesses reach crisis proportions. That way we wind up maximizing the suffering of poor individuals and insuring that they receive the most expensive possible treatment but only after allowing the illness a chance to get as serious as it possibly can! The unpaid bill gets forwarded to the rest of us who can afford insurance (for a while longer we hope) and, one assumes, the only party to go home happy is the insurance company. Surely we can do better than this and for my money it’s high time we insisted on it.

Inevitabilities

The older I get the more it becomes apparent to me that an awful lot of life is inevitable. Once you’re born, you will grow up, go to work, seek (and in most cases find) relationship(s) with the opposite sex, generate offspring (or successfully avoid generating same), grow old, decline and die. Somewhere along that line you will come to grips with the meaning of life (or lack thereof). As a result of that epiphany you will then relate yourself to whatever deity, moral code, and/or metaphysical system that appeals to you.

The choices we get to make are involved only with the details of life. (Which job/career, which spouse/significant other, kids, no kids, adopted kids, Christian, Muslim, Jew, first church of what’s happening right now, etc.) If you look at life that way the details can be a lot of fun to pick out and the stress of the whole exercise is much lessened because the over all outcome is, well, inevitable.

Oh, that our fearless leaders could look at our social policy that way! Take my field, hunger, for instance. There is an ongoing struggle to find ways of insuring that all the poor people (35 million by recent count) are fed. This debate has gone on for all of my 28 years in hunger work and we are no closer to finding a solution than we were when we started. The bickering, back biting, posturing and bloviating that goes on between liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, is enough to tax the patience of Job.

If you just look at the inevitability of the situation, the solution can’t be that hard to find. Here’s the thing. Are we going to stand idly by while people starve to death in America? No, of course not. Well then Senator, Governor or whoever, that means we’re going to feed them. Inevitably. The only question is how is the best, most effective way to do that. Finding the answer to that question won’t be all that hard for a nation who can send a man to the moon. It might even be a fun and rewarding thing to do.

Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas.

Blessed is the full plate

I’ve been working up to this blog for a long time now. And then, out of the blue somebody comes along and says it better, and to a much bigger audience. I hate it when that happens. Anyway, have a look at this week's blog straight from the horse's mouth at: http://www.newsweek.com/id/70982

Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh

I recently read a book on leadership. The book can remain nameless, mostly because it was bunk. To be more exact, it was pushing the sort of “get ahead at all costs,” “the guy who dies with the most toys wins” sort of mentality that is so prevalent today. The good news is it got me to thinking about what makes a good leader. What does he/she look like, what lifestyle do they exhibit and so on. All of which posed the following question:

What did Jesus do with all that gold, frankincense, and myrrh? There’s no record at all. Probably, Joseph took it and just kept carpentering until it was all gone. (Poor folks didn’t do so well in those days.) At any rate, Jesus apparently didn’t have much use for the fame, wealth, and power that comes from being “number one.” He would have made a lousy king. That’s probably why he disappeared once when his followers decided to make him king.

Jesus’ values, as opposed to those of a great number of our current religious and political bloviaters, were compassion, frugality, and modesty. (in the sense of not trying to get yourself elected king, etc.). Those values do not require the addition of much wealth, power, or fame to make them work. As a matter of fact, fame, power, and wealth tend to get in the way.

On the other hand, it does occur to me that if you need to be a wealthy, powerful blowhard to be an effective king, and if we can’t find any kingdoms that have outlived His kingdom, maybe this whole modern “leadership” game is not worth the candle. Could be that’s why our founder said that if we want to be leaders, we should become servants of all. Just a thought.

If the world is wrong

When I was just old enough to know that there is a big world of ideas out there, I stumbled upon a comedian. He was from Jackson Tennessee, I think, and he billed himself as “Brother Dave Gardner”. There was much about Brother Dave that was profound and all of it was funny. He was like a southern Lenny Bruce, minus the vulgarity. Among the really profound sayings I picked up from him was, “if the world is wrong, then right your own self”.

You can take that as an invitation to conform and go along with the crowd, even though the crowd may be crazy. Or you can take the more profound point that the best, (only?) way to impact a world gone wrong is to go right in spite of it all. The latter is a better way of looking at it.

I believe a few things about the world. I believe that things as they exist are the result of millions of choices and decisions made every day, all the time, by all of us. For that reason the choices we make are of extreme importance. When most of us choose to “right our own selves” the will of God gets done. When not, then not. I also believe that things (including us) are always changing. Change is simply, all there is. For that reason the most important question to ask about our choices is, where are they leading us?

We are tempted to think that we don’t count in all this because there are so many “choosers”. After all, what could it matter if I “right my own self”? Who would care? Well, you could ask Gandhi, or Buddha or Moses or Christ, or any number of others. They all thought’ righting their own selves’ was worth the trouble, and they were all absolutely right about that. All of this gives me great hope. If you look at where we were as a species 2000 years ago, and where we are today, the trends (neo fascists, residual communists and religious fanatics aside) are in the right direction.

Sick and tired

I always get antsy when working to help the hungry leads to taking positions on political questions. The fact of the matter is I don’t like the way politics is done very much. It seems to me that there is a far right element (‘yes, the earth is flat, says so right here in the sacred scroll’) and a far left element (‘here, have some more pie with that sky’) and not much in the middle anymore.

Health care is a case in point. I don’t know how stupid Americans really are, but it seems we are the only modern nation on the planet that just can’t figure out how to get all our people to the doctor when they get sick. And now we can’t even figure out how to hold the line on insurance for poor kids. There’s a wonderful presidential legacy, don’t you think?

But hey! I’m really not writing this to bash Bush. Where would be the challenge in that? The point is that this whole health care mess is fixable. After all the British, Germans, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Danes, Poles, Italians, Canadians, and yes Rush, even the French have figured it out. So can we. But we can’t figure anything out if our so called leaders spend most of their time sticking their tongues out at each other. So please people, for the sake of the poor sick children, put your hands in your pockets, step away from the microphone and just “git ‘er done”. I’ll bet Larry the cable guy could figure it out.

Proper Lifestyle

I find people’s fascination with money fascinating. We operate as a society under the unwritten presupposition that you can’t have to much money. People who don’t have very much of the stuff are considered “poor”. People who have a great deal of the stuff are considered “successful”. And the “stuff” itself….. well, it costs us 10 cents to mint one nickel, if that tells you anything.

I personally think you can have too much money. The finer things in life (the ones that money can buy you at any rate) are, people tell me, addictive. Wouldn’t know myself. Although I will confess harboring a serious weakness for well made guitars. Aside from that I haven’t got much use for lots of money.

We started the ministry at Society of St. Andrew under the presupposition that the earth was a good thing provided for our use… (You ought to use what you need). We also assumed that the earth belonged to all of us collectively…… (you ought to share what you don’t need). Our final assumption was that we were managers, not owners of this God given gift. That means that we are expected to have enough sense to distinguish our needs from our wants. Given the advertising bozo’s ongoing efforts to convince us that every want we ever had (and some we didn’t even know we had) are actually “needs”, this is a fairly tall order.

I struggle with it every time I go past a music store. The demons of the dulcet tones reach out and grab me almost every time. Some days I’m strong and other days….. not so much. And so it goes. Good luck to you with your demons, and remember, it’s an advertising jungle out there.

Crisis among Children

We live in a world of immense promise and immense disappointment. It is possible for the first time in the history of our species to create a world where the ravages of poverty are a thing of the past. Our science and technological advances have created that possibility for the human race. Our spiritual and moral backwardness as a species continues to prevent us from making that possibility a reality.

It seems obvious that our scientists and technicians are a great deal better at what they do than our preachers and theologians are. Or maybe it’s just that when a scientist tells us that E = MC squared, we believe him. And when Jesus tells us “when you see your brother hungry, feed him” we do not believe. What ever the reason, we have a true crisis on our hands in the churches of our land. Our response to that crisis will determine whether we fulfill our role as moral and spiritual leaders in the world, or we become an irrelevant waste of time.

We are constantly bombarded with news of “crisis." Every week the newspapers bring a new crisis to our attention. On a good week we are treated to two or three! Most of these so called “crises” are designed to sell newspapers and very little more. However, there is a real crisis out there. It can be found right in your home town and all around the world.

In this day when we have the wealth, the capability and the know how to eliminate hunger, thirty-five thousand children die from malnutrition every single day. Ten million children die from “poverty related causes” every year. Twelve million children during the decade just past have been made homeless. In that same decade more children die from war than do soldiers. And it’s getting worse. The poorest fifth of the world's population now shares less than 1.5 percent of the world's income. Those most severely hurt by this inequity are the children.

Closer to home we find the same phenomenon. The gap in income between the richest and poorest people in the United States is widening. The poorest 20 percent of our people have only 5 percent of our nation's income. The disparity has not been that wide since the before Second World War. The hunger, homelessness, violence, neglect, retribution and despair that are ravaging our society are bred by such inequity. Those most devastated by all this are the children. And it’s getting worse.

In fact, if statistical trends continue, conditions will get much worse. We must speak and act in these times as the true followers of Jesus. Our actions must be full of the compassion of the Christ who fed the hungry, healed the sick, and befriended the outcast and the orphan. Our words must be full of the indignation of the Christ who drove the officially ordained and elected thieves from the temple because they made it hard for the poor to get to God’s house. Our actions must be full of the resolve of the Christ who lived, ate and drank with the “unclean” because he saw that God much preferred their company to that of the successful “Righteous ones."

Speaking and acting for and with the poor is not an option for us as people of faith. It is the only path to salvation.

Children and the Poor... What is the Church all about?

People join organizations for many different reasons. But generally, when you boil it all down, we join organizations because we want to do or be whatever the organization does or is. These are perilous times for the church. Not only is membership shrinking in the “main line” denominations, (which indicates that we’re not doing or being what people joined up to do or be), but the church (main line and otherwise) is clearly not doing and being what God intends in the first place. We are a living comedy of errors. Is it any wonder that the society we are supposed to be giving moral guidance and inspiration to is adrift and sinking?

You don’t have to be a Bible scholar. Just a cursory reading of the Old Testament will show you God is fundamentally and foremost on the side of the poor and marginalized people of this world. God has always had a peculiar idea in mind as to what kinds of people he wanted his people to be.

He didn’t rescue the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery because he especially likes Hebrews. He rescued them because they were slaves and he especially dislikes slavery, and every other evil thing that we humans do to degrade and take advantage of each other. He didn’t punish those same Hebrews because they disobeyed ritual laws or any other “religious” crimes. He punished them because they “ground the faces of the poor” and trusted in their own power and wealth to make them great.

When Jesus came he was born among the poor. That was not an accident. When he started his public ministry he quoted Isaiah, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That was not an accident either.

Jesus preferred to associate with the “outcasts and sinners” of society. This wasn’t because he doesn’t love respectable folks. It was because he especially loves those that we respectable folks make into “outcasts and sinners”, you know, the kinds of people you’d be embarrassed to invite to your church this Sunday.

If you look seriously at the priorities of Jesus and his Father, and compare them with the priorities of most of our churches today, it is difficult to see why we insist on calling ourselves the church of Jesus Christ in the first place. It would be more honest, given our present priorities, to call us “the church of the status quo”, “the church of more for me”, “the church of “just get me to heaven, Lord”, or the church of “let’s all just be nice”. We could lay claim to all those names and more. But the church of Jesus? I don’t know.

If we want to be the church of Jesus, we simply have to start identifying with those people he identified with. We have to be among the poor and outcast, and have them among us, like he did. Not so much as a great benefactor to them, but as a friend who knows how to find the Father’s kingdom.

The church’s faithfulness to the example of Jesus will be measured by the presence of the poor and the children among us, and by our response to them. The bad news is that we are a long way from being faithful in this regard. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way.