Land of the Free?

I recently got an e-mail from a friend of mine, Todd, who is an ideological Libertarian who tends to vote Republican for reason of pragmatics. The e-mail was entitled "Remember to thank the Democrats for this one…" in which he rails against the Social Security (FICA) Program as a Democratic 'failure' instituted under 'pretenses of moderation' by FDR that were almost immediately undermined and eroded further with each new Democratic presidency.

Blah, blah, blah. This is just the continuation of an ongoing friendly rivalry between some friends of mine and I. Notice I did not say it was a debate "among" friends, because there's really only 2 sides, them versus me. They call me a socialist and a closet Democrat. It makes them feel more comfortable in their conservatism to dismiss my ideas with their labels. I'm neither. Though I find Democratic politics more palatable between the 2 major parties, I consider myself an independent spiritual progressive (if I must choose a label at all—I just want to see us attempting to be better tomorrow than we were today). So although his e-mail was addressed to several persons, it was really directed at me.

Of course I could not let a shot careen across my bow and not respond; that would be unsporting of me. "I'll take that," I replied. "But you have to remember that I'm a non-Democrat who doesn't have a whole lot of problem with Social Security. Let me ask you this. Would you imagine that people would have to "earn" a living in the kingdom of God or would that be one or more of the 7 basic dignities (life, food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education and career) afforded to all? What's wrong with trying to welcome as much of that into existence whenever and wherever we can, even now?"

To which another friend quickly responded, "The HUGE difference is who is the administrator of the program...and even there, according to what I have read [in scripture], we will have to work!"

There they go with that tired old capitalistic false dichotomy crap again. Why has it always got to be Capitalism/Conservatism hook-line-and-sinker or bust! Nobody said anything about not working. My issue is with requiring people to "earn" or have to have capital to access basic human dignities. When the biblical narrative admonishes us not to steal or not to covet, we forget that it was in the context of a society where these 7 basic dignities were already provided for.

I am reminded of two things as I listen to my friends defend their conservatism. The first is something I read in Brian McLaren's The Last Word and the Word After That: that one's politics is often the reflection of a similar theology. In this case, it strikes me as the theology of manifest destiny: "Because I am blessed and you are not, God must have meant it to be so. I must be on the right side of what God is doing. If you want to be blessed, you need to work that out with God for yourself and get on his good side as well." My wife just reminded me how neatly such thinking aligns with our misinterpretation of Jesus' Parable of the Talents. You can almost hear the servant with 10 talents saying to the servant with 1, "It's not my fault I was blessed with $1.5 million, and you only received $150,000 to invest."

Secondly, I am reminded of a line from a song by The Cobalt Season that speaks to the sub-plot of this on-going discussion between friends. My friends often claim as their motivation the desire to protect their personal freedom to respond to societal needs as one's conscience leads her/him. "The government [as if government is something separate and apart from 'we the people'] should not force us to give money to anything. People have the right to choose what they want to support" is the sensible, yet self-interested rationale behind their comments. But I challenge all this talk of freedom we like to do in America with the words of The Cobalt Season's song "Twenty-Eight":

"Freedom's seldom what we think it is
Empty rhetoric
Freedom's often greed dressed up"

Seldom has a truer word been spoken.

The Difference the Point Can Make

Anyone who has ever heard me speak knows I love stories (villagehalwit@blogspot.com). I particularly love allegories. I have grown up reading and re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia and Lewis' space trilogy. In college I discovered Langston Hughes' Jesse B. Simple stories, and I fell in love with the art form all over again.

Over the years I've read or listened to many wonderful stories, but the ones that have intrigued me the most bar none are the parables of Jesus, primarily because they have seemed so packed with a meaning whose surface I always felt I was barely scratching. What has been particularly frustrating is that it has always been said that Jesus' parable were intentionally simple so that peasants could understand them. Now I'm no peasant (any wisdom I've ever stumbled into has never been as earthy or as profound), but I've always hoped one day to make the pieces and parts of any one of Jesus' parables read as a cohesive whole, instead of having certain phrases in each stand conspicuously out of place with my most recent interpretation.

Today, on a friend's blog (Ryan Sharp) I found a link to an article that was able to make sense for me of two of the most commonly invoked of Jesus' parables. When I read it, my heart leaped for joy in my chest. For the first time stories I have heard recounted in fragments over and over finally came together as a cohesive whole. It was amazing. Check it out for yourself. I promise you will be delightfully unsettled.

For more, check out Ched Myer's book Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus.