Why is the book of James fiercely anti-rich?
From The Message translation, James 1:9:
"When the down-and-outers get a break, cheer! And when the arrogant rich are brought down to size, cheer!"
According to Luke, Jesus was also fiercely anti-rich; a sample of his teaching: "Woe to the rich"---the unrepentant rich be damned. And he called the sacred Temple, "a den of robbers" run by a rich religious elite.
James, the half brother of Jesus, agrees with Jesus; James exposes and explains why in greater detail in 5:16:
"And a final word to you arrogant rich: Take some lessons in lament. You'll need buckets for the tears when the crash comes upon you. Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you've piled up is judgment.
"All the workers you've exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groans of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the Master Avenger. You've looted the earth and lived it up. But all you'll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse. In fact, what you've done is condemn and murder perfectly good persons, who stand there and take it."
With this powerful passage as a background, James two will make more sense. James is anti rich because the rich are usually greedy oppressors; one exception can be found in the book of Acts 4:32-35 where the newly converted, Spirit-filled rich sold houses and lands, then gave the proceeds to the church to feed the poor. Should the American church also be anti-rich? Is it now? Should the Second Reformation be anti-rich oppressors?
At the end of chapter one, James distinguishes between worthless, hot air religion and pure, real religion---genuine biblical Christianity that combines spirituality and justice. 1:27 "visit the widows and orphans in their affliction" better translated "minister among/release the oppressed poor."
Immediately James (2:1-7) scorches the churches for acting like the godless world. The church was showing favoritism, partiality, discrimination, segregation; it was honoring the rich oppressors and disrespecting the oppressed poor.
God, on the other hand, honors the poor. "He chose the world's down-and-out as the kingdom's first citizens, with full rights and privileges. . . .And here you are abusing these same citizens."
How stupid can you be? Are you religious idiots? "Isn't it the rich who oppress you?" So why in the world do you honor the rich in your churches?
Solutions
Love the oppressed poor; how about spending a generation rebuilding one community.
Combine faith and works; combine God-talk and God-acts.
Do works of Jubilee justice that release the oppressed; they need much more than fragments of justice.
The acid test: Is our gospel RELEASING THE OPPRESSED? See Isaiah 58:6 and Luke 4:18.
Friday, January 27, 2017
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
The Trinity of Truth, Love and Justice
The Trinity of truth, love and justice; lessons from James, chapter two.
The end goal of the kingdom of God is justice (the Messianic passages from Isaiah, Matthew 6:33, NEB, Romans 14:17, NEB); Jubilee justice that releases the oppressed (Isaiah 58, Luke 4:18-19).
But how do we move from oppression to justice---through truth and love.
When discrimination, segregation and oppression take place inside the church walls or when they take place in the surrounding community and the church is silent, then social evil is normalized, legitimated, even sanctified; for example, the Temple as a den of robbers.
What is the remedy? Three steps in this order: truth first, then love, and last justice. The church should not skip steps one and two and jump to step three. James, chapter two:
1. 1-7 need a PROPHET to proclaim the TRUTH, expose the evil.
2. 8-13 need a PASTOR to practice LOVE.
3. 14-26 need a PRACTITIONER to do JUSTICE---rebuild poor communities.
Back to verses 1-7: the church was honoring the oppressive rich and dishonoring the oppressed poor; religion was used as cover for this deceit. Verses 8-13: the church was not loving their neighbor, the poor, the oppressed. Verses 14-26: the church needed faith fueled good works of justice; these are required to release the oppressed poor.
How does James two apply to the American church? The American church desperately needs prophetic teaching about the fact that oppression is evil, discrimination is wrong, partiality is sin, neglect of justice is evil, failure to your neighbor is sin. In the American church,
there is no biblical based theology of oppression so the church fails at step one and cannot proceed to steps two and three until the church has repented and restituted.
Some churches are skipping steps one and two and jumping over to step three, the justice emphasis. This won't work; at best, one will only produce fragments of justice. Not good enough to release the oppressed.
All Americans could learn from John Perkins, the Mississippi prophet and practitioner. In Mississippi, the church had practiced discrimination, segregation and oppression for generations. To break the demonic stranglehold, John used both the Word of Truth and the Spirit of Truth to expose social evil and provide solutions. John loved his enemies and rebuilt oppressed communities.
Love alone might RELIEVE the pain of the oppressed; but only justice will RELEASE the oppressed.
The end goal of the kingdom of God is justice (the Messianic passages from Isaiah, Matthew 6:33, NEB, Romans 14:17, NEB); Jubilee justice that releases the oppressed (Isaiah 58, Luke 4:18-19).
But how do we move from oppression to justice---through truth and love.
When discrimination, segregation and oppression take place inside the church walls or when they take place in the surrounding community and the church is silent, then social evil is normalized, legitimated, even sanctified; for example, the Temple as a den of robbers.
What is the remedy? Three steps in this order: truth first, then love, and last justice. The church should not skip steps one and two and jump to step three. James, chapter two:
1. 1-7 need a PROPHET to proclaim the TRUTH, expose the evil.
2. 8-13 need a PASTOR to practice LOVE.
3. 14-26 need a PRACTITIONER to do JUSTICE---rebuild poor communities.
Back to verses 1-7: the church was honoring the oppressive rich and dishonoring the oppressed poor; religion was used as cover for this deceit. Verses 8-13: the church was not loving their neighbor, the poor, the oppressed. Verses 14-26: the church needed faith fueled good works of justice; these are required to release the oppressed poor.
How does James two apply to the American church? The American church desperately needs prophetic teaching about the fact that oppression is evil, discrimination is wrong, partiality is sin, neglect of justice is evil, failure to your neighbor is sin. In the American church,
there is no biblical based theology of oppression so the church fails at step one and cannot proceed to steps two and three until the church has repented and restituted.
Some churches are skipping steps one and two and jumping over to step three, the justice emphasis. This won't work; at best, one will only produce fragments of justice. Not good enough to release the oppressed.
All Americans could learn from John Perkins, the Mississippi prophet and practitioner. In Mississippi, the church had practiced discrimination, segregation and oppression for generations. To break the demonic stranglehold, John used both the Word of Truth and the Spirit of Truth to expose social evil and provide solutions. John loved his enemies and rebuilt oppressed communities.
Love alone might RELIEVE the pain of the oppressed; but only justice will RELEASE the oppressed.
Society is Like a Spider Web
Society is like a spider web. Every part is interconnected. Touch one part of the web and all parts move. No one person can understand all of the complex web of society.
Sociologists in this day and age, so-called experts in society, tend to over specialize in studying one, two or three factors. For example, an expert on past slavery may miss or underemphasize a current system of oppression.
In terms of society, any one person's life experience is extremely limited. A white rural person knows little about what a poor black person living in the inner city experiences and vice versa. At best, we make judgments about the other based only on fragments of information. I have lived in black communities for 35 years, but I often run into whites who have spent zero years in black communities pontificate as though they were experts.
There are always multiple causes or factors at work at work. Be very wary of single cause explanations which take an important half truth and make it into the whole truth. For example, poor black women may experience three different types of oppression at the same time---gender oppression, racial oppression and economic oppression.
Or one social institution may have two functions---one positive and one negative---at the same time. The Temple was a legitimate place of worship for the Jewish poor and a system of oppression that exploited the poor. Jesus called the sacred temple a den of robbers.
The American criminal justice system was created to maintain law and order, but currently in the U.S. it has a second function---racial profiling that results in unjust mass incarceration of young black and Hispanic males.
It helps enormously to have a biblically based theology of society to inform us, plus some understanding of history. Few Americans have these perspectives so often they draw wrong conclusions about social problems.
The white church in Mississippi and Iowa has two functions: a place of worship and a place of segregation, a place of worship and a place of white privilege, a place of worship and a place that neglects justice and the love of God expressed as love of neighbor.
Theologians that specialize in the cross and resurrection and justification by faith often neglect the kingdom of God as justice that releases the oppressed poor. Billy Graham, late in life, admitted that he had neglected the important kingdom of God message which he defined as justice for all.
Most Americans see the Washington Monument as a proper and fitting symbol that honors our heroic founding father. I see the Washington Monument as a symbol of oppression because Washington was our first bigoted billionaire. He and his wife owned around 300 slaves making him a very wealthy man. In my eyes, a slaveowner is an automatic bigot.
The same with the St. Louis Arch. another famous monument. For most white Americans, the Arch is a symbol of westward expansion---the spread of American civilization and Christianity to the West coast. To Native Americans, the Arch is a symbol of oppression---the beginning of the end of Indian peoples and cultures west of the Mississippi. One Arch with two radically different meanings.
Sociologists in this day and age, so-called experts in society, tend to over specialize in studying one, two or three factors. For example, an expert on past slavery may miss or underemphasize a current system of oppression.
In terms of society, any one person's life experience is extremely limited. A white rural person knows little about what a poor black person living in the inner city experiences and vice versa. At best, we make judgments about the other based only on fragments of information. I have lived in black communities for 35 years, but I often run into whites who have spent zero years in black communities pontificate as though they were experts.
There are always multiple causes or factors at work at work. Be very wary of single cause explanations which take an important half truth and make it into the whole truth. For example, poor black women may experience three different types of oppression at the same time---gender oppression, racial oppression and economic oppression.
Or one social institution may have two functions---one positive and one negative---at the same time. The Temple was a legitimate place of worship for the Jewish poor and a system of oppression that exploited the poor. Jesus called the sacred temple a den of robbers.
The American criminal justice system was created to maintain law and order, but currently in the U.S. it has a second function---racial profiling that results in unjust mass incarceration of young black and Hispanic males.
It helps enormously to have a biblically based theology of society to inform us, plus some understanding of history. Few Americans have these perspectives so often they draw wrong conclusions about social problems.
The white church in Mississippi and Iowa has two functions: a place of worship and a place of segregation, a place of worship and a place of white privilege, a place of worship and a place that neglects justice and the love of God expressed as love of neighbor.
Theologians that specialize in the cross and resurrection and justification by faith often neglect the kingdom of God as justice that releases the oppressed poor. Billy Graham, late in life, admitted that he had neglected the important kingdom of God message which he defined as justice for all.
Most Americans see the Washington Monument as a proper and fitting symbol that honors our heroic founding father. I see the Washington Monument as a symbol of oppression because Washington was our first bigoted billionaire. He and his wife owned around 300 slaves making him a very wealthy man. In my eyes, a slaveowner is an automatic bigot.
The same with the St. Louis Arch. another famous monument. For most white Americans, the Arch is a symbol of westward expansion---the spread of American civilization and Christianity to the West coast. To Native Americans, the Arch is a symbol of oppression---the beginning of the end of Indian peoples and cultures west of the Mississippi. One Arch with two radically different meanings.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Symptoms or Causes
In terms of social problems, I would estimate that 9 out of 10 Americans mistake symptoms for causes. Nine out of 10 accept half-truths for the whole truth. And most Christians accept half the gospel for the whole gospel (Acts 8:12). A case in point:
About 10 years ago, the state of Iowa had a 2 and 24 problem; now it is around 3 and 26. As an Iowan, when I first discovered that Iowa's black-white incarceration ratio was the worst in the nation---2 percent of Iowa's population is black, 24 percent of Iowa's prison population is black---I was shocked and dismayed. Iowa is full of decent, church going people. How could this be? What was happening? What was causing this? Did we have a repeat of Mississippi---a state full of church people yet full of poverty and racism? I discovered:
1. That most Iowans, including most Christians, didn't know about Iowa's terrible incarceration ratio---IGNORANCE. Not even preachers were speaking about this serious social evil.
2. Those Iowans who did know something about the 2 and 24 problem mostly assumed that it was proof that blacks are much more criminal than whites, 12 times more criminal in fact. Criminal justice stats tell the raw truth. Explanation: both individual responsibility and black inferiority/dysfunction.
3. Those social activists who dug a little deeper historically, who understood slavery and segregation, came up with a remnants of racism explanation. This was was a half-truth that was convincing even to fine scholars such as Harvard's brilliant historical sociologist, Orlando Patterson, the world's top expert on slavery. In 2000, even Michelle Alexander accepted the remnants of racism argument.
Since there is great truth in the saying "The historical past haunts the sociological present," remnants of racism seemed to be a convincing, compelling argument. But it was only an important half-truth posing as the whole truth. If a person already knows the truth, why look any further?
4. In addition to past systems of oppression, there is a current system of oppression---mass incarceration---that is invisible and unknown to most Americans. The first scholar to raise the possibility of a a new system of oppression was Jerome Miller, author of Search and Destroy. The criminal justice system was responsible for mass incarceration. It was given the assignment to prosecute the War on Drugs. Under the president's direction, blacks were targeted. Everyone knew that drugs were rampant in the inner city black community. Arrests and incarcerations skyrocketed. But there is one flaw in this widely believed theory; illegal drugs were equally rampant in white communities.
5. In 2010, Michelle Alexander changed her mind and became the chief advocate of a current system of oppression argument. America justice, contrary to popular opinion, is not blind, impartial; it is deliberately and systematically biased. Read The New Jim Crow.
6. Not only were whites blind to mass incarceration as a new system of oppression that was as bad as past slavery and segregation, so were the black leaders of 180 civil rights organizations as was Michelle Alexander herself for many years.
7. The same thing happens in Haiti. Some see corruption as Haiti's number one problem; true corruption is widespread, but there is a deeper cause. Some see demonic voodoo as the problem; that extreme poverty has spiritual roots. I see 500 years of oppression---both past and present---as the number one problem.
8. Among Christians, the number one problem is a gospel that does not release the economically oppressed. There are 555 reference to oppression in the OT but the American church has no theology of oppression. Christians should be specialists on oppression, be able to spot it before anyone else, but they are often blind to it.
About 10 years ago, the state of Iowa had a 2 and 24 problem; now it is around 3 and 26. As an Iowan, when I first discovered that Iowa's black-white incarceration ratio was the worst in the nation---2 percent of Iowa's population is black, 24 percent of Iowa's prison population is black---I was shocked and dismayed. Iowa is full of decent, church going people. How could this be? What was happening? What was causing this? Did we have a repeat of Mississippi---a state full of church people yet full of poverty and racism? I discovered:
1. That most Iowans, including most Christians, didn't know about Iowa's terrible incarceration ratio---IGNORANCE. Not even preachers were speaking about this serious social evil.
2. Those Iowans who did know something about the 2 and 24 problem mostly assumed that it was proof that blacks are much more criminal than whites, 12 times more criminal in fact. Criminal justice stats tell the raw truth. Explanation: both individual responsibility and black inferiority/dysfunction.
3. Those social activists who dug a little deeper historically, who understood slavery and segregation, came up with a remnants of racism explanation. This was was a half-truth that was convincing even to fine scholars such as Harvard's brilliant historical sociologist, Orlando Patterson, the world's top expert on slavery. In 2000, even Michelle Alexander accepted the remnants of racism argument.
Since there is great truth in the saying "The historical past haunts the sociological present," remnants of racism seemed to be a convincing, compelling argument. But it was only an important half-truth posing as the whole truth. If a person already knows the truth, why look any further?
4. In addition to past systems of oppression, there is a current system of oppression---mass incarceration---that is invisible and unknown to most Americans. The first scholar to raise the possibility of a a new system of oppression was Jerome Miller, author of Search and Destroy. The criminal justice system was responsible for mass incarceration. It was given the assignment to prosecute the War on Drugs. Under the president's direction, blacks were targeted. Everyone knew that drugs were rampant in the inner city black community. Arrests and incarcerations skyrocketed. But there is one flaw in this widely believed theory; illegal drugs were equally rampant in white communities.
5. In 2010, Michelle Alexander changed her mind and became the chief advocate of a current system of oppression argument. America justice, contrary to popular opinion, is not blind, impartial; it is deliberately and systematically biased. Read The New Jim Crow.
6. Not only were whites blind to mass incarceration as a new system of oppression that was as bad as past slavery and segregation, so were the black leaders of 180 civil rights organizations as was Michelle Alexander herself for many years.
7. The same thing happens in Haiti. Some see corruption as Haiti's number one problem; true corruption is widespread, but there is a deeper cause. Some see demonic voodoo as the problem; that extreme poverty has spiritual roots. I see 500 years of oppression---both past and present---as the number one problem.
8. Among Christians, the number one problem is a gospel that does not release the economically oppressed. There are 555 reference to oppression in the OT but the American church has no theology of oppression. Christians should be specialists on oppression, be able to spot it before anyone else, but they are often blind to it.
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Deceptive Fragments of Truth
Watch out for half-truths, partial truths, fragments of truth, biblical proof texting, historical proof texting, even eloquent error, as they deceptively and dangerously parade as the whole truth. My favorite example of eloquent error---Pastor James Kennedy's sermon on George Washington in which he turned the bigoted billionaire into a Protestant saint. Though impressively delivered, in my judgment, it was based 10 percent truth and 90 percent error. But most of his listeners would have assumed it was 100 percent true.
Most Americans, especially white Americans, but also many black Americans, settle for half truths about social problems. Fragments of truth are quite seductive and convincing because they do contain a kernel of truth. Remnants of racism is one of those widely believed partial truths. Partial truths are very dangerous and deceptive because they give cover for other causes of social problems which then go unknown, unchecked, unchallenged.
When most white American Christians fall for half-truths biblically, historically and socially, but then believe these half-truths are the whole truth, social evils such as ethnocentrism and oppression run rampant. So it has been throughout all of American history. Even most abolitionists did not give equal emphasis to both freedom and justice. Because of the lack of emphasis on justice, soon slavery was replaced by another system of oppression---segregation, economic sharecropping, extensive use of prison work gangs, and lynching. Not much of an improvement over slavery. Lincoln believed that the solution to the race problem was to send blacks back to Africa, not to send whites back to Europe.
In the year 2000, Michelle Alexander, a brilliant, well-educated, black lawyer who worked in the area of civil rights, thought she understood why there were continuing serious social problems in the black community. Alexander wrote in her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow, the following: "I understood the problems plaguing poor communities of color, including problems associated with crime and rising incarceration rates, to be a function of poverty and lack of access to quality education---the continuing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow." In other words, the historical remnants of racism argument; this statement contains some truth, but not the whole truth.
After 10 years of experience and extensive research, Alexander discovered that she and most other blacks including the leadership of 180 civil rights organizations only partially understood what was really going on in American society at large and how this was impacting and traumatizing black individuals, families and communities. Here is Alexander's new insight: "The new system [of racist oppression] had been developed and implemented swiftly, and it was largely invisible, even to people, like me, who spent most of their waking hours fighting for justice."
The criminal justice system had become not only a legitimate institution that upheld the law and punished criminals; cleverly and diabolically, it had also "emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well disguised system of racialized social control." One by one, not in a mass roundup, black young males were arrested and incarcerated. Over the years, the total exploded into 31 million arrests. This catastrophe started with the 1982 War On Drugs which was combined with racial profiling and a planned media blitz from the White House that targeted young black and Hispanic males.
"A [largely unrecognized] human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch." Martin Luther King, in 1967, said his Dream had turned into a nightmare. From 1982 to 2017, the Nightmare exploded. Alexande named this Nightmare, "mass incarceration." Mass incarceration was deliberate and planned, not an accident of history.
The following is Alexander's description of the mass incarceration nightmare:
"Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. . . . In some states, black men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates twenty to fifty times greater than those of white men. And in major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and thus are subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. These young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream society."
Most Americans, especially white Americans, but also many black Americans, settle for half truths about social problems. Fragments of truth are quite seductive and convincing because they do contain a kernel of truth. Remnants of racism is one of those widely believed partial truths. Partial truths are very dangerous and deceptive because they give cover for other causes of social problems which then go unknown, unchecked, unchallenged.
When most white American Christians fall for half-truths biblically, historically and socially, but then believe these half-truths are the whole truth, social evils such as ethnocentrism and oppression run rampant. So it has been throughout all of American history. Even most abolitionists did not give equal emphasis to both freedom and justice. Because of the lack of emphasis on justice, soon slavery was replaced by another system of oppression---segregation, economic sharecropping, extensive use of prison work gangs, and lynching. Not much of an improvement over slavery. Lincoln believed that the solution to the race problem was to send blacks back to Africa, not to send whites back to Europe.
In the year 2000, Michelle Alexander, a brilliant, well-educated, black lawyer who worked in the area of civil rights, thought she understood why there were continuing serious social problems in the black community. Alexander wrote in her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow, the following: "I understood the problems plaguing poor communities of color, including problems associated with crime and rising incarceration rates, to be a function of poverty and lack of access to quality education---the continuing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow." In other words, the historical remnants of racism argument; this statement contains some truth, but not the whole truth.
After 10 years of experience and extensive research, Alexander discovered that she and most other blacks including the leadership of 180 civil rights organizations only partially understood what was really going on in American society at large and how this was impacting and traumatizing black individuals, families and communities. Here is Alexander's new insight: "The new system [of racist oppression] had been developed and implemented swiftly, and it was largely invisible, even to people, like me, who spent most of their waking hours fighting for justice."
The criminal justice system had become not only a legitimate institution that upheld the law and punished criminals; cleverly and diabolically, it had also "emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well disguised system of racialized social control." One by one, not in a mass roundup, black young males were arrested and incarcerated. Over the years, the total exploded into 31 million arrests. This catastrophe started with the 1982 War On Drugs which was combined with racial profiling and a planned media blitz from the White House that targeted young black and Hispanic males.
"A [largely unrecognized] human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch." Martin Luther King, in 1967, said his Dream had turned into a nightmare. From 1982 to 2017, the Nightmare exploded. Alexande named this Nightmare, "mass incarceration." Mass incarceration was deliberate and planned, not an accident of history.
The following is Alexander's description of the mass incarceration nightmare:
"Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. . . . In some states, black men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates twenty to fifty times greater than those of white men. And in major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and thus are subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. These young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream society."
Can the Oppressed Also Be Guilty Of Oppression?
Can the oppressed also be guilty of oppression at the same time? What do Nazareth Jews and American working class whites have in common? Both were/are oppressed---Nazareth Jews by Temple elite Jews; working class whites by Wall Street/corporation elites.
At the same time, both were ethnocentric (ethnocentrism is a form of oppression or usually leads to oppression); Nazareth Jews thought they were superior to Gentiles and Gentiles were inferior, unclean. Working class whites think they are superior to blacks and Mexicans and they are deathly afraid of losing their white supremacy and the white privilege that goes along with it.
Then a white bigoted billionaire who was from the class that oppressed/exploited working class whites showed up on their turf, outwardly showed them some respect, talked their language including a generous dose of blatant racism. The white working class loved it, believed it, voted it. Will Trump save them or is it a clever con game?
Clinton did much the same with blacks. Clinton was called the first black president. But most of his policies not only did not aid blacks, but actually harmed them. But showing respect to a people who have been forever disrespected goes a long way.
At one time in our history, poor whites and poor blacks were allies---on the same page. Then a clever planter elite succeeded in forever dividing them. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, tells the tragic story of Bacon's Rebellion: "Nathaniel Bacon was a white property owner in Jamestown, Virginia, who managed to unite slaves, indentured servants, and poor whites in a revolutionary effort to overthrow the planter elite." The planter elite was oppressing them all. The planter elite was deeply fearful of this rebellion.
"Deliberately and strategically, the planter elite extended special privileges to poor whites in an effort to drive a wedge between them and black slaves. . . . Poor whites suddenly had a direct, personal stake in the existence of a race-based system of slavery. Their own plight had not improved by much, but at least they were not slaves."
Unfortunately, this division between poor and working class whites and poor and working class blacks continues down to today. Oppressors know how to exploit this division. This last election was built on exploiting this division. Tragically, Trump was a genius at this type of politics.
At the same time, both were ethnocentric (ethnocentrism is a form of oppression or usually leads to oppression); Nazareth Jews thought they were superior to Gentiles and Gentiles were inferior, unclean. Working class whites think they are superior to blacks and Mexicans and they are deathly afraid of losing their white supremacy and the white privilege that goes along with it.
Then a white bigoted billionaire who was from the class that oppressed/exploited working class whites showed up on their turf, outwardly showed them some respect, talked their language including a generous dose of blatant racism. The white working class loved it, believed it, voted it. Will Trump save them or is it a clever con game?
Clinton did much the same with blacks. Clinton was called the first black president. But most of his policies not only did not aid blacks, but actually harmed them. But showing respect to a people who have been forever disrespected goes a long way.
At one time in our history, poor whites and poor blacks were allies---on the same page. Then a clever planter elite succeeded in forever dividing them. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, tells the tragic story of Bacon's Rebellion: "Nathaniel Bacon was a white property owner in Jamestown, Virginia, who managed to unite slaves, indentured servants, and poor whites in a revolutionary effort to overthrow the planter elite." The planter elite was oppressing them all. The planter elite was deeply fearful of this rebellion.
"Deliberately and strategically, the planter elite extended special privileges to poor whites in an effort to drive a wedge between them and black slaves. . . . Poor whites suddenly had a direct, personal stake in the existence of a race-based system of slavery. Their own plight had not improved by much, but at least they were not slaves."
Unfortunately, this division between poor and working class whites and poor and working class blacks continues down to today. Oppressors know how to exploit this division. This last election was built on exploiting this division. Tragically, Trump was a genius at this type of politics.
Monday, January 9, 2017
LAVISH LOVE, EXTRAVAGANT JUSTICE: RELEASED OPPRESSED
Jesus exhorted all of us to love God with ALL our heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbor with ALL our beings as well. Or we are to love both God and neighbor with every fiber of our whole being.
Loving God and neighbor lavishly requires doing justice extravagantly. Only extravagant Jubilee justice releases the oppressed---ends systems of brutal oppression. The combination, and only this combination, is really good news to the battered poor of our world.
Amos 5:24: "I want justice---oceans of it."
Luke 4:18: "release the oppressed."
Romans 14:17: "The kingdom of God is justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit."
From the pen of Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Letters to My Son," The Atlantic:
"But all our phrasing---race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy---serves to obscure that racism is a [lived] visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscles, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth." And Coates could have added "creates individual, family and community PTSD."
Biblically, according to Hebrew roots, oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills persons/peoples created in the image of God.
A true story from the medical doctor of Haiti fame, Dr. Paul Farmer; Farmer describes giving a painful spinal tap to a Haitian girl with meningitis: "Wild cries erupt from the child. She's crying, 'It hurts, I'm hungry.' Can you believe it? Only in Haiti would a child cry out that's she hungry during a spinal tap."
In order to rebuild a poor community that has been oppressed for 500 years, a Christian ministry must stay in one location for a whole generation using the principles and methods of Christian Community Development. It will take love and justice to release the oppressed. Warm feelings of love, generous charity and isolated, well-meaning projects will not get the job done.
Haitian Jean Thomas has been doing CCD in rural, poverty-stricken Haiti, Fond-des-Blancs, for over 30 years. HCDF has accomplished a lot, but Fond-des-Blancs needs another 30 years to complete the process. Transforming a socioeconomic hell takes incredible commitment, biblical wisdom, and an extended time period.
Haitian Pierre Thomas, Jean's brother, who, of course, knew the language and culture, tried a different approach---starting a number of projects in different communities. Years later, what were the results; all the projects failed. Why? The isolated projects were not embedded within a comprehensive community development plan.
Loving God and neighbor lavishly requires doing justice extravagantly. Only extravagant Jubilee justice releases the oppressed---ends systems of brutal oppression. The combination, and only this combination, is really good news to the battered poor of our world.
Amos 5:24: "I want justice---oceans of it."
Luke 4:18: "release the oppressed."
Romans 14:17: "The kingdom of God is justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit."
From the pen of Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Letters to My Son," The Atlantic:
"But all our phrasing---race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy---serves to obscure that racism is a [lived] visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscles, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth." And Coates could have added "creates individual, family and community PTSD."
Biblically, according to Hebrew roots, oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills persons/peoples created in the image of God.
A true story from the medical doctor of Haiti fame, Dr. Paul Farmer; Farmer describes giving a painful spinal tap to a Haitian girl with meningitis: "Wild cries erupt from the child. She's crying, 'It hurts, I'm hungry.' Can you believe it? Only in Haiti would a child cry out that's she hungry during a spinal tap."
In order to rebuild a poor community that has been oppressed for 500 years, a Christian ministry must stay in one location for a whole generation using the principles and methods of Christian Community Development. It will take love and justice to release the oppressed. Warm feelings of love, generous charity and isolated, well-meaning projects will not get the job done.
Haitian Jean Thomas has been doing CCD in rural, poverty-stricken Haiti, Fond-des-Blancs, for over 30 years. HCDF has accomplished a lot, but Fond-des-Blancs needs another 30 years to complete the process. Transforming a socioeconomic hell takes incredible commitment, biblical wisdom, and an extended time period.
Haitian Pierre Thomas, Jean's brother, who, of course, knew the language and culture, tried a different approach---starting a number of projects in different communities. Years later, what were the results; all the projects failed. Why? The isolated projects were not embedded within a comprehensive community development plan.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)