Some quotations from Greed and Good; I have now upgraded this from rec. reading to required reading---all 700 pages!! Sam is an expert on economic inequality/oppression and he even includes a brief but excellent section on the OT Jubilee:
J. P. Morgan, the grandest capitalist of the late nineteenth century . . . insisted on a twenty-to-one pay ratio between workers and top executives. . . . Peter Drucker consistently championed the notion that pay ratios between workers and executives ought to be kept within a fifteen-or-twenty times range. [Pizzigati rec. 10-1 ratio]
Colleges and universities took Title IX to heart. They really had no choice. Most couldn't survive a semester without federal support. . . . All America benefited.
American private enterprises currently face no negative consequences for choosing inequality. These enterprises can pay their workers pittances and their executives millions---and still merrily collect our tax dollars [billions in subsidies]. Why should we let them?
To keep current on economic inequality, subscribe to Sam Pizzigati's online newsletter, Too Much: on excess and inequality. To keep current on the racial wealth gap, google IASP, Thomas Shapiro, a top-notch sociologist and the nation's expert on the racial wealth gap. See the Feb., 2013 article "The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap."
From the lips of Jesus, Luke 6:24 "Woe to the rich." Chapter 16 of Luke provides context and interpretation for this blunt, uncompromising verse:
1. A person cannot serve both God and Money at the same time.
2. The highly religious Pharisees "loved money."
3. The story of the rich man and Lazarus.
4. In 19:46, Jesus describes the temple as "a den of robbers."
With this context, I could paraphrase this verse: "Woe to the religious rich." Could the religious rich be the worst kind of rich? Historically, this verse could be paraphrased:
1. Woe to the atheistic rich---the Russian, Communist elite.
2. Woe to the dictatorial rich---Papa Doc and Baby Doc and a host of Spanish kings.
3. Woe to the deistic rich---the American founding fathers, especially the slave holders, Washington and Jefferson.
4. Woe to the socialistic rich---the growing wealth gap in Sweden and Norway, the semi-socialistic nations.
5. Woe to the capitalistic rich---American corporations.
It appears that the rich are clever enough to manipulate and exploit any type of economic, political or even religious system.
Was Jesus a radical?
"To be truly radical is to understand the root [cause] of the problem." Angela Davis
White abolitionists who worked hard to abolish slavery weren't radical enough, biblically speaking. They stopped at freedom for slaves but did not follow up with justice for the freed slaves (40 acres and a mule). In fact, many white abolitionists were actually racist, as Lincoln was, (they believed that whites were superior to blacks) at the same time that they were against slavery.
In American eyes, white abolitionists were radical, but biblically they went only halfway. Since ethnocentrism/racism was not rooted out, soon slavery was replaced by another system of oppression which enslaved blacks again. Slavery was replaced by segregation, sharecropping and prison work gangs.
Was Jesus radical enough? Jesus the radical, revolutionary prophet who pushed hard for the incarnation of the kingdom of God here on earth, identified ethnocentrism and oppression as the root social evils plaguing Palestine (Luke 4). So he prophetically proclaimed that the revered temple was a den of robbers, that the religious leaders, many of whom were rich, neglected justice and the love of God. He also scorched the religious rich ("Woe [doom] to the rich") who put Money on a par with God.
Jesus also had a radical solution: incarnate the kingdom of God in behalf of the oppressed poor; pursue Jubilee justice; practice love and do justice to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. Only the Spirit-filled church (Acts 4:32-35) can fulfill this demanding assignment. An Americanized church can't, and it is likely to be a part of the problem more than a solution.
In Mt. 5:10, Jesus warned that those who did justice would likely experience persecution. After Jesus cleansed the temple and called it a den of robbers, the chief priests sought his death. In their eyes, Jesus was a dangerous revolutionary. After all their practice of ethnocentrism and oppression produced prosperity---for them.
Do white evangelical theologians need to get close to the pain of the oppressed poor before they can and will produce a relevant NT theology of society, a kingdom of God theology that puts the oppressed poor first? The following is a true story reported by a white pastor in Leadership, summer 2010, page 46:
Right after I spoke [on Zacchaeus], a woman from the Cowichan tribe told her story of being physically and sexually abused as a child in a nearby Residential School. In fact, she only told the story of her pain so that she could tell the story of her joy: how Christ was redeeming and reclaiming and healing her in mind, body, and spirit.
But the room was heavy when she finished. The white pastor got up, overcome with emotion, and said she was sorry.
"I'm not apologizing because I was involved in what happened to you," she said. "I'm apologizing because I wasn't involved. Because, even when I knew terrible things were happening in those schools, I still did nothing."
Then the pastor said, "If you are white and want to join me in apologizing, I simply as that you stand." I stood. All the white people stood.
We were completely unprepared for what happened next. The First Nations [Indians] people began to weep. Then their weeping turned to sobbing. And then their sobbing turned to wailing. It was piercing. I felt the shame of all the wrongs my forebears had committed. I felt the shame of all the ways I, though not involved personally, had been personally uninvolved. Apathetic. Not wanting to know and, once knowing, wishing they'd just "get over it."
The wailing continued, got deeper, got louder.
When I could bear it no longer, an older First Nation woman---a chief of her tribe---came to the front, took the microphone, and said, "I do not want those of you who are standing to carry the weight of this. I forgive you. On behalf of my people, we forgive you."
Peace like a river swept over me, and I wept.
Isaiah and America: Does the ancient prophet Isaiah have anything relevant to say to modern America? YES, especially in 2014, as these United States are riven and torn by socioeconomic inequality/injustice/oppression. Persons and groups as different as the, at times, semi-anarchic first leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement to the religious leader pastor, prophet, Pope Francis, to the political leader, President Obama, to op-ed pundits, have exposed and condemned the massive and widening income/wealth gap between the filthy rich and the exploited poor, between the filthy rich and the shrinking middle class, between high profits and low wages.
Isaiah condemns a pious spirituality that is divorced from doing social justice, Jubilee justice, kingdom of God justice. Such a spirituality ends up as meaningless, worthless worship because it leaves the daily playing field of life wide open for oppressors to run wild. According to Eugene Peterson, translator of the paraphrase, The Message, Isaiah boldly proclaims to Israel "Quit your worship charades." Instead, do justice.
From chapter one, The Message:
My people have walked out on me, their God. . . . I am sick of your religion, religion, religion. . . . No matter how long or loud or often you pray, I'll not be listening. Why? Because you've been tearing people to pieces. . . .
From chapter two:
a world rolling in wealth. . . .
From chapter three:
Your houses are stuffed with what you have stolen from the poor. What is this anyway? Stomping on my people, grinding the faces of the poor into the dirt.
From chapter five:
Doom [Woe] to you who buy up all the houses and grab all the land for yourselves. . . . leaving everyone homeless and landless. . . . Those mighty houses will end up empty.
Doom to you who use lies to sell evil. . . . Doom to you who call evil good and good evil. . . . Doom to you who think you're so smart.
From chapter ten:
Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims. Laws that make misery for the poor. . . ,on Judgment Day . . .what good will your money do you? . . . . I've eliminated kingdoms . . . far more impressive than Jerusalem [and the U.S.].
From chapter one:
Work for justice. Help the down-and-out. . . . [Jerusalem] was once all justice; everyone living as good neighbors. . . . He looked for a crop of justice.
From chapter nine:
He'll [Messiah] rule over that promised kingdom with fair dealing and right living [justice and righteousness].
From chapter 11:
He'll judge the needy by what is right, render decisions on earth's poor with justice.
From chapter 16:
A Ruler passionate for justice. . . .
From chapter 28:
I will make justice the measuring stick. . . .
From chapter 42:
I've bathed him with my Spirit; He'll set everything right among the nations.
From chapter 61:
I, the Lord, love justice.
Isaiah warned Israel to repent and do justice---repent of idolatry, oppression and immorality, to released the oppressed poor by doing Jubilee justice. If Isaiah were prophesying in the U.S. in 2914, I think he would issue the same warning, the same call for justice.
There are millions of bible-believing Christians in America; some political pundits say the evangelicals elected a president in 2004. If these same evangelicals were acting as salt and light in American society; if they were in mass, doing justice, potentially they could transform American society. But, overall, there seems to be little understanding of nor practice of biblical justice. Instead, white American evangelicals have conformed to ethnocentrism and oppression throughout American history more than they have transformed American society. So it is in 2014, where American evangelicals seem unconcerned about current unjust mass incarceration and unjust economic inequality/oppression.
Why this huge failure? This question has tormented the professional bible translator, Steven Voth (See chapter 14 of The Challenge of Bible Translation). After assisting with two Spanish translations of the Bible and comparing Spanish and English translations of the concepts of justice, Voth noted a glaring flaw in English translations of the term justice. Even the modern NIV English translation has only 134 reference to justice whereas the Spanish RVR has 370 references and the Spanish NVI, 426. The Spanish RVR NT, 101 references to justice; the English NIV, 16.
Then Voth becomes an historical detective to find out when and how and why justice was downplayed in English translations. Some details are lost in the fog of history, but this is what Voth thinks happened. A combination of theology and political ideology pushed personal righteousness to the forefront and social justice into a distant second. Both in Hebrew and Greek, the weaker translation of righteousness were chosen over justice. So, still in 2014, English readers of the Bible are not exposed to the full justice message of the Bible. This allows injustice to reign in American society with little opposition.
January 29, 2014
How Providential! The powerful President and the powerful Pope are pushing the same points: perverse profits, weasel wages, corrupt capitalism, unjust inequality, obscene oppression, pervasive poverty, complicit church. But the Pope is more prophetic and he calls the church to enter into the suffering of the streets.
The answers: lavish love, Jubilee justice, economic equity, church commitment.
The end results: jumping for joy, loving liberation, sharing shalom.
From The Message by Eugene Peterson:
On the prophets (p. 1198), Peterson declares:
The prophets are not "reasonable," accommodating themselves to what makes sense to us. They are not diplomatic, tactfully negotiating an agreement that allows us a "say" in the outcome. . . . Their words and visions penetrate the illusions with which we cocoon ourselves from reality. We humans have an enormous capacity for denial and self-deceit. . . . One of the bad habits that we pick up early in our lives is separating things and people into secular and sacred. We assume that the secular is what we are more or less in charge of: our jobs, our time, our entertainment, our government, our social relations. The sacred is what God has charge of: worship and the Bible, heaven and hell, church and prayers. We than set aside a sacred place for God, designed, we say, to honor God but really intended to keep God in his place, leaving us free to have the final say about everything else that goes on. Prophets will have none of this.
An example from chapter 5; the prophet Isaiah (The Message):
He looked for a crop of justice. . . . and heard only the moans of victims. Doom [Woe] to you who buy up all the houses and grab all the land for yourselves. . . . Taking over the county, leaving everyone homeless and landless. . . . Those mighty houses will end up empty.
The prophet Amos, 5:24, declares: "I want justice---oceans of it."
Both the abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement achieved a paradigm shift (revolutionary change, transformation) in terms of freedom, but neither movement achieved a paradigm shift in terms of justice (economic justice, jubilee justice, kingdom of God justice for the oppressed poor). Freedom without justice is a hollow victory and often soon lost. Slavery was quickly replaced by neoslavery (Jim Crow laws, segregation, sharecropping and incarceration). After the victories of the 1960s, legal segregation was replaced by mass incarceration and massive economic inequality (1980-2014).
Both social movements could have used the wisdom of Kenneth Young (The Problem With Racial Reconciliation) and Bill Moyer (Doing Democracy). Both movements needed to be grounded in a comprehensive NT theology of society based on its teaching on the social evils of ethnocentrism and oppression/injustice, and kingdom of God justice with social reconciliation. Unfortunately, such a theology didn't exist and still doesn't exist. Into the social/spiritual vacuum rushed unchecked social evil.
I recently learned that the famous Republican who uttered, "Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice," also said "Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Most white American evangelicals are weak, not even moderate, in their understanding and doing of kingdom of God justice, even in the year 2014. What happens when white American evangelicals are not guided by a NT theology of society?
Evangelical abolitionists who zealously supported the freedom of slaves did not with equal zeal pursue jubilee justice for freed slaves. During the civil rights movement, white evangelicals for the most part, either sat on the sidelines or actively opposed freedom and justice for blacks. In the 1980s most evangelicals supported President Reagan who initiated the War on Drugs/mass incarceration and massive economic inequality. Even in 2014, few evangelicals are vigorously opposing mass incarceration and massive economic inequality/oppression.
According to Isaiah 58, God despises a pious spirituality that is divorced from the doing of justice. Hint: so does the Sermon on the Mount. Amos 5:24 (The Message) reads: "I want justice---oceans of it." Amos 5:24 (Noble paraphrase): "I want artesian wells of justice, constantly flowing streams of justice, in society." Mt. 6:33 (Noble paraphrase): "I want kingdom of God justice, a jubilee justice for the oppressed poor."
Don't try to worship both God and Money at the same time; instead worship God on Sunday and Money during the week, as most Pharisees and American evangelicals do.
To summarize, I call upon the American evangelical church to fully engage in several social movements at the same time. Initiate and support social movements to eliminate 1) the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males, 2) the unjust, massive economic inequality, the systems of political and economic/financial oppression that widen the gap between the rich and poor, 3) expose and eliminate the false concept of race, the systems of racism, racist oppression, and the racialized worldview; biblically these concepts of social evil would be called ethnocentrism and oppression, 4) pursue, do, biblical justice and reconciliation, and 5) which is tied to 4, urgently create a NT theology of society. I state that we need social movements to accomplish the above because the status quo evangelical church and its colleges, universities and seminaries are, in my opinion, only marginally involved. But there may be efforts that I am unaware of; please inform me of any aggressive evangelical actions that are addressing the above issues, efforts that go beyond tokenism.
The following will consist of a rather lengthy summary of Wright's analysis of Old Testament society, especially of the economics of agriculture or the land. First, a lengthy quotation; note the contrast between Canaanite and Israeli societies:
For example, in contrast to pre-Israeli Canaanite society which was organized along 'feudal' lines, with power residing at the elite top of a highly stratified social pyramid, Israel was a 'tribal' society. It had a kinship structure based on a large number of 'extended-family', land-owning households. These units, which were largely self-sufficient economically, performed most of the socially important functions locally---judicially, economic, cultic, military. Israelite society was more broadly 'egalitarian' rather than 'hierarchical'.
This same contrast is seen in economic life in the forms of land tenure. In the Canaanite city-states, all land was owned by the king and there were feudal arrangements with those who lived and worked on it. In Israel the land was divided up as widely as possible into multiple ownership by extended-families. In order to preserve this system, it could not simply be bought and sold commercially, but had to be retained within the kinship groups. Furthermore, many of the Old Testament laws and institutions of land use indicate an overriding concern to preserve this comparative equality of families on the land and to protect the poorer, the weaker and economically threatened, and not to uphold the status and wealth of a small land-owning nobility.
Likewise, in political life, power in Israelite society was originally very decentralized and located in the wide network of local elders in each community.
Notice how the social, economic and political systems all worked together to provide the framework for a just society. Wright states the following principles:
1. The land was a divine gift from God, but God was still the acknowledged owner. In a sense, God was the landlord and the Israelites were his tenants (Lev. 25:23). All other economic principles flow from this theological foundation.
2. Only on the basis of God as ultimate owner and involved landlord is it safe to talk about individual property rights at the household level. In one sense, this household or kinship ownership was inalienable, almost sacred, because the land could not be bought and sold commercially as was noted above. If each household does not control its own land, then a household is under the control of someone else. This opens the door to oppression.
3. These land rights were balanced by a set of responsibilities. Rights without responsibilities can become the basis for greed. Responsibilities to God included such things as the first fruits of the harvest, the fallow year and the release of debt-pledges. Responsibilities to the family included "redemption procedures, inheritance rules and levirate marriage." Responsibilities to neighbors included "respect for integrity of [land] boundaries, generosity in leaving harvest gleanings [for the poor], and fair treatment of employees." From this balance of rights and responsibilities flowed right relationships---justice-righteousness.
4. When the above principles of justice-righteousness were violated, God sent prophets to warn the offenders. King Ahab was condemned by the prophet Elijah for conniving to obtain Naboth's vineyard. According to God's principle, Naboth could not sell the land. Amos, Isaiah, Micah and others ranted and raved against the injustice of "more and more people being deprived of their ancestral land and forced, by debt-bondage and other means, into a state of virtual serfdom on land once their own but now in the hands of the wealthy, powerful few."
5. Wright cleverly points out the radical nature of the Old Testament socio-economic ethics with a series of statements and questions:
Not that there was any illusion in the Old Testament that such economic obedience to God was easy. It was one thing to celebrate the victories of God in past history. It was another to trust in his ability to produce the future harvest. It was still another to trust his ability to provide you and your family with sustenance for a year if you obeyed the fallow or sabbatical year laws and did not sow a crop---or for two years if you had a double fallow at the jubilee! And could you afford to let your slave, an agricultural capital asset, go free after six years, still less with a generous endowment of your substance, animal and vegetable? Were you not entitled to extract maximum yield from your own fields and vineyards without leaving valuable remainders for others? How could you possibly cancel debts after six years?
6. The land, the resources of the earth, God's creation gift, are to be available to all mankind. "Ownership does not entail absolute right of disposal, but rather responsibility for administration and distribution. The right of all to use is prior to the right of any to own." Private property, yes, but only under carefully controlled conditions. "There is no mandate in the creation material for private exclusive use, nor for hoarding or consuming at the expense of others."
7. Why are the socio-economic principles spelled out in such detail and with such care? To counter the corrupting impact of the Fall. Greedy, oppressive possession of the land replaced responsible property rights. Strife and warfare replaced sharing. Covetousness and materialism turned into idolatry. The poor became objects of exploitation rather than opportunities for sharing. "The effect of the fall was that the desire for growth became obsessive and idolatrous, the scale of growth became excessive for some at the expense of others, and the means of growth became filled with greed, exploitation and injustice." Wright concludes: "But in a fallen world, where human greed, injustice and incompetence have already put chasms between the rich and poor, that creation principle of sharing cannot be approached without the redemption principle of sacrifice and the costly waiving of self-interest."
Richard Stengel, author of Mandela's Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love and Courage (2009) and who assisted on Mandel's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, asserts the following about Mandela:
"He saw injustice and tried to fix it." Mandel strove for national "harmony and equal opportunity." He put these ideals ahead of personal and family needs: "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." (1990)
Observers of Mandela have described him as a person of grace and humility, one who forgives and reconciles, a person who was kind and redemptive. He not only desired to free his people from oppression (apartheid), but also to reconcile both the oppressors (Afrikaners) and the oppressed (Africans) so that both could live in harmony in a new South Africa. Grace, forgiveness and reconciliation are normally words we use to describe biblical Christians or Christ himself. But in reading about Mandela, watching media reports and documentaries, I have not noted a single reference to a deep religious faith or that God called and empowered Mandela. In fact, Richard Stengel at the end of his book declared that Mandela did not believe in a higher power, that we each shape and determine our own destiny. So where did this remarkable ability to combine justice and reconciliation come from?
I wish to suggest six factors that shaped Mandela's life and ministry:
1. The Image of God
Mandela may refuse to acknowledge this truth because he doesn't believe in God, but the fact remains that he was created in the image of God. This is a remarkable gift to any human being. He and we can use our minds to think creatively and wisely, to think, at least partially, the thoughts of God. Sin/depravity confuses and distorts, but it does not destroy the image of God.
2. The Common Grace of Creation
Romans 1:19-20: "God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities---his eternal power and divine nature---have been clearly seen. . . . so that men are without excuse." The creation around us reveals God. Some of this wisdom has been preserved in the liberal (liberating) arts. Mandela read widely in this treasure of human wisdom.
3. Disciple of Gandhi and King
Gandhi and King lived out the non-violent, peace-making, justice-seeking, love and reconcile with your enemies/oppressors message of the Sermon on the Mount. Mandela drank deeply from this kingdom of God ethic even though he ignored the God part.
4. Bi-cultural
Mandela believed deeply in ubuntu, the African ideal of the collective, more we than me (enlightenment); this shaped his goal of making the nation of South Africa, one nation with liberty and justice for all. But he was also shaped by Western culture. When a person is bi-cultural, he is less like to be trapped by tradition and ideology as substitutes for truth. Both Gandhi and King were bi-cultural as are John Perkins and Jean Thomas who are remarkable leaders in their own right. Being bi-cultural broadens your perspective.
5. An independent thinker
Mandela was very much a free and independent thinker; he enjoyed conversing with other independent thinkers so he could see all angles, all sides of an issue. Mandela was not doctrinaire, legalistic. He held deeply to a few core principles such as human dignity, freedom, justice, etc. but in other things he was willing to change and adapt.
6. His prison experience
The younger Mandela was passionate and committed, but too immature to be a great leader in a time of crisis; 27 years of prison refined Mandela into maturity---the ability to see and chart the way to a new nation with the needed forgiveness to reconcile bitter enemies.
Some nuggets from the pen of Mandela:
His mission was "to liberate the oppressed and the oppressors both because both are robbed of their humanity when human freedom is restricted."
"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."
"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."
Two score and ten years ago, a rich, white, male president, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Seven score and ten years ago, a poor, white, male president, Abraham Lincoln, gave his Gettysburg address. Neither president understood the nature and necessity of justice for the nation. In 1776, a rich, white, male elite drafted the Declaration of Independence; in 1787, a rich, white, male elite drafted the United States Constitution.
These documents are rightly remembered and treasured. But I place the Pledge of Allegiance about the Declaration and the Constitution. Why? The Declaration and Constitution do refer to the concepts of freedom and equality, but they omit the equally important and absolutely necessary concept of justice. The Pledge ends with this fundamental requirement of a democracy---"with liberty and justice for all."
Without justice for all its citizens, freedom and equality ring hollow. For example:
* Without justice, slavery can be abolished and legal freedom gained; but they were quickly followed by a new birth of oppression---legal segregation.
* Without justice, legal segregation can be abolished and legal freedom regained; but these victories were quickly followed by an exploding racial wealth gap and the mass incarceration of young Black and Hispanic males.
* Without justice, the beautiful and eloquent phrase "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people," becomes, in tragic reality, "a government created by a rich, white, male elite for a rich, white, male elite."
Justice demands that we look underneath the oppressive systems of slavery, segregation, wealth gap and mass incarceration to find the underlying causes/values and uproot them---something neither Lincoln nor Kennedy did. As a nation, we must confess and repent from our national sins of American exceptionalism, white supremacy, WASPness (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant), and the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism---something the nation has never done.
Without a public statement of confession and repentance, we repeat the same national sins, slightly revised, over and over again. The Declaration and the Constitution did not lead us from repentance to justice. Neither does the Pledge, but at least the Pledge, for the first time in American history, publicly tied freedom and justice together.
We need to add another sentence or two to our Pledge: "We pledge, under God, in a spirit of repentance and restitution, to free all our oppressed peoples. We will pursue, under God, Jubilee justice for all our citizens."
ps I will love my God with all my heart; likewise, I choose to love my neighbor as myself, especially my poor, oppressed, ethnic neighbor. I pledge to pursue Jubilee justice for all my neighbors. I do not want to make the same mistake the Pharisees who professed faith in God but who neglected justice and the love of God (Luke 11). God, help me to keep spirituality and justice close
This essay will draw from #OccupytheBible: What Jesus Really Said (and Did) About Money and Power by Susan Thistlethwaite (2012). First, a provocative quotation:
Gustavo Gutierrez, a pioneer of reading the Bible from the perspective of those at the street level rather than those on the eighth floor, once explained the importance of understanding theology from the most human of locations, the body. Gutierrez was being honored at a faculty reception at a school where he was a visiting professor. There was a lavish banquet, and senior professor in theology, carrying a plate piled high with food from the buffet, came over to where Gutierrez and I were chatting. He loomed over Gutierrez and intoned, "So, Professor Gutierrez, explain liberation theology to me." Gutierrez looked at him for a moment and replied, "It's a matter of the stomach." "The stomach?" the tall. portly professor said. "Yes," said Gutierrez. He looked pointedly at the professor's loaded plate. "You do theology differently when your stomach is full than when it is empty."
Those who are on the street [the least of these], who are hungry and in poor health, are the one's feeling the real effects of economic policies that have made HALF of all Americans poor or near poor, according to new Census Bureau data. Possibly those of you who are preachers should run your next sermon by the scrutiny of one of the least of these to make sure your theology is accurate and relevant.
Temple religious leaders "were using scripture to justify driving people into poverty through increased debt and low wages, and driving them out of their homes and jobs."
"temptation is always about the desire to gain power over others." "So much of American life is tied up in wrestling with the temptation to overreach, to think of ourselves as exceptional and not resist the lure of political and financial power."
"The Temple in Jerusalem was the national bank of Israel in Jesus' time; it was a powerful national treasury that did not let its great wealth sit idle. The bank lent the money it collected [huge amounts] at interest, violating Jewish tradition on lending. . . . These unjust lending practices drove many residents into extreme poverty."
"Our current economic crisis is really a credit crisis generated by the way banks decided to change their lending practices, effectively crashing the system." "Jesus' economic plan [Jubilee] is about sharing resources and celebrating community. This kind of economic model is about 'power with' not 'power over'" "Money is an enormous source of temptation; the desire for money is the hook the Devil uses to lure humanity into becoming every more greedy."
In one of the best chapters of her book entitled "Den of Thieves", Thistlethwaite refers to the national bank, a part of the Temple operation, in this way: "The whole issue of charging interest on loans and poor people falling further and further into debt is a huge biblical issue . . . the center of Jesus' teaching and actions." "The vast wealth of the 1% in Israel reached unbelievable proportions in the days of Herod."
"God is a movement God, and unless we as Christians quit mistaking our institutional forms of faith for the movement of God in history, we won't be able to see the signs even if they are written in letters a thousand feet high. "When did we see you, Lord?" Jesus is asked. But Jesus was right in front of them in the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned, and they never saw him. The trick is to actually "see," and you can't see what's happening if you don't get out of your house and out of your church and move around where people are gathering in the streets."
From the lips of a Catholic priest: "The Vatican sounded like the Pharisees of the New Testament;---legalistic, paternalistic and orthodox---while 'the good sisters' were the ones who were feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, educating the immigrant."
In terms of money, wealth and power, are most American Christians modern day Pharisees? After reading Money, Possession and Eternity by Randy Alcorn (2003) and #OccupytheBible by Susan Thistlethwaite (2012), I would answer a resounding, YES.
From Luke/Jesus 16:13-14, we read: "You cannot serve [both] God and mammon. The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all of this, and they scoffed at him." Luke 11:42: Jesus accused the Pharisees of "neglecting justice and the love of God."
After Jesus declared that a person cannot serve both God and Money at the same time, the bible-believing Pharisees sneered/scoffed at Jesus. Why? Because they had been doing both at the same time for a long time, and it seemed to be working well for them. As both "lovers of money" and "lovers of God," they were running a religious racket. This blending of religion and materialism was now natural and normal; Jesus was the weird one who questioned the status quo.
Randy Alcorn, a conservative evangelical, is deeply troubled by the widespread American blend of Christianity and materialism; hint: its influence goes far beyond the prosperity gospel. Alcorn devotes four chapters to the topic of materialism: The Nature of Materialism, The Dangers of Materialism, Materialism in the Church, and Prosperity Theology. Because the American church has not been taught in depth the biblical principles on money and possessions, most American Christians are easily seduced by the temptation of materialism. They, like the Pharisees, readily blend the two as natural and normal. After all, most of their Christian friends are doing so, and their pastor is silent on this evil.
Randy Alcorn is sure to challenge and offend many of his readers. So also is Susan Thistlethwaite. Writing from a much different perspective---Bible, kingdom of God and social/Jubilee justice---Susan will equally challenge and offend most American Christians. But don't be too quick to sneer and scoff at Alcorn and Thistlethwaite. Hang in there, read carefully; you might learn some important new biblical truth and how to live them out in today's world. In fact, both authors excel at modern application of biblical truth.
In 1967, after the Civil Rights laws had been passed and four month before his assassination, Martin Luther King referred to his continuing nightmare---"black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity." If King were alive in 2013, he would assert much the same. Where has the church been since December, 1967 and November, 2013 on the issue of economic inequality and the systems of oppression that drive it? Rather quiet, largely silent. So we need to read Randy and Susan who are blunt, direct, no sugarcoating of the hard biblical truth on money, idolatry and materialism.
