pat loughery

Today I saw a Chevy Excursion – that’s the biggest of the SUV’s – pumping gas in front of me at the gas station. Its bumper contained, on the right side, the Christian Icthus fish and bumper sticker advertisements for McCain, Palin and Dino Rossi (Republican candidate for governor of Washington State this election).

On the left side, another political bumper sticker: “Say No to Socialism. Say No to Obama.”

I was thinking about this perspective, so popular during the past election and elections previously, that Christianity meant Republicanism and that Christianity was about personal responsibility, legislating conservative morality, pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps and granting authority via tax incentives to businesses as a means of growing our economy.

Perhaps it’s no shock to my friends that I just don’t see the intersection between faith and politics this way anymore, and instead as I read the Gospel stories, I see a different focus being lived out by Jesus the Anointed One. I see offensive grace offered to those who don’t deserve it, demands that the powerful give up their power for their own sake to help those who have no power, and a subversive rejection of politics from all sides.

Then I was thinking about the CEO of Merrill Lynch demanding a $10 Million bonus for his performance this year, which just happened to be the worst in Merrill Lynch’s history and which saw the company being sold in order to avoid bankruptcy.

I was also thinking about the complexity of the auto bailout now coming on the heels of the previous banking bailout, with both systems demanding government funds with a pistol pressed against the national economy, saying “give me the money or we’re all going to die.”

It was with these ideas bouncing through my mind today that the following quote, from Mike Todd’s blog, hit me square between the eyes. In his brief post, Mike writes this:

N.T. Wright gave a straightforward and elegant speech in the House of Lords today. You can read the entire transcript on the Empire Remixed blog, but here’s the killer line for me:

   “The very rich are doing for the very rich what they have refused to do for the very poor.”

And I thought, as I was reading this, that of course this is the problem. Our economy is being propped up because if we don’t prop it up, the whole thing will collapse (and I do believe that these fears are reasonable; this isn’t just blowing smoke). But what bothers me is that we’re easily able to find this money, or at least to borrow it against our future, because we trust who’s asking for it. We trust the bankers and financiers and Big Three CEOs and economists. They are the trusted voices in our economy, and while we all wring our hands and wish it didn’t cost so much, we all know we’re going to pay.

And we don’t trust the nonprofit agencies and the social development agencies and the community organizers and the homeless and the devastated and addicted and the dying, precisely because they are not powerful enough to catch our attention.

Only the powerful are worth listening to, because we are a nation that idolizes power (whether in the form of fame, money, military strength, or position, it doesn’t matter.)

And we say things like, “socialism is evil” while we collect money from our kids and grandkids to prop up an economy which is tarnished by shortsightedness and by greed, while we do our best to exterminate the needy among us.

We consciously, proudly choose to despise and reject these weak ones, those full of sorrow and familiar with suffering. We despise them, and we give them no esteem. The cycle continues, and we gladly give our future to the very rich, in the hopes that one day we, too, might be very rich, or at least touch the hem of their garments.