I Used to Be Smart.

I haven’t figured out the best way to phrase this question, so forgive me if it’s awkward.  However, I’ve been wondering: in a society of affluence, should any wage be less than livable?

Should there be anyone in America who is employed who cannot make enough money to meet a certain basic standard of living?  I know what we can argue all day about what that standard of living should be, and some you may even be convinced that our current minimum wage makes that standard possible.  I am not so convinced.

If there were some great shortage of money in America, I would not make this argument.  I would not ask these questions.  However, no such shortage exists.  None of need a long list of numbers to tell us that.  Our system is simply set up with all of the wrong priorities.  It allows people like professional athletes, who contribute very little to society to earn ludicrous amounts of money, while essential wage laborers can barely find ways to make ends meet.  Everything is upside down.  We’ve elevated the positions that we can live without above the positions that we can’t live without.  It’s insanity.

There are lots of people who hate the idea of a livable wage.  They are so against giving any more money to anyone else that they cannot be for giving away some of their money for the sake of the poor.  That’s fine.  If that’s how they believe the world should work, that is most definitely their right.  What’s tragic is how many of these people claim to be Christians.

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I didn’t want to go there.  I promise.  I never want to go there.  I don’t want to look like the bitter guy who just rails and rails against Christians and just doesn’t ever do anything about it, because I’m afraid that’s what I’m becoming.  There are just things I feel like I need to say sometimes.  I can’t help it.

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Isn’t it obvious from even the most cursory readings of the gospels that the whole point of what Jesus was doing was that we should think so highly of other people, and that we should be so concerned with their well-being that we are willing to give up whatever is we have to give up for their sake?  Isn’t that the point?  Isn’t that the whole story?  That while we were still ignorant idiots, God gave what was most dear to him for the good of a bunch of people who would never, ever be properly grateful or be able to repay him for that?  Isn’t that the point of what we’re doing?  Isn’t that why Jesus even matters in the least?  Because turns the whole selfish system upside down and shows us all that there is a completely different way to live?  And if we believe a single word that Jesus says, shouldn’t we be convinced that it’s a better way to live?  If we have eyes to see at all, shouldn’t we be daily reminded that our way never has worked, and that our way is still failing?  Shouldn’t we be smart enough to see that our selfish ways will continue to fail us?

So why do we cling?  Why do we insist on keeping ourselves at the center of our universes?  Why are people so offended by the people that Jesus said that they were to hold most dear?  Why do we stand on these stupid piles of garbage we’ve accumulated and pretend that we’re the kings and queens of rotting hills?  Who do we think we are?

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I’ve been reading a book by Rob Bell called Velvet Elvis.  He talks a lot about how he’s passionate about what he does.  He says that it’s what makes his “soul soar,” and he encourages us to find the things that make our souls soar.  (I know.  It sounds like kitschy church language, but it’ll do.)  I’ve been thinking about what that is for me.  I know that issues like what I wrote this entry about get me going.  I know that these are much less forced than anything else I write.  I know that I am passionate about these things and that I think that they are infinitely important.  The only problem is that I cannot find a way to make these issues my life.  I cannot transform myself from a person who just talks about all of these things to a person who makes his life a reflection of all of these things.  Maybe I’m not supposed to yet.  I don’t know, but it’s something to think about.

“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.  But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’  Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

–James 2:14-18

I know that you’ve read those verses a million times, and I know that you probably don’t need to hear them again.  However, they struck in sort of a backwards way today.

Ben Folds has a new video for his song, Jesusland.  (That’s the link to it, for the record.)  I was watching it this afternoon, and I was struck by how the video appears to be saying exactly what James said.  However, what struck me was the source.  As far as I know, Ben Folds doesn’t have any particular affinity for Christianity or Jesus.  However, here is this guy, completely outside the realm of our faith who is offering a startilingly True depiction of how we act every day.
That may not be earth-shattering news for anyone, but it’s at least worth watching.

There is a prevailing sentiment among a very vocal minority in America that there is one overwhelming problem in America.  With fingers pointed and brows furrowed, they tell us clearly — America is failing because the traditional family structure is failing.  The traditional family structure, they believe, is the fundamental moral institution of society, and without that fundamental institution, the moral fabric of America will quickly become unwound.  Until that sort of patriarchal family structure they seek as the norm returns, they believe that America will continue to have its problems.

I wonder if they’re not putting the cart before the horse.

While this vocal minority believes that America is failing because the traditional family structure is failing, I offer an alternative solution.  The traditional family structure is failing because America is failing.  We have, in this country, written a check that we cannot cash.  We are in over our heads.

For the vocal minority, the solution is simple.  If people will return to a traditional, patriarchal family structure, the “moral decline” that they believe America is experiencing will reverse itself.  Strong male leaders and subservient females will dot the landscape, and we may all return to idyllic time (that never really existed).  That is the only solution.  There are prescribed roles for how different genders should act, and there is no room for changing any of those roles.

I think that they have missed the point.

Family structures have not broken down because there is confusion about gender roles.  Family structures have not broken down because of a new opennes about sexuality.  Family structures have broken down because they had no choice.  Work connected to the home has largely been made obsolete, or the focus of derision.  Homes in which both parents work away from the home are often looked down upon.  The prevailing influences and images in society are of family units where both partners work away from the home and where childcare is outsourced, often at great cost.

Family structures have broken down because people have been manipulated into lifestyles that can only be sustained by loads of debt and by working away from the home.  Family structures have broken down because there is an institutionalized bias against traditional family structures.  There is an institutional bias against a simple life, lived in connection with the home.  Small farming continually approaches extinction.  Family owned, home-run businesses are becoming impossible propositions.  We are living in a world in which the traditional family structure has been doomed for failure.  In order to meet the demands placed upon us by the institutions to which we swear allegiance, the family must crumble.

That is where I believe my conservative friends miss the point.  Railing against the decline in the traditional family structure is useless if we do not understand the things that are causing the family structure to fail.  We must take a long look at those issues, and commit ourselves to fighting against the things that are causing the family structure to fail.  Otherwise, we risk unduly villifying those who are struggling to make ends meet in the context of a non-traditional family, and trying their best to instill morals and values (although morals and values aren’t enough) in their children.  That gets us no closer to the solution.  That sort of vitrol will only drive a wedge further between the preachers and the people to whom they are preaching until the preachers become a source of irrelevance.

If there is an institutional bias against the fundamental family structures inherent in our economic system, that MUST be addressed first and foremost.  Otherwise, we have done absolutely no good, and we’ll continue to talk over each other’s heads.

Does it matter that we killed al-Zarqawi?  Did we gain anything?

Maybe I just have to be contrary to the popular opinions.  Maybe I’ve just developed such a grudge against George Bush that I can’t possibly agree with anything that he says.  Maybe I’m just a short-sighted, idealistic idiot who doesn’t get it.  I’m willing to concede that.

While this may be some great victory for the United States, it seems like a huge blow for peace.  That sentence is “tacky, sentimental crap.”  I know.  Maybe that’s my problem.  Maybe I’m just drawn to tacky, sentimental crap and I can’t see the forest for the trees, but I just can’t think that’s right.

I don’t see how this was a victory at all.  I don’t see how this will lead to a more peaceful, safer Iraq or America.  Is this the way we’re supposed to live?  Are we supposed to kill all of our enemies until there are none left?  Is that the only recourse we have?  Is that the only solution?  Do we still believe that somehow our violence will be redemptive?

History is clear about the consequences of violence.  It is never successful.  That we are still turning to violence for the sake of “peace” is makes that self-evident.  Do we think that we are that much smarter than all of the people who have gone before?  Do we think that our technology makes our violence different?  Does it make our violence superior?  Do we really think that our violence is less violent?

If so, we are idiots.  If anything, our violence is worse.  It is worse because it hides itself.  It pretends that it is not violence.  It can be executed by people who never see their victims.  It is killing that can happen without discrimination or recrimination.  It is a nameless, faceless, cowardly violence, and it is still a failure.

On some days it is clear to me.  I can’t ever do anything about this.  I won’t ever change any President’s mind.  My input will never affect any foreign policy decision.  So worrying about these things is ridiculous.  I am worrying about all of the things that I could never hope to change.  I am worrying about all of the things that I was never made to worry about it.  I am attempting to be something much, much larger than I can ever be — not that I don’t have the ability to influence Presidents or foreign policy, but that I am not called to influence Presidents or foreign policy — at least not as far as I know.

I have enough trouble keeping my own affairs in order.  I have enough trouble not wrecking my relationships with everyone around me.  I have enough trouble being too lazy to change anything in the world around me.  Who am I to complain about what any President is doing?  I work my job, I hang out with friends, and every once in a while I sit down in front of this screen and rant about something that I’m not going to change, because that makes me feel better.

Writing is hilarious.  The things that want to come out have their way of making it to the surface.  Even when you think that you’re just going to talk about some recently killed Iraqi militant, you figure out that’s not what you wanted to say at all.  Nice.