What Revolutionaries, Counterrevolutionaries, And Defenders Of The Status Quo Forget: We Need Each Other

Two examples have led me to the conclusion expressed in the title of this blogpost. The first example is Marx's promotion of the Proletariat Dictatorship. Marx firmly believed that the proletariat had to be liberated from the bourgeoisie. To be liberated, the proletariat had to replace the bourgeoisie at both the workplace and government. And what would eventually follow, according to Marx, was a utopia.

The second example involve my experiences with Occupy Wall Street (OWS). I have fond memories of OWS and the Global Justice Working Group of which I was a part. I still miss meeting with those people. I had originally signed up with the Washington D.C. version, which initially had a different name, but found myself participating more with OWS in NYC. I remember the declaration that was written for the occupation of New York City (click here for a copy of that declaration). The declaration was almost flawless. All of the accusations made against the 1% made in that declaration have been proven to be true, and yet there was one flaw. The flaw was that with the charges we presented, we were asking the public to punish the 1%. Instead, we should have asked the 1% to join the rest of us in terms of sharing power and having to live under the same laws we live under--especially in terms of financial laws. In other words, we were asking for the 99% to replace the 1%.

Today's protests  also operate on that principle of replacing a threat or enemy. The tearing down of the statues, the calls by some to abolish the police, and CHOP (the Capital Hill project in Seattle) are all attempts at replacing parts of the status quo.

And though there is good reason to have certain statues be pulled down and significant police reforms to be made, the revolutionary call to replace parts of the status quo are the order of the day. And it is easy for members of the undecided public to feel threatened, or at least insecure by the call to replace. And if they feel insecure, imagine how defenders of the status quo and counterrevolutionaries feel. One feeling they have is that they feel left out of any future decision making process. And that could very well be true for the police when laws that attempt to reform how the police work are discussed and passed. For those municipalities who did little to nothing to let the police have a say in police reform, the replacement principle is being practiced.

In fact, if we remember the torch-lit protest that occurred in Charlottesville, Va., what was one of the chants uttered by the neo nazi, white supremacist groups? Wasn't it about claiming that they will not be replaced?

See, what we need today is a new kind of revolution. A revolution that is not based on exclusive claims for power, but inclusion. We need a revolution that is not looking to replace people, but is looking to create new structures so that people of different races, economic classes, and ideologies must work together to solve problems.

See, we don't need a proletariat to replace the bourgeoisie, we need the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to work together as equal partners so that they learn how to look out for, not just their own interests, but the interests of others.

See, we don't need for society to punish and give the 1% a time out from influencing government, we need the1% and the 99% to collaborate as equals so that the threats to justice and the environment cited in the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City can be thwarted.

See, we don't need idealists to restructure our police forces and leave all of the decisions in their hands. We need neighborhood representatives, government officials, and representatives of the police to work together to eliminate police abuse and racism in law enforcement.

We don't need rightly angered mobs to tear down monuments and statues at their discretion. We need a structure where city officials meet with representatives of all parts of the public to determine which monuments and statues must be torn down and what ones can remain. Who are we going to replace our nation's past heroes with?

And finally, we don't need a two-party system that gives the illusion that conservatives are battling liberals and vice-versa in an eternal king-of-the-hill  for control of the political system. We need conservatives, liberals, and leftists--we actually have no leftists in government--working together because they can admit that no one ideology has all of the answers to address our problems.

While it seems that all previous revolutions look to replace the privileged class with the marginalized class(es), we need revolutions that include, not exclude, both the privileged and the marginalized and redistribute the power so the privileged and the marginalized have equal power. Hopefully that means that they will work together to advance each other's interests.

We need to change our revolutions from being based on exclusion to being based on inclusion of both previously marginalized groups with oppressive groups. We need revolutions that replace practices without eliminating people. We need revolutions that are based on getting different groups to collaborate rather than to replace and discard.

Our survival as society and nation depends if we can conduct a new kind of revolution than what was practiced before.


 

What Responses To Ferguson Can Reveal

Quite often, how people really feel about the status quo can be seen in how they react to a crisis. For those who are content with the status quo, the problems that stem from any crisis are always someone else's fault, for it cannot be the fault of the current systems that maintain the status quo. There are some who are discontent with the status quo but who act and think as if it were a natural disaster or a fixed cost rather than being a social problem--we should note that a social problem, by definition, must be problem about which we can do something. People from either group will then respond to the crisis by stressing individual responsibility. Of course, there are other responses made by those who are not happy with the status quo.  These people will either exclusively blame the systems for people's problems or they will see the status quo as a contributor to the struggles people have.

It is with all of that in mind that this blog will review some blogposts about Ferguson and racism posted in the Gospel Coalition website. These blogposts appeared in the Gospel Coalition website. The guest articles were written by Benjamin Watson (click here for his article) and Voddie Baucham (click there for his article) as they gave their responses to what occurred in Ferguson.  

Both men downplay external systemic factors only in different ways. Baucham acknowledges systemic problems plaguing the Black community but these problems are, according to him, within the community itself. Baucham especially wants to avoid giving any credibility to a Marxian 'White privilege' explanation for what has happened to the Black community. 'fatherlessness' and 'immorality' are root causes for what plagues Blacks. In addition, he does not see racism against Blacks allegedly practiced by police as being a problem. Rather, citing the disparity between the number of Blacks killed by Blacks vs the number of Blacks killed by the police, he believes that the Blacks have far more to fear from fellow Blacks than from the police. He gives personal experiences, though, of what Blacks do suffer from. And yet, he attributes all of this to personal sin and gives no credit to unjust, external systems.

Watson also emphasizes individual responsibility over problems caused by external systems, but he does so in a different way. First, Watson is deeply troubled by generations of injustice as well as some of the response such as rioting and looting. He's worried about an us vs them attitude and the prejudice it can produce, he's frustrated over the lack of change and yet thinks things are better now than before.  And he is confused over why it is so hard to do what the police say. Here, we might want to remind Watson of the history of the struggle for Civil Rights.

But most telling is where he finds his hope. His hope is in the Gospel because the root problem is due to sin--that is individual sin. Though, unlike Baucham, he doesn't write off the systemic racism, he still sees the solution solely in terms of changing individuals through preaching the Gospel. And in so thinking, he joins Baucham in affirming the status quo. Only here, the status quo isn't state of being that Blacks have in our society, it is in the current systems that maintain everyone's state of being. 

So what we have is a, though not the only, typical Conservative Christian response. That response says that we only need to work on individuals by preaching the Gospel and thus we leave the systems on which the status quo rests alone. This is why preaching the Gospel is seen as the only solution. Of course, Christians who believe this have their counterparts, especially on the Left, who believe that all we need to do is to change the systems, there is more than one system, that maintain the status quo and we can eliminate injustice. What both sides have in common is that they think in all-or-nothing terms which leads to making exclusive-or choices between converting individuals and changing the systems. And thus, trying both approaches is impossible because they are seen as being antithetical.

Now this exclusive-or approach isn't taken by all Christians nor of all who post on the Gospel Coalition. Trevin Wax challenged Baucham's dismissal of White Privilege as a cause for racial problems (click here) as he should. For one of Baucham's key mistakes is that he fails to look behind the curtain of Black fatherlessness and immorality. He doesn't consider whether political, economic, and other systems contribute to Black fatherlessness and immorality. And here, shouldn't we challenge Baucham for suggesting that Blacks have a greater problem with immorality than Whites? 

Justin Taylor just wrote a blogpost quoting Martin Luther King on the need to change legislation in order to curb racism (click here). And though he and Wax are presenting different approaches than Baucham and Watson, we would be making the same exclusive-or thinking mistake as Baucham and Watson made have if we replaced what Baucham and Watson wrote with just the corrections which Wax and Taylor suggested. That is because there is no need to think in exclusive-or terms here. Yes, we need to preach the Gospel and convert individuals. Here, we should note that there are other messages besides the Gospel which promote racial equality. And yes, we also need to change the systems that maintain the status quo. And there is no reason not to do both unless one is seeking control for one's own group. That is when Christians say that the only solution to a significant social problem is to have everybody believe the Gospel, they are in effect saying that Christianity should rule society for it to have any hope. Such people have an inadequate knowledge of our history. The same goes for those who believe that if society would only employ the systems they are advocating, our problems would be solved. 

We should note one final problem in our attempts to solve our society's problem with continued systemic racism. That problem is that though there were political advances made in terms of gaining equal rights for minorities, wealth disparity either remains unchanged or it grew. And anyone who knows anything about politics will tell you that power follows wealth and thus the failure to change the wealth disparity problem might be, or is in reality, a significant contributing factor to our society's failure to overcome racism. 

Though the Conservative Christian Church will sometimes address racism and try to work to change the political system to advance equality, it has utterly failed to address an economic system that is based on the love of money and contributes to our ongoing problem with racism. As I remember Noam Chomsky stating in a DVD I have that while King went after racism, he was applauded; but he was denounced when he worked for economic justice and opposed the Vietnam War and militarism. So at best, the Conservative Christian Church has followed what gained King applause and has avoided to do what caused him criticism. 

Thus, our current economic system, which plays just as big a role in maintaining racism as any unjust political system could, has been treated either as a sacred cow or a fixed cost. And so there is no prophetic word challenging our economic system coming from the Conservative Christian Church. Thus, we can only conclude that it is content with that part of our society. And this is what we see in all of the writers cited here.

When Poverty Calls, Justice Is Listening

I have been severely disillusioned by many who share my faith. Here, I am not speaking of Christians in general as much as Christians who come from Reformed Tradition. This tradition consists of those who adhere to the teachings of Calvin, Luther, and a bunch of catechisms and confessions. Why am I so distressed? It seems that too many from the Reformed faith do all they can to confirm the Left's charge that it is an institution of indoctrination for the maintenance of the status quo.

Part of the problem for those from the Reformed faith here is that they put so much emphasis on submitting to the authorities, taken from Romans 13, that they don't see the forest for the trees.  They don't see that after so much submission, they merely end up practicing the same kind of tribalism that was so popular in the past especially in the Old Testament but is so out of place because of the New Testament today. Because of their emphasis on submission, the resulting division of labor resembles a well modularized computer program where each part of the program has its own specific responsibilities that are shared with no other part. But that is the nice way of saying it. What we could say is that too many from the Reformed Tradition are extremely rigid thinkers especially when it benefits them.

Likewise, with the Reformed faith's submission to the authorities, it isn't the believer's position to determine if the orders he or she is to carry out is leading to injustice. That is the job of those in authority. Rather, according to many Reformed faith leaders, the believer's job is to simply obey those in authority unless the command given causes the believer to disobey God. Thus, the sole concern for the Christian who holds to this view is to be concerned solely for themselves but in a spiritual way. They are absolved of all responsibility if the Christian citizen is not committing sin but the policies instituted by the government are unjust.

A similar division of labor occurs again when some Reformed Christians talk about government caring for the poor. While some allow for the government to be partially responsible for caring for the poor but worry about what tax rate constitutes stealing, others believe that government should not offer any assistance to the poor because to do so would require it to steal from those creating wealth. They call collecting taxes to fund programs for the poor stealing because the government is forcing people to donate funds they would otherwise choose to keep for themselves. Rather than allowing the government to care for the poor, they believe that helping those in need is a job for the Church only. Never mind that the Church has neither the resources nor the will to provide the necessary relief for the vulnerable, it is this rigid thinking regarding roles again which moves many Reformed Christians to employ exclusive-or thinking.

An additional problem to the inflexible thinking mentioned above occurs when we excuse those who have more from helping to support those in need, we are supporting the growing trend of those with wealth who flee from meeting their end of the social contract. And all of this continues the status quo.

In short, up until a few days ago, all leaders from the Reformed faith with whom I am acquainted appeared to support the maintenance of the status quo that serves those with wealth and power. And there appeared nobody who would even dare to challenge the abuses practiced by those with wealth and power. That until an non-reformed theologian referred me to Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff. Dr. Wolterstorff currently teaches at Yale but attended and taught at Calvin College.

According to Wolterstorff's lecture at BIOLA University, social justice came to him through a couple of conferences. One conference occurred in South Africa during apartheid and another in Chicago which dealt with the oppression of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. In the first conference, Wolterstorff explained how the Afrikaners defended Apartheid by claiming that their treatment of the Blacks and Colored (mixed decent) was benevolent rather than unjust. These apologists for apartheid claimed that the inequitable treatment of Blacks and Colored people showed how good the Afrikaners could be to the rest and that their goodness far outweighed any problems resulting from practicing injustice that South Africa's Apartheid might involve. According to Wolterstorff's interpretation of the what the Afrikaners were saying and doing is that their benevolence was a tool of oppression.

In the latter conference, he discovered that a speaker from Palestine was given conditional permission to attend the conference so long as any audience he spoke to did not exceed five people. Wolterstorff concluded that  something is seriously wrong with our policies when we put those kinds of restrictions on free speech.

The stories about the conferences were there to tell us how social justice became an important issue to Wolterstorff. But the key point the he makes that challenges the typical views of Reformed Christians is that instead of portraying the solution to poverty as an issue of tough-love or charity because the poor are either lazy or have had bad luck, Wolterstorff uses the Scriptures (Psalm 72 and Isaiah 10 to be specific) and the writings of Church Fathers such as Basil of Caesarea, Ambrose who was the Bishop of Milan, and John Chrysostom to assert that to not care for and share with the poor is to practice injustice and this is regardless of the causes for the poverty.

The ramifications of such an assertion should not be underestimated. For if helping the poor is a matter of tough-love, then rebuke is all that one needs to help those who are impoverished.  And if we are considering how to help those who have had bad luck, we will consider the option of giving charity and we are our own judge regarding how much charity we bestow if we share at all and under what conditions. But if giving aid to the poor is practicing justice, then there are a couple of conclusions that follow this premise. The first conclusion is that helping the poor is not an option or something we do that is above and beyond the call of duty. Though Wolterstorff did not refer to Jesus's parable of the sheep (Matthew 25:31-46), this conclusion is certainly implied by the parable. That is God holds us accountable for not helping the poor. Of course, Wolterstorff does not dictate how helping must be implemented. But the fact that each individual is to help and share with those in need is required course in life rather than optional one.

But another conclusion that comes from the premise that helping the poor is a justice issue raises its ugly, remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, head here. That is if helping the poor is a justice issue and the job of government is to establish justice, then helping the poor is a responsibility of the government. And if one of the jobs government has is to help the poor and the government uses taxes to do that and we are taxpayers, then all of us unless we are suffering financial hardship are also called to help the poor through our taxes that funds the government's efforts. And those who avoid paying taxes, such as around 66%, which is the last percentage I saw, of corporations that do business in the U.S., are practicing injustice by not giving their fair share. And the significance to this argument is that it shows how businesses, especially large corporations and financial institutions, must be called on by the Church, if not others, to repent of their policies that allow them to hoard their money. For it is in the avoidance of paying taxes rather than in the government's collection of taxes that the real stealing is occurring.

However, we have another snag. What do we do with a government that is withholding the just help due to those in need? That will be a subject for another post. As for this one, we see that in people like Dr Nicholas Wolterstorff, there is hope in that someday the Reformed Church will no longer serve the interests of the wealth and power but will serve God and part of that service is to promote and practice justice instead.

It Is Time To Take Names And Preach Repentance

When confronting Peter about his duplicitous behavior, Paul was not shy as recorded in Galations chapter 2. For Paul to be shy would imply that he was at least leaning toward trying to please people than God. What was Peter's sin? He would associate with Gentile Christians when he was by himself but withdrew from them when those from the Circumcision Party came. The Circumcision Party consisted of those who believed that Gentile Christians must follow all of the Jewish ceremonial laws including being circumcised. Paul regarded those in this party as preaching a false gospel.

The question the Conservative Church must answer today is how does it confront evil behavior? The Conservative Church has an answer but, like the behavior that Paul had to confront, it is duplicitous. When an average Joe commits sin, especially sexual sin, the Conservative Church is prepared to intervene and even bare its teeth. But when those with wealth and power sin, the Conservative Church backs away and becomes meek, mild, and some would say obedient. Sins such as waging immoral wars, destroying the environment, and manipulating the economy receive a far different treatment from the Conservative Church than personal sins committed by ordinary individuals. Why the double standard?

Those on the Left explain the duplicitous behavior this way. The Church, along with the education system and the news and entertainment media, serve as institutions of indoctrination to maintain the status quo with the status quo consisting of society being ruled over by those with wealth and power. This keeping the status quo can be done by either encouraging people to support the status quo or by minimizing dissatisfaction and resistance.

To see how correct the Left is in its assessment of the Church as an institution of indoctrination, one only needs to look at the tenets the Church teaches and the behaviors it promotes amongst its members. One of the basic tenets that the Conservative Church teaches its flock is to be preoccupied with oneself, to be spiritually narcissistic. This is first done through teaching the flock on how to be content in all situations. The result here is that contentment, especially in the face of hardship, is a measure of one's spirituality. Logically speaking, if one is taught that contentment is how we should respond when things are not going our way, one will very likely conclude that the way to help others who are going through trials is to teach them how to be content.

To answer this call to contentment, a parallel could be drawn here between the personal command to not to be anxious for our lives and not to work for food that perishes with how we should respond to those in need. Here, a different kind of double standard is imposed on Christians. Despite the Golden Rule, while we should learn to trust God and be content (Matthew 6:25-33 and John 6:27), we should look to provide for those in need (Matthew 25:31-46 and James 2:14-17).

Another way by which the Conservative Church leads its flock into a gross self-preoccupation is through its emphasis on saving faith. The way it is preached is that as long as one has saving faith, one can be apathetic to a world that is destroying itself. But we should note that that disinterest is selective. For when the world around us is doomed, this saving faith is adequate to give us peace. But how many Christians would have the same peace if they sold all they had to give to the poor?

Likewise, I have heard preachers reject the Social Gospel because feeding the hungry does means little if the same people are unbelievers and will condemned to hell. And the same goes with righting the wrongs of those who are oppressed. But here we must consider the source of these statements. Realize that these things are being said by well-fed pastors who, because of their own personal wealth, have more privileges than most people who live on earth. For not only must we ask the Biblical question of of how can people believe if there is nobody to preach the Gospel to them. We must ask how can people hear the Gospel when they are too hungry or oppressed to listen when it is preached.

The same self-centeredness can be found in the way Conservative Christians use Romans 13, the chapter that tells us to submit to all in authority, to quell resistance against the abusive practices of those with wealth and power. Basically, Conservative Christianity tells us that because of this chapter in the Bible, when it is those in authority who do the abusing, the hands of Conservative Christians are tied. There is a escape clause however. If  those in authority tell the Christian to do or refrain something that violates a Christian's conscience, the Christian is allowed to ignore those in authority.

The problem with the Conservative Christian approach here is that it reduces our relationship to tyrants to our personal obligations to honor those whom God has ordained as rulers. In so doing, those in the Conservative Christian are, again, being told to be concerned solely for oneself. They are being told to care first about being pure by submitting to those in authority while others suffer even cruelly. Their suffering, Conservative Christians are being told, is of no consequence. But saving oneself by being obedient, which in turn enables the persecution of others, is what is important.

Romans 13 is important. It played a role in Martin Luther King's thinking of how to react to abusive people in position of authority. However, unlike what the leaders of the Conservative Christian church tell their flock, King did not reduce how one should respond to unjust governments to Romans 13. Two other issues we must consider when determining how we will react to an abusive government are how we are to oppose evil and how to stand with the victims. In contrast to Romans 13, both of these issues call us to be concerned about and act on that what is outside of our interests.  Opposing evil calls on us to be stand against the evil of others while standing with the victims calls on us to show an abuse, and sometimes even death, defying compassion on others. We need to ask ourselves which behavior follows Christ's example more faithfully, is it obeying the authorities so that one is not punished or is it to risk what one has in order to protect innocent victims from bullies with power?

Now we should not jump to stereotypes about how the Conservative Christian Church teaches its members on how to respond to those in authority. Certainly some Conservative Churches, in the name of patriotism, condemn any resistance to the government that they see by some of its own politically progressive members. Other Conservative Churches, however,  allow for some of its members to resist those in authority but with a concern for not offending its good, submissive, patriotic members. These Churches do so by either merely trusting the consciences of those who resist or by exhorting people to take a political stand on whatever political side one's own understanding of the Bible leads them to.

This allowing for members to be on both sides of an issue can be a legitimate recognition of the complexity of an issue but it can also be used to dodge having to take a possibly costly stand. Just as we could ask how Christians could be on the both sides of the slavery issue during the 19th century, how can Christians be on both sides of fighting immoral wars,  of fraudulent foreclosure processes, of the poisoning of our food and environment, of the growing wealth disparity that is at least partially due to the reduction or elimination of workers' pay, rights and benefits, or the torture and/or murder of innocent civilians overseas? In short, how can any Church, in good conscience, be on both sides of all of the issues in a society where money rules and determines what is right and wrong? All of these attacks on innocent people and the environment are occurring because of government-corporation collusions where one hand washes the other and there is a revolving door for jobs between those in the private and public sectors.

Again, the Conservative Church has no qualms with persecuting an individual member for sexual sins but let a sin be both violent and perpetrated by either a businessman dressed for success or a person in a military uniform and we find that the Conservative Church is strangely silent. It is as if good clothes cover a multitude of sins. And one of the reasons for this double standard is that to take sides would mean that the Conservative Church could lose members and thus revenue.

Where the Conservative Church takes such a cowardly stand by treating defenseless, though not innocent, individuals harshly while overlooking the gross injustices of those with wealth and power, it exceeds the Apostle Peter's duplicitous behavior referred to at the beginning of this post. Already, those outside of the Church are trying to do the Church's job by calling those with wealth and power to repentance. Of course, without the Gospel, their calling of wealthy and powerful sinners to repentance will have many unnecessary flaws. But at least they are not afraid to say who is sinning and challenge them to repent. When will the Conservative Church do the same? When will the Conservative Church name those who are committing sins that devastate the lives of the vulnerable? The Conservative Church will do so when it commits itself to pleasing God rather than people. The Conservative Church will do so when it no longer agrees to serve as an institution of indoctrination for the status quo.

Martin Luther King's Review Of The Good Samaritan

In his last speech, Martin Luther King spoke in Memphis in support of the striking sanitation workers. Conservatives should note here that King's presence in Memphis was to promote economic justice. Toward the end of his speech, King referenced the parable on the Good Samaritan (read here for parable, read here for King's speech).  This parable tells a story about a man who was  beaten, robbed, and left for dead on a dangerous road. He was then ignored by two religious leaders but was helped by a religiously unclean Samaritan. This parable was told by Jesus to a man intent on proving his own righteousness.

King began his explanation by giving the traditional interpretation of the parable. This understanding says that the Levite and the priest had religious reasons for not stopping to help. These reasons might have included wanting to get to the "church" on time or desiring to keep ceremonially clean.

But then King decided to use his imagination to fill in the blanks. He first noted that the road Jesus used in the parable was a dangerous road and was filled with robbers. So when the Levite and the priest came upon the man, King thought that they had asked themselves the question, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" They wondered if they would be robbed or was the man who was beaten merely trying to trick them so he could rob whoever stopped to help. King summarized the attitude of these two religious leaders by asking, "What would happen to me?"

Then King noted that the Good Samaritan reversed the question that the Levite and priest had asked. The Good Samaritan asked the question, "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" King went on to say that the reason why they were in Memphis was not because of what would happen to them; rather, the question that made King go to Memphis was one that asked what would happen to the sanitation workers if he did not join them.

The question King attributes to the Good Samaritan delivers a knockout punch to the solar plexus of Conservative Christianity. Why? It is because this question challenges us to become other-directed while Conservative Christianity, with its focus on the individual, pressures us to stay self-directed. American Conservative Christianity funnels our attention to the individual by putting the emphasis it does on both where we will go after we die and on keeping oneself personally pure. Unfortunately, this stress on the self stops us from caring for many people. Therefore, the question that is most often asked by conservative Christians with regard to helping others is, "What will happen to me if I stop to help another person?" A variation of this question is also asked by conservative Christians. That question is "What will happen to me if I don't stop to help this person?" The subject of the latter question is whether one would be punished by God if one does not stop to do something one does not want to do.

But the demands of God's law, as partially illustrated in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the needs of our time require that we ask the altruistic question. Both the law and the times require that we place concern for others over self. And in the parable of the Good Samaritan, as in the parable of the sheep and the goats (read sheep and goats parable), the other person is one who is oppressed or neglected. Thus, when we meet someone in need, we should be asking, "What will happen to this person if I do not stop to help them?"

The next question becomes will Conservative Christianity remain on the road paved by the question of "what will happen to me" and its variation or will it turn onto the street that asks, "what will happen to the other person." We should note that care for where one will go after death and one's own personal righteousness does not necessarily free the believer from sin. However, being other-directed can help. The believer who is self-directed regardless of how religious the believer is holding on to an idolatrous self-interest. The believer who is other-directed has an advantage in battling sin.

As Conservative Christianity remains on its current road, it sanctifies self-centeredness. It tells us to become preoccupied with ourselves in a holy way. It teaches us that faith in Christ can help us get what we want in life. It teaches us to be righteously selfish. That means Conservative Christianity tells the sinner that their self-centeredness only needs to be tweaked, not removed. With Conservative Christianity, one can be as self-centered as before as long as what one desires is not taboo. With today's Conservative Christianity, the believer becomes a consumer, the Gospel a commodity, and the exercise of faith in Christ the adding of the Gospel to one's shopping cart.

We should also ask why Conservative Christianity teaches its adherents to remain so preoccupied with themselves when their Savior did just the opposite. One reason has to do with what the believer would have to do if they were other-directed. Certainly they would have to help some as individuals such as by helping with chores, giving money to those who are poor, tutoring, and such. But other activities would require the believer to be an activist and speak out against those with wealth and power. In Biblical language, this is called being a prophet.

Does the Conservative Church want to change course and challenge the status quo by teaching its members to be prophet-activists? After all, the Conservative Church depends on the status quo for both numbers and funds. Calling on believers to challenge the hand that feeds them may cause them to leave since many individual conservative Christians depend on and admire the wealthy and are loyal to power. In addition, calling on believers to be activists on more than just the abortion issue will lead to believers working with and reading unbelievers. This idea frightens the American Conservative Church both on an institutional and individual level. On an institutional level, encouraging believers to read nonbelievers could result in having less control of the flock as its members read non-approved material. At the same time, many individual Christians are afraid of reading non-approved material less they be corrupted by nonChristian world views.

So far, the American Conservative Church has opted to keep faith and the Christian life as a self-directed endeavor. And this is despite the fact that a greater concern for others than for self does not prevents one from believing or from being concerned about personal righteousness. In fact, being other-directed is more consistent with saving faith than is being righteously selfish.

In the meantime, the question that King imagined the Good Samaritan asking challenges those outside of the Conservative Church as well. With all of the factions and issues tearing at our society and world today, it is safe to say that unless we imitate the Good Samaritan as King saw him and tried to do himself, we will implode and lose all that we have. Not only will we lose, but so will all of our loved ones. Such a statement seems incredulous to those who are content. That is because contentment releases a hallucinogen that causes us to see our current state as existing forever. And it is only when that state of contentment is interrupted that are we motivated to see and react to reality. If this is the case, our hope can only come too late.

Is The Conservative Church Disturbing The Peace?

The answer to the question is both yes and no and in the wrong way each time. The Left's most often made criticism about the Church is that it serves as an institution of indoctrination. The purpose of the indoctrination is to teach compliance to the dictates of the rich and powerful. Unfortunately, the Conservative Church as met the Left's expectations admirably.

But first, who am I referring to when I mention the Conservative Church? It consists of the majority of American Christian Fundamentalist Churches. Fundamentalist Churches are those that adhere to specific tenets of the Christian faith of the inerrancy of the Bible, the Virgin Birth, that Jesus died for the sins of believers, Jesus' resurrection and His second coming. But as I write about the Conservative Church,  I am sad that I must write about friends and brothers and sisters in the faith.

How does the Conservative Church exceed the Left's expectations? It does so by how it keeps the peace. It does so by what it says to those who are under the whip of the rich and powerful as well as what it refrains from saying to those who use this whip. The Conservative Church has two messages for those who live under this whip for it speaks to two distinct groups: the minions and the victims. To the minions, the Conservative Church says this, "well done thou good and faithful servants, enjoy now the prosperity that has been promised to you." However, unlike the heavenly reward that true believers will receive, this reward consists of an abundant life here to which every good minion feels entitled. After all, the good minion has faithfully followed the orders of the proper authority figures and has thus earned a reward. And living faithfully and being rewarded provides the best witness to others on how to have it all in life in a sanctified way.

Who are these minions? Minions are those who are comfortable with the way things are. They are content because they have a decent income from either investments and/or employment. And since they themselves have benefitted from the system, they see no need to change it. Therefore these minions either work to continue the reign of the rich and powerful or they remain silent. They do not even consider the most minimal efforts one can take to change things, like voting for third party candidates. Their vision is severely myopic and this has blinded them to the suffering of others as well as made their hearts cold and their minds dull.

Minions may also include those in law enforcement and the military who blindly follow orders because, they feel, it is not their place to step back and look at the big picture. Thus, they enforce the rule of the rich and powerful. Law enforcement agencies do this on a domestic level while the military expands the rule of its rich and powerful sponsors over new turf. This criticism is difficult to make because of the kinds of risks that those in both law enforcement and the military face when doing jobs that are necessary. They deserve appreciation and respect for that. But any group that offers near blind allegiance pretends that use of their services is never abused.

To those receiving the whip, such as those who have received the brunt of today's economic distress, the Conservative Church offers an interesting message of support. Here, the Conservative Church offers to teach these abuse victims how to become Spiritual Spartans. And one becomes a Spiritual Spartan by first believing the Gospel and then by learning to be content in all things, that is to suck it up or take a lap, and finally by yielding unquestioning obedience to the authorities, that is be good little children so one is not spanked. The goal of the Christian Church here is to get Spiritual Spartans to behave like the minions despite the wealth disparity.

The Conservative Church goes on to explain that being a Spiritual Spartan is the precedent set by leaders in the early Church, particularly Paul. Paul neither resisted the injustice visited up him by the Roman authorities nor did he teach others to do so. Paul is the apostle who told all to be submissive to the governing authorities, he told wives to be submissive to their husbands and children to be submissive to their parents, and he told slaves to cheerfully serve their owners and not to seek their own freedom. And, the Conservative Church reasons that if it was good enough for Paul, it must be good enough for the rest of us. In addition, the victims should never forget the heavenly reward that awaits them should they remain faithful Spiritual Spartans. And this focus on heavenly rewards is designed to make these Spiritual Spartans as myopic as the minions have become.

And though there is some truth in what the Conservative Church preaches to its flock, whether they be minions or Spiritual Spartans, not only do they leave out the context from their Biblical teachings, it keeps a disturbing silence when relating to wealth and power. This is where the Conservative Church refrains from disturbing the peace in the wrong way. It refrains from preaching a Gospel of Repentance to their benefactors--benefactors because the Conservative Church lives on the donations that come from the rich and powerful and their minions.

But by faithfully maintaining the status quo, the Conservative Church also becomes complicit in the sins and the violence being practiced. And by enabling the rich and powerful's oppression of others, the Conservative Church is disturbing the peace in the wrong way. The Conservative Church refrains from challenging America's use of wars and proxy leaders and by so doing it shows a reluctance to learn from the past. Certainly, it is aware of some past abuses, such as America's past support for leaders like Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, or Pinochet; but it steadfastly prefers to maintain a disconnect in contrast to experiencing a shameful but healing sense of regret. So in the name of the minigod Patriotism, it supports troops and the havoc they cause.

Likewise, the Conservative Church supports violence on local dissenters and others. An extreme example of this support could be seen in the words one conservative church goer told me as I told him of a protest I participated in in D.C. He said that just as Jesus used violence to expel the moneychangers, he would have used a baseball bat on protesters like myself. But such an example does not characterize the Conservative Church. Rather, they lend explicit or implicit approval of whatever tactics are used by law enforcement on dissenters. In fact, it supports even harsh law enforcement on all others than themselves. In short, we could say that when the Conservative Church disturbs the peace, it does so through surrogates who wear uniforms.

The answer to the question of whether the Conservative Church is disturbing the peace depends on whose peace. For, as of late, the Conservative Church refuses to disturb the peace of the rich and powerful regardless of their sins. But by offering unconditional support to the same group, the Conservative Church vicariously disturbs the peace of all others. So for all its complaining about today's godless world and state of affairs, the Conservative Church seems to be content since it does not muster the courage required to change things.

Franklin Graham vs Rob Bell Or Aren't There Enough Faults To Go Around

The latest battle in the Christian community pits Conservative Christians vs those from the Emerging Church. This is well seen in the comments from Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, about Rob Bell (about Rob Bell's views on Hell) and Rob Bell's defense of his views on Hell (defense).

Rob Bell appeals to the words of Jesus to defend his view of Hell. Bell sometimes gets specific, but for the most part, he appeals to abstract concepts of God. For all of his selective use of details when defending his position, Rob Bell has a point that should be listened to. That point is that Conservative Christians have an escapist approach to life. For such Christians, there is no need to either be involved in or troubled by the world because they will be raptured while the world experiences the ultimate barbecue. This belief leads those Christians to seek a double escape. The first escape is while they are alive on earth and the second one is when they are taken up. We can call such people Snagglepuss Christians. For like the character Snagglepuss, they are always leaving when times get tense. Only Snagglepuss Christians live life by saying "exit, stage up, up, and away."

Now there are far better people to read on how not to be such Christians. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for example, was no slacker on Biblical details and he gave us a new look on faith and a sanctified involvement with a troubled world--though thanks to the Nazis, his world went from troubled to psychopathic. And it is very easy for most Christians to pay lip service to Bonhoeffer's point here regardless of any theological misgivings they have about him.

Bell, however, has made a living from providing chicken soup for the restless, young professional soul. He has made Christianity about being just and generous for one's own sake. His views on social justice cannot compare with Bonhoeffer's. For Bonhoeffer believed that Christians should work for Social Justice for the sake of the other. He rightly demanded that the Christians of his day stand with the too dangerous to stand with oppressed, the Jews of Europe, He did this because, back then, both liberal and conservative Christians of Germany ran away from them for safety's sake.

Neither do Bell's views of social justice match what Martin Luther King challenged us to do. For King, even mere generosity meant far more than tossing x number of bread crumbs to the poor. In contrast to Bell, King charged us to stand against and challenge the system that causes poverty. Like Bonhoeffer's standing with the Jews, King's opposing the system meant taking risks and suffering blows, even fatal ones. For both King and Bonhoeffer, working for social justice meant taking up a real cross of death. For both, one either took up this cross or they loved the world.

Though Franklin Graham is correct in his assessment of Rob Bell's views on Hell and the Christian life, Graham, and those who stand with him, probably prefer Bell's concept of Social Justice to the living examples provided by Bonhoeffer and King. This is because American Conservative Christianity has been preaching a gospel of having one's cake and eating it too. This gospel allows one to both escape hell and flee from a dying world while enjoying the same world a bit too much.

Thus, Conservative Christians have reduced taking up one's own cross to crucifying personal demons. Such Christians become suspicious when anything more is associated with bearing one's cross. This is partly due to the American emphasis on individualism. But it is also because we live in a very prosperous country and we like to attribute that prosperity to our "Christian" heritage. Thus, there is a built in link between Christian values with being well off. And nothing threatens that state of wealth like challenging the status quo. That is because in the end, much of our wealth can be traced to the status quo.

Though American Conservative Christians are frustrated with the falling away by some in the Emerging Church Movement, like Rob Bell, we have only ourselves to blame. By emphasizing faith as being merely an escape from Hell, we have provided nothing for the current life except the spiritual emptiness of being righteously selfish. At this point, we need to be specific in our compliments and applaud Rob Bell and those in the Emerging Church Movement for recognizing the emptiness of a sanctified materialism and self-centeredness. Though it seems that their call to us to work for Social Justice can be just as self-centered, for it revolves around self-fulfillment, they are calling us to task on our materialism.

Evidence that the objections American Conservative Christians have to Bell's call to Social Justice are due more to our ties to materialism than any spiritual concern can be seen in the fact that we act as if working for Social Justice contradicts the Gospel and our faith, but it does not. There is nothing implied by working for Social Justice that contradicts what Jesus and the apostles said.  But again, we act as if it does. Here, we seem to object too much to Bell's call to work for Social Justice and we do so for no real reason other than Bell might have hit an exposed nerve.

When Squeezed, Is The Church "Wimpy, Wimpy, Wimpy"

Not too long ago, those who made Hefty garbage bags ran a commercial that compared their bags with a generic store brand in the following way. They showed the generic store bought bags eventually breaking after a certain amount was put in and this was followed by the chant, "wimpy, wimpy, wimpy." Afterwards, a person was stuffing everything but an M1A1 tank into the unbreakable Hefty garbage bags while the chant, "hefty, hefty, hefty" could be heard.

Though the Church cannot be compared, except by some critics, with garbage bags and how much can be stuffed into them, the question of how the Church stands up to pressure is an important one. Pressure for the Church comes when taking a stand costs something. And if the Church becomes wimpy and intimidated by people, regardless of who is pushing it, we need to speak up.

Those who can pressure the Church come from one of two groups. The first group are individual people while the second consists of the status quo. Individuals can make the Church feel coerced by threatening to  leave. Such losses mean more to a church than just a smaller congregation, it results in less income. The main rub between individual members and a church comes when a church challenges its members on personal morality. Another conflict between the two revolves around the worship service styles.  The question here is whether the worship service is oriented around making the attendees feel good about themselves or does it direct the congregation's focus on God.

The second group that can push the Church is the status quo. The status quo consists of the combination of those with wealth and those with authority, that is the rich and the government. There are a variety of relationships between the wealthy and the government from a combative one  to one where one group rules through the other. Here, the potential clash is whether the Church will speak out against the neglect or oppression of those in need which results from the reign of the status quo. In America, the consequences for the Church that come when challenging those with wealth and power can be similar to that of challenging individuals when they sin, that is the Church can lose members and thus revenue.

I can only speak for the Conservative Church here because that is what I am mainly exposed to, but the Church does have a mixed record when standing for what is right. It has demonstrated that it can be stronger than hefty when dealing with an indivudual's sins but worse than wimpy when challenging the status quo.

Why the difference? The answer can be found in the word syncretism. Syncretism is the act of trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. If you hit the peg hard enough, you will insert it but not without doing violence to either the peg, the hole or both. Syncretism allows the Church to hold on to unbiblical values while preaching the Gospel. The Church most often employs syncretism when its allegiance to the Gospel does not lead to challenging sinners to repent.

Here, we want to focus on the sins of the status quo. These include creating an economic system that robs people of their jobs, homes, and democracy. The latter is difficult for some to see at first but one only needs to see what is happening in countries like Greece and Spain before one could perceive it happening here. In Greece and Spain, the governments must decide whether they will serve their foreign investors or their people. Note that these foreign investors lent these countries money on one condition, to make a profit. And that is what most help is based on in our global economy, can the lender make money off of helping the people in need.

Certainly the above is an oversimplification of what is happening but it has much truth. In this country, while Conservatives are slaughtering those in need on the altar of the bottom line, both them and the "liberal" Democrats are funneling tax money to the wealthy. The channeling of funds takes many forms including the revision of tax laws and the implementing of unnecessary and even harmful policies--especially foreign policies requiring military interventions--that require the purchase of goods and services provided by certain corporations. Here we see how the status quo feeds itself at the expense of all others without including the bailouts, relaxed regulations on financial institutions, Obamacare, and tax breaks that have consolidated wealth to those those at the top and thus, in a world of limited resources, robbed others of the chance to make a living.

So why is the Conservative Church so silent about sins that kill and rob multitudes of people while it is quick to make stand up to individual sins especially if those transgressions are sexual in nature? What is holding the Church back from preaching the same kind of hell-fire sermons to those whose riches depend on theft and murder as it does to individuals who hurt just a few through consensual activities?

Here, we must return to syncretism. But we must delve a little into the details of how conservatives hold non compatible ideas. We should note that it is common for people to project their life experiences into their religion. For conservative Americans growing up in a prosperous capitalistic society, patriotism has been preached as being involved with something greater than oneself. In addition, Conservatives are naturally receptive to authoritarianism. So here we have the ingredients that can greatly alter one's faith. We should also note that the status quo wraps itself tightly in these viewpoints.  Thus, it is a personal allegiance to and comfort with capitalism, patriotism and authoritarianism that makes the Conservative Church hesitant to challenge the sins of the status quo. Questioning these three is taken off the table for many Conservative Christians.

The problems that projecting capitalism, patriotism and authoritarianism onto the Gospel are undeniable to their often invisible victims; thus, it is hard for the Conservative Christian to see. What does the Conservative Christian risk when he/she employs an uncritical approach to capitalism, patriotism, and authoritarianism? The danger is that unless we let the Gospel change us into becoming honest brokers enabling us to challenge our old ideas and philosophies, we are in danger of accepting another gospel to stand alongside the Gospel of Christ. That second gospel is the gospel of self-exhaltation. Believing that the system one grew up in is God's system makes one feel very good about oneself. And that good feeling is what makes it so difficult to pry capitalism, patriotism, and authoritarianism loose from its mismatched joining with the Gospel.

The Conservative Church does have a mixed record when it is squeezed by today's world. This record tells us that you should not cross paths with the Conservative Church unless you are part of the status quo. The reasons for the Church's inconsistency are personal and apply to each believer.  And thus the Conservative Church will need all of the help it can get to become hefty when pressured by those with wealth and power to remain silent.