Moral Bankruptcy

“It is extraordinary to me that you can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion to save 25,000 children who die every day of preventable disease and hunger.”  – Bono

Enough said.

Jubilee

This week marks the beginning of a 40-day fast to push for legislation to eliminate the debts of 67 of the world’s poorest nations. The Jubilee Act seeks debt relief in an effort to improve the living conditions in developing countries, many of which face insurmountable amounts of debt. Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are among a group of prominent leaders who are taking part in one-day fasts or are endorsing the Jubilee Campaign …

Charity is not enough

Charity is Not Enough ~ Kate Stevens
As posted on http://www.relevantmagazine.com/

Charity is my job these days. So is justice. The majority of my waking hours are spent at the non-profit humanitarian organization where I work as a representative for Northern Ontario. It’s been my home for almost six years now, and I am indebted to the global perspective that I’ve gained over those six years. I leave work each day with a sense that I am contributing to something more than my employer’s paycheck, my company’s growth or my culture’s consumerism.I know that I’m contributing to charity and justice in a very tangible way, but I sometimes forget the difference and the importance of each in the midst of endless phone calls, meetings, computer problems and angry donors. It’s easy to be numbed to the real issues that are going on in the world and to lose the right perspective in exchange for paperwork.Even so, as someone who has been concerned about justice since my brother was old enough to take my toys, the story Ronald Stanley tells about the difference between charity and justice is difficult for me to ignore.
Stanley describes a scene where two men are fishing in a river. They begin to enjoy the fish they’ve caught when cries for help get their attention. One by one, they see people being swept away by the river. They jump in, desperate for a chance to save the drowning and, each time, they succeed. Tired after having worked to save several, they hear the cry of another: this time, a child. One of the men rushes away, leaving the other to rescue the child alone. The first man is confused. The second man declares he’s heading upstream to find out why there are so many people being swept away by the river.I can’t help but laugh a little at Stanley’s story, partly because I can almost imagine the desperation in the conversation between the two men and partly because I can’t believe how effectively it captures the difference between charity and justice: charity is helping on the surface, for the short term, while justice is attacking the source of the problem itself. The first man was doing a great thing by saving the people who were drowning, but the second man went a step further by attempting to figure out from where the problem was originating so that he could do something about it. Neither charity nor justice can stand alone. On its own, charity has the potential of becoming a band-aid solution, never really getting to or treating the root of the problem. Justice on its own, on the other hand, can be harsh and can ignore the immediate needs of people. Had the first man in Stanley’s story given up on his attempts at charity, people would have drowned. However, had the second man not worked just a little bit harder to get to the root of the problem, more people would have drowned. A balance is required.A quick look at the media makes obvious that charity and justice are popular topics of discussion these days. We see celebrities adopting children from overseas and giving their time, money and endorsement to the charities of their choice. We see global campaigns like Make Poverty History. We see media endorsement for projects involving sending mosquito nets overseas to combat malaria. Numerous charities produce television spots. People give up their vacation time to volunteer overseas. It’s everywhere.Ever since Dec. 31, 2004, when the undersea earthquake off the coast of Indonesia created tsunami waves that devastated coastal South Asia, Western culture has been inundated with opportunities to give its time and its money. And it’s all for good reason. We are aware that there is a world that needs the resources we are so blessed to have and are willing to invest our resources in something other than ourselves. Yet, despite how amazing this is, it’s just charity. And we’re not doing enough. Yes, charity’s positive impact is unmistakeable and, yes, charity encompasses elements of justice, but my fear is that while amazing things are being done in the world today because of our charity and generosity charity is just a trend. If our charity is just fashionable, is true justice really being done?It takes sacrifice to develop a lifestyle that allows us to support charity. We need to watch how we spend our money and watch how we save. We need to respond when we feel any sense of compassion rather than changing the channel. It’s challenging, but even so, it’s still just charity.Justice, on the other hand, is messy. Those of us who are aiming for fashionable don’t usually give it much of a thought. It requires long-term commitment and investment in prayer. It requires blood and sweat and tears and hard work and a fight. It requires that we not only sacrifice things in our lives so that we can give, but that we change our lifestyles entirely or, in many cases, that we live counter-culturally, making choices about our lifestyle based on how we will impact what deserves justice: the environment, AIDS orphans in Uganda, farmers making pennies on coffee farms in South America, 10-year-old sweatshop workers in Asia, 14-year-old girls who have been forced into prostitution in Thailand, street kids in Toronto.While we are making an incredibly positive difference with our charity and while the Bible is clear that charity is incredibly important, taking the next step to create truly lasting change for our world requires justice. I imagine that God was trying to let us in on that secret when He asked that we “act justly…love mercy…[and] walk humbly with [Him]” (Micah 6:8, TNIV).

From the "God’s Politics" blog

I especially like the quote from Solzhenitsyn…

Three Principles for Christian Dual Citizens

~Rick Nathan

Sometimes we can best understand the role of faith in politics by listening to the way people of faith responded to crises in their day. Nearly 1,600 years ago, in the year 410 AD, the city of Rome was invaded by an army of 40,000 led by a general named Alaric. The attack on Rome sent a shockwave through the world that was much greater than the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many Christians believed that the fall of Rome signaled the end of the world, or at least the end of Christendom, since Christianity was the established religion in Rome.

The great St. Augustine responded to this equation of the fortunes of Rome with the fortunes of God’s kingdom by writing his immensely important philosophy of history called The City of God. In it, he distinguished between Rome, which he called “the city of man,” and the heavenly kingdom, which Augustine called “the city of God. The city of man, he said, was enamored with its own strength; the city of God is enamored with God and says, “I love you, my Lord, because you are my strength.”

Now, the person of faith is a resident of both cities. We live in time, but we belong to eternity. We are deeply engaged in this world, doing all we can to love our neighbor and work for justice while we acknowledge that we don’t ultimately belong to this world. According to Augustine, people of faith hold dual citizenships; we are resident aliens, or in the words of Jim Wallis’ magazine, we are sojourners.

It is precisely the dual citizenship of people of faith that both the secular left and the religious right deny. And in one of the strangest ironies in contemporary politics, the secular left and the religious right end up in precisely the same place. The secular left denies that there is a city of God to which they are morally accountable. There is only the city of man – utterly autonomous, self-confident, answerable only to itself. The religious right equates the city of God with the city of man. America is God’s chosen nation, our perspectives are God’s perspectives, our fights are God’s fights. So in its triumphalist self-confidence, “because God is always on our side,” the religious right also ends up unaccountable to God.

How can we, as people of faith, carve out a space that rejects both the secular left and its ideological twin, the religious right; one that recognizes our dual citizenship? How can we create a society that sees itself as morally accountable to God and God’s kingdom?

We can start by asking President Lincoln’s great question: Not “Is God on our side?”, but “Are we on God’s side?”

Let me suggest three simple guiding principles to assist us in determining if our political choices are on the side of the city of God.

First, how does this political choice play out for the marginalized? The Hebrew Bible reminds us over and over again to remember the widow, the orphan, and the alien; to remember the widow, the orphan, and the alien – the most dependent, the most vulnerable, the ones living closest to the edge.

Today we would say that the most dependent, and the most vulnerable, certainly include the immigrant, the uninsured, and the hungry, the unborn in the womb and their mothers, the residents in the Darfur and the victims of AIDS around the globe. When we stand before the God of history, he will not ask us about our GPA or our incomes, or what political party we supported. The God of history will ask us what we did for the least of his brethren. As Jesus said, “As you did for the least of these my brethren, you did it unto me.”

So, how does this political choice play out for the marginalized? That’s the first principle in deciding if we are on God’s side.

Second, how does this political choice support global peace? The Hebrew Bible speaks of a day when we will beat our swords into plowshares. Jesus, the Messiah, is called the Prince of Peace. The first thing Jesus said following his resurrection was “Peace be with you!” The Eucharist Christians share is called, in Roman Catholic tradition, the “Peace.” The church is always called to be a peace movement. That is why Augustine, who originated the just-war tradition, said that Christians ought to be the most reluctant to go to war – and that when we do, we always go with tears.

As I’ve said to the church I pastor, how did it come to be that we evangelicals have become the chief advocates of war of any demographic in the country? We Christians ought to be the hardest to convince; we ought to require the highest burden of proof; we ought to demand the most evidence before we support any military action. The church is always a peace movement.

Third, and finally, in deciding if we are on the side of God, we must always ask, “Do we see ourselves as answerable to God?” God forbid that we should project evil onto the other – onto the Arab, or the Persian, or the North Korean – still less onto the secular left or the religious right. As Solzhenitsyn said as he was lying on a rotting bed of straw in a Soviet Gulag,

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

Only if we as individuals and as a nation retain the capacity to be self-critical, to see evil in ourselves, to see ourselves as ultimately answerable and morally accountable to the city of God and to the God of that city, can we have any hope that we, as people of faith, are on the side of God.

Rich Nathan is the pastor of the Vineyard Church in Columbus, Ohio. He delivered these remarks to the audience at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium before the broadcast of last week’s presidential candidates forum on faith, values, and poverty.

Not just for graduates..

Below is a commencement speech given by Jim Wallis of Sojourners at Georgetown University.

Very timely…and certainly thoughts for all of us to meditate on…

Each new generation has a chance to alter two very basic definitions of reality in our world – what is acceptable and what is possible.

First, what is acceptable?

There are always great inhumanities that we inflict upon one another in this world, great injustices that cry out to God for redress, and great gaps in our moral recognition of them. When the really big offenses are finally corrected, finally changed, it is always and only because something has happened to change our perception of the moral issues at stake. The moral contradiction we have long lived with is no longer acceptable to us. What we accepted, or ignored, or denied, finally gets our attention and we decide that we just cannot, and will not, live with it any longer. But until that happens, the injustice and misery continue.

It often takes a new generation to make that decision – that something that people have long tolerated just won’t be tolerated any more.

So the question to you as graduates, as ambassadors for a new generation, is this: what are you going to no longer accept in our world, what will you refuse to tolerate now that you will be making the decisions that matter?

Will it be acceptable to you that 3 billion people in our world today – half of God’s children – live on less that $2 per day, that more than 1 billion live on less than $1 per day, that the gap between the life expectancy in the rich places and the poor places in the world is now 40 years, and that 30,000 children globally will die today – on the day of your graduation – from needless, senseless, and utterly preventable poverty and disease? It’s what Bono calls “stupid poverty.”

Many people don’t really know that, or sort of do but have never really focused on the reality or given it a second thought. And that’s the way it usually is. We don’t know, or we have the easy explanations about why poverty or some other calamity exists and why it can’t really be changed – all of which makes us feel better about ourselves – or we are just more concerned with lots of other things. We really don’t have to care. So we tolerate it and keep looking the other way.

But then something changes. Something gets our attention, something goes deeper than it has before and hooks us in the places we call the heart, the soul, the spirit. And once we’ve crossed over into really seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting the injustice we can never really look back again. It is now unacceptable to us.

What we see now offends us, offends our understanding of the sanctity and dignity of life, offends our notions of fairness and justice, offends our most basic values; violates our idea of the common good, and starts to tug at our deepest places. We cross the line of unacceptability. We become intolerant of the injustice.

But just changing our notion of what is unacceptable isn’t enough, however. We must also change our perception of what is possible.

In that regard, I would encourage each of you to think about your vocation more than just your career. And there is a difference. From the outside, those two tracks may look very much alike, but asking the vocational question rather than just considering the career options will take you much deeper. The key is to ask why you might take one path instead of another – the real reasons you would do something, more than just because you can. The key is to ask who you really are and what you want to become. It is to ask what you believe you are supposed to do.

You do have great potential, but that potential will be most fulfilled if you follow the leanings of conscience and the language of the heart more than just the dictates of the market, whether economic or political. They want smart people like you to just manage the systems of the world. But rather than managing or merely fitting into systems, ask how you can change them. You’re both smart enough and talented enough to do that. That’s your greatest potential.

Ask where your gifts intersect with the groaning needs of the world – there is your vocation.

The antidote to cynicism is not optimism but action. And action is finally born out of hope. Try to remember that. At college, you often believe you can think your way into a new way of living, but that’s actually not the way it works. Out in the world, it’s more likely that you will live your way into a new way of thinking.

The key is to believe that the world can be changed, because it is only that belief that ever changes the world. And if not us, who will believe? If not you, who?