Gingrich a Grinch

I have held off saying anything for as long as I could. I have been …meditating …on how to talk about …Newt.

You know, as in Gingrich. The now-leading GOP presidential candidate hopeful.

I nearly ran off the road when I heard his comments on the radio – something to the effect that poor kids have no work ethic because they don’t see anyone who works, and that they should become janitors in their schools, or maybe junior janitors.

My first thought was, “How arrogant! Has he been in a poor neighborhood, where parents often work 2-3 jobs, usually minimum wage with no benefits – and still can’t make ends meet? Has he been in poor neighborhoods dominated by slum landlords who charge exorbitant rent for habitats that are one step removed from shanties? Has he been in neighborhoods where there is no local supermarket and where many people cannot afford cars, so children are forced to eat horrible food gotten from the local corner store …which also charges too much?

I would bet not.

But then, I thought along a different line. If the children in poor neighborhoods became the janitors, where would the current janitors work – people who are trying to make a living and provide for their families?

Did he think of that? Would he even think to think of that?

The fact is, Gingrich, like so many white and privileged people, relies on stereotypes and generalizations. He, and others like him, speak on what they assume to be true. The “poor people” of whom he speaks (he and people like Limbaugh, Hannity, Bachmann, Coulter and others) are not even worthy of a personal investigation of why they are where they are, and how difficult it has been to get out and move up in a society which spurns them.

The fact is, many kids seldom see their parents because those parents do have a work ethic and they work their fingers to the bones, at the expense of their families. How many poor kids have come up saying that their parents worked two and three jobs, that their mothers were so tired after working that they would sit at the kitchen table and fall asleep? No, everyone doesn’t have the same work ethic, but some of them do not because they have given up. They have tried and tried to get good employment, to no avail and have stopped trying.

All kinds of people these days, who would not call themselves “poor,” or wouldn’t have called themselves “poor” before now, know what it feels like to try to work and get rejected, over and over. After a while, people stop trying.

Gingrich might be an intellectual, but he’s an insensitive and calloused and prejudiced intellectual who has no business wanting to be president of a country where there are more and more people who do not have work. A president is supposed to care for everyone, including “the least of these.” Donald Trump defended Gingrich’s statements, and said Barack Obama had not done anything for “people in the ghetto.”

Oh, how the cries of “socialist” would have been even louder had the president put his focus there!

Michelle Bachmann says that “the American people” are gravitating to the views of Hannity, Limbaugh, and people who, I suppose, think like Gingrich. Clearly, “the American people” of whom she speaks are white, privileged Americans who think the poor – primarily black and brown people – are not worthy of time or respect.

Gingrich was out of line. His arrogance is repugnant …and surely, “the American people” would not want such a divisive character to lead this country, the so-called, “land of the free and home of the brave,” poor people included.

A candid observation …

God and Government, Really

It occurred to me that we humans treat God and government in much the same way.

When times are good, we tend to marginalize God and we rail against “big government.”

But when the bottom falls from beneath us, we run to God or government or both, depending on the situation.

Nicholas Kristoff wrote an article in The New York Times about a former employee of Chase Bank whose job it was to award sub prime loans to people whom the bank knew were poor risks. If things fell apart, the bank reasoned, the government would bail the banks out …and no one would be the wiser.

Things did fall apart and the government (that would be big government) did in fact bail banks and corporations out, and the people who had been granted loans the banks knew they’d never be able to pay were left out in the cold – some of them literally.

Big government did what a government is supposed to do, right?

In times of economic prosperity, however, big government is spurned and scorned. It is pushed to the side; a government too involved in the life of the masses of people makes it too “socialist.” Whatever America is, it is not socialist. God forbid.

The same type of marginalization of God tends to be a reality. When times are good, for way too many people God is an afterthought, or if not an afterthought, an unwelcome reminder that there is a God who is the same whether times are good or not.

In Biblical literature, the Israelites, over and over, rejected God when times were good, when they were enjoying economic prosperity and benefited from all that money gives. They failed to understand that God doesn’t like to be marginalized and they failed to appreciate God’s anger against such insensitive treatment.

When times got bad, however, and they always got bad – these same people would fall before God and ask for forgiveness and mercy and relief from their dilemmas.

Government doesn’t much care, one would suppose, if it is marginalized. Government, though it is supposed to be “of the people, by the people and for the people,” doesn’t have a personality with which adherents have to deal. Government takes its knocks; some politicians do what they can for “the least of these” when the anti-big government cries are loud, and they see that those whose voices cannot be heard are those who are themselves marginalized, with seemingly no voice.

God, on the other hand, according to the Bible, doesn’t take very well to being marginalized. If we are to believe the Biblical texts, then God must be fuming because the recent spate of prosperity encouraged way too many people, some of them church-going believers – to push Him/Her to the side.

But that’s how we treat God and government. We consider them our tools, our property, really, to use when we need them, but to be pushed onto a nice shelf when we are doing all right.

A candid observation …

Would the World be Better Without Religion?

A report issued this week said that lobbying and advocacy by religious groups has increased by fivefold since 1970 and has become a $400 million industry.

The study, issued by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, said that religious groups are making their voices and opinions known as never before, addressing issues including abortion, marriage, the relationship between church and state, and bioethics and life issues, among others.

Religious groups include Roman Catholics, evangelical and mainline Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and other, smaller religions of this country, and all of them seek to influence both domestic and foreign policy.

But a question arises: Why? Why should religion get so heavily involved in politics and policy-making? Is there separation between church and state, or not? And, echoing a question argued this week on National Public Radio, “Would the world be better off without religion,” would it? Would there be less of a mess, less gridlock and less acrimony on Capitol Hill if religious people would simply “do God” and leave politics alone?

Some argue that there is a moral crisis in this country and in the world, and if that is the case, a co-mingling of religion and politics hardly seems the way to address and rectify the problem. Religion is supposed to be the vehicle in which rule of morality and “right behavior” are carried to people and taught. Politics, on the other hand, would scoff at such a vehicle because the aim of politics, or politicians, is to win, no matter what.

Forget the “golden rule” would seem to be the battle cry of those looking to win an election. Politicians, it would seem, push God to the periphery so that they can freely ignore all religious precepts as they go for the “big win.” The quest for salvation can come later, if at all.

There seems to be no concern for religious precepts or the will of God when it comes to politics and elections, so what are religions trying to do as they spend close to $400 million annually lobbying politicians?

In the NPR debate, which occurred on a program called “Intelligence Squared US,” a rabbi, a descendant of Charles Darwin, a philosopher and a scholar squared off over the value of religion in the world. Predictably, the rabbi and scholar argued for the good of religion in the world, and the descendant of Charles Darwin and the philosopher saw no real need for religion.

Matthew Chapman, the great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, and A.C. Grayling, argued against the value of religion for the world. On the cheer team for religion were Rabbi David Wolpe and Dinesh D’Souza.

Religion, the “keep-religion in the world” proponents said, organizes people “to do good things.” If that is the case, then we might assume that the lobbying going on by religious people are encouraging politicians to “do good things.” But, notes A.C. Graying, there is no one “great rule” or one model of what is good. So, what is “good” for an evangelical might not be seen as good by a Muslim, or what is lobbied as a good thing by a mainline Protestant might seem reprehensible by a Roman Catholic.

And, noted Chapman, “religion makes everyone an infidel to something.”

Those statements are baffling, seeing as how presumably there is one God who gave one blueprint of what “good things” are, but “we the people” seem to have participated in revisionist interpretation of the sacred texts, so that “we the people” decide what is “good,” according to our own values, culture and predicament, God notwithstanding.

So, what “good” are the religious groups lobbying for? What good are these religions, which have allowed so much pain, and in fact inflicted so much pain, based on their definition of “good?” While religions are lobbying, using these millions of dollars, I find myself wondering if that money might better be spent on doing “good” for those who really need it, who have nothing to pay except extreme gratitude for being looked upon as human and worthwhile by one who says he or she loves God.

That would be a candid observation.

A Death in the Family

My sister died yesterday.

Her death was not unexpected; she had battled cancer like a trooper, the first time, 20 years ago, and then again, last year this time, when it came back.

She was tired of fighting, tired of going back to the hospital, tired of getting blood and medicine and more blood. I think she just said, “OK, already. Enough.”

She is the first of our siblings to die. My parents both died years ago. We five children have always had each other. Now we are five, minus one. It feels strange.

I have learned not to despise death, or even fear it, but rather, consider death a part of our life cycle. I keep thinking of John Donne’s sonnet, “Death Be Not Proud:”

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so,

For, those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,

Die, not, poor, death, not yet canst thou kill mee.

I can rather hear my sister saying that to Death as it approached her. She defied death and the doctors, from the first time she was diagnosed with cancer until the end. Doctors said she would be gone much sooner than now; my sister told them both, “I think not.”

When I saw her in April, we were able to talk and laugh and share. What she wanted most was a cup of coffee from McDonald’s. I ran out to get her a cup and the last thing I did before I left that time was to bring her another cup of that coffee. It felt good to give her something she wanted. I took a picture of her, in her hospital bed, with her bald head and IV…and cup of coffee. That picture will forever make me smile.

I am, as a pastor, very familiar with losing people I love. I am even more familiar with the loss death deals as a member of a family. Death doesn’t affect the one who dies nearly as much as it wrangles those left behind.

This coming Monday would have been her birthday. Well, I guess it still is …it’s just that she’s celebrating it in a different space.

Is she gone? Well, physically, yes, but her spirit is all over the place. No life, once shared, is ever fully gone. I took a walk this morning and saw two amazingly beautiful Blue Jays. It was if she had sent them into my space to remind me that her spirit is forever.

There is a comfort I feel, remembering my tenacious sister and John Donne’s poem: death didn’t beat her. She took Death by the hand and led it to where she wanted it to wait until she was ready to go.

Death clearly, in this case, cannot be proud.

That would be a candid observation.

Do God and Business Mix?

I find myself wondering what happens to God if a businessman becomes president of the United States?

Herman Cain and Mitt Romney keep saying that a businessman needs to run the country. Romney, in his stint as governor of Massachusetts, has shown that even as a businessman, he has some compassion for “the least of these.” People seem to matter to him, not just profit, at least from a distance.

Mr. Cain has no such record, but what I keep thinking is that the purpose of business is to make a profit, to use the people for the sake of making the profit. Some people will rise, some will fall, but business people really work for the preservation of “the bottom line.”

We, the United States, are in a financial mess, and we do need to fix it, and soon. But do business people factor God, and the will of God, into their daily operations and daily plans? Somehow, I do not think so.

When the Civil War began, Mayor Fernando Wood of New York City suggested that New York should secede in solidarity with its southern brothers and sisters. South Carolina was talking secession, and Wood was ready to lead his northern city into the fray.

At the heart of Wood’s position was a concern not for the plight of the slaves of the South and their predicament, but, rather, the preservation of the financial and maritime industries of New York City. Northern cities were becoming wealthy on the backs of slave labor; as cotton was picked, Southern landowners benefitted as did the textile industry.

In the North, immigrants suffered horrible working conditions as they worked the docks and in the textile industry. Work was a precious commodity; immigrants resented free blacks as they competed for the same jobs, and when the Union issued a draft in 1863, these immigrants revolted. They were scrounging around, working in horrible conditions, and they were not about to support a war and fight in a war that was against slavery because they felt the slaves were not suffering any more than were they.

Meanwhile, the business people continued their concern with doing whatever they needed to do to bring in big dollars. The people who made it happen for them were not that big a concern. Business people also were able to keep their own children out of the army. “The least of these” were the sacrificial lambs.

Today, we have Romney saying that “corporations are people,” and Cain saying that a businessman needs to run the country. We have people saying that there are some businesses too big to fail, while “the least of these” are falling like flies all over the country. It’s not just the poor who are falling. It’s people who used to have good jobs, members of the quickly disappearing middle class, who are falling as well.

In many churches, the focus has shifted from prophecy to profit-making, from God to greed, with God being mentioned minimally at best, or in ways that support a gospel of prosperity. Where in the New Testament, or in the Hebrew scriptures, is such a disconnect with “the least of these” supported? Where does Yahweh, in the Hebrew scriptures, and Jesus in the New Testament show a Texas-sized concern for the proliferation of the rich at the expense of the poor and suffering?

Yes, it is true that the United States needs to get its deficit reduced, its spending redirected, its debt eliminated, but at what cost? Who is “allowed” to suffer? I am afraid that the basic businessman would find such a question absurd and maybe naïve.

A candid observation …