WWJD?
Facebook is interesting.  Each day before I read my daily news I check in and nearly every day a friend (sometimes a distant high school friend or cousin I have not actually seen in years) has posted something that sparks some thinking.  I like that a lot.  Today, there was a post about WWJD.

First, let me fully recognize that it is an ongoing struggle to learn to love our enemies, the call to engage with love is a high calling that most of us fall short of every day, and I certainly claim no moral high ground since I am sure I fall short more than most. 

 

 

 

At the same time, there is puzzling phenomena out there among Christians that seems to be more about removing the call itself, redefining it so it just so happens to turn out that by being affluent or middle class we are answering the call.  Conveniently, then, those who are unlike us are not.

 

It really baffles me that people care enough to call themselves Christians (since if you choose not to internalize the call and the engage in the struggle with the paradox that we matter and we don’t why not just call yourself something else?) and then see our collective efforts to feed the hungry as best accomplished through pledges about no new taxes, which everyone knows is a direct assault on our capacity to do anything for the least among us.

 

There is always room for disagreement, but I am honestly at a loss here.  And I am not really focused on those who are Christian in name only.  This is less about do we tithe or attend weekly services, and more about those who are the most vocal about self-identifying as Christians and similarly insistent that What Jesus Would Do is support, for instance, approaches to health care that we know will leave millions more without access to care and put millions more at risk of losing their homes if a health challenge hits a loved one.

 

The prosperity gospel and Christians for the smallest possible government portion of the Tea Party both seem like they are, as Gandhi put it, the least Christian among us.  Their approach to democracy is not to pull together as communities to help the least, but to decry the chief tool we use to that: government itself, claiming that tool is the problem. 

 

This strikes me as a self-centered rationalization for turning our backs on the poor, for choosing to live a life defined neither by loving our neighbors nor our enemies.  This seems to redefine Christianity to make us more comfortable, instead of challening us with a call to engage with love, to do for the least among us as if that so-called lazy, black welfare mom were Jesus herself.

 

Worse yet, these resentment driven approaches to politics turn around to hurt the elite and middle class as well. As income inequality grows to record levels, with higher poverty and crime and diseases unchecked in public spaces, with federal agencies unable to check meningitis or mortgage back derivatives, many spheres of our lives become less stable and less safe...for everyone.

 

For instance, we all know that a single-payer health insurance plan is the most cost effective way to provide everyone with decent coverage.  All those who claim to be only interested in the dispassionate issue of debt and deficit should be supporters, because this is the best way to reduce health care costs. 

 

It is also the approach that is most consistent with our democratic and Christian values.  This approach would remove the burden of health care costs from American businesses, providing an enormous boost to our global competitiveness…all achieved by loving our neighbors and enemies alike, by doing the right thing, by using the power of democratic government rather than rejecting it.