Companions of thieves

I started this post last week as I was reading the first chapters of Isaiah, a prophetic book with plenty to say about wealth, poverty, injustice and oppression. 

On Tuesday, I read Isaiah 1:23:

"Your rulers are rebels,
companions of thieves.
They all love bribes 
and chase after gifts. 
They do not defend the cause of the fatherless;
the widow's case does not come before them." 

Just a day later, the US Supreme Court confirmed the current relevance of that and other passages in Isaiah. By a 6-3 decision, the US high court concluded that an after-the-fact gift in exchange for favors, contracts or other benefits is totally legal. In effect, as a Guardian headline announced, "The US supreme court just basically legalized bribery."

Justice Clarence Thomas, who once attended the same church as our family, passing the peace with us on Sunday mornings, has captured international attention for the magnitude of gifts he's accepted from billionaire benefactors across the past three decades: vacations at luxury resorts, flights on personal jets and private helicopters, VIP passes to sporting events, tuition for his grandnephew, raised as his son, at expensive private boarding schools. 

Justice Thomas is not alone in accepting generous gifts or in failing to report those gifts. In May, ProPublica won a Pulitzer Prize for a series called Friends of the Court, detailed reports on gifts. Judiciary watchdog Fix the Court followed early this month with a detailed report, dating back decades, listing "freebies worth millions of dollars" including memberships to clubs, extravagant vacations, flights and balances on loans. 

While accepting gifts, the court has also been undermining anticorruption laws, with the decision this week just the latest in a series. Two lawyers with CREW: Citizens for Responsibilty and Ethics in Washington, wrote earlier this year:

In a series of cases decided over the past 37 years, the Supreme Court has systematically gutted the country’s public corruption laws.

The Court’s rulings have helped promote a radical vision of a government filled with powerful people, who are seemingly unaccountable despite taking unlimited gifts, loans, and other benefits from individuals who seek access and influence. It has helped foster a culture of corruption and impunity in the halls of power.

On Thursday I read Isaiah 3:

People will oppress each other—
    man against man, neighbor against neighbor.
The young will rise up against the old,
    the nobody against the honored. (v 5)

This verse really caught my attention: 

"What do you mean by crushing my people
    and grinding the faces of the poor?”
declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty. (v 15)

A Supreme Court decision announced the next day made that text literal. The case involved an ordinance passed in Grants Pass, a small Oregon city, prohibiting sleeping or camping in public areas: “any place where bedding, sleeping bag, or other material used for bedding purposes, or any stove or fire is placed, established, or maintained for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live, whether or not such place incorporates the use of any tent, lean-to, shack, or any other structure, or any vehicle or part thereof.” 

The high court decision in support of the Grants Pass ordinance reversed a 2018 case, Martin v. Boise, that found that involuntarily homeless people can't be punished for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go.

Homelessness is at a record high. So is income inequality. Causes of both are complicated, but just leadership, as defined throughout scripture, involves policies and practices that provide for the hungry, the homeless, those on the edge, no matter how they got there. 

I made it this far on Sunday morning, but could imagine voices of friends saying "Carol, why does this matter? We can't vote out Supreme Court justices. We can't change their opinions. There's nothing we can do to limit their cozy relationships with the rich and powerful. What in the world is your point here?"

Then yesterday, Monday, July 1, the court shared another decision that's echoing across the globe. 

Isaiah shares words from the Lord, prophetic pronouncements against the leaders of Judah: 

Woe to those who call evil good

    and good evil,

who put darkness for light

    and light for darkness,

who put bitter for sweet

    and sweet for bitter.

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes

    and clever in their own sight...

who acquit the guilty for a bribe,

    but deny justice to the innocent. (5:20-21)

There are times when it's okay to turn off the news, tune out politics, pretend it doesn't matter. 

There are times when it's fine to nod and go along with what others say without doing the work of weighing the costs and praying for insight and understanding. 

Isaiah was speaking to the people of Israel, not America, in the 8th century BC, not 2024. 

But it's interesting to note who he was speaking to. While some of his messages were directed to kings and rulers, more often he addressed "a sinful nation, a people whose guilt is great."

Israel was not a democracy. Its people didn't choose their rulers. 

We don't choose our Supreme Court justices. 

But we do choose who we listen to, who we honor, who we ignore.

When the wealthy and powerful demand access and influence, the poor suffer. That has been true since the days of Isaiah. The causes of widows and orphans (the most powerless and marginalized) have no chance to be heard when justice is sold to the highest bidder. 

And now, as then, there is grave danger when rulers are rebels, companions to wealthy thieves.

Now, as then, the proper response is lament, grief, prayer. And willingness to speak out on behalf of those in distress a corrupt culture leaves behind. 

We Don't Know What to Do

When I'm not sure what to do, I sometimes look back on one of my favorite Old Testament accounts, the story of King Jehosophat, in 2 Chronicles 20.

Warned of a vast army gathering on the other side of the sea, Jeshosophat gathered his people to join him in asking God what to do. He described the ways God had led in the past, described the current overwhelming need, then confessed his own inadequacy, and willingness to do what God instructed: 

“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” (2 Chronicles 20:12) 

In my years of full-time youth ministry, I led a mission trip every summer to an inner city neighborhood where our task was to share the hope of God’s love in a community with the lowest per capita income and highest density of children in the state of Pennsylvania. Early in our week together we would read King Jehosophat’s prayer and talk together about our own inadequacy in the face of poverty, addiction, racial unrest.

I’d point out the way the people of Judah “stood there before the Lord,” and read this: 

“Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Jahaziel son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, a Levite and descendant of Asaph, as he stood in the assembly.
 He said: “Listen, King Jehoshaphat and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem! This is what the Lord says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s.”  (2 Chronicle 20:14-15)

My goal was to have us look, not at what we were going to do, but at what God was going to do, while we were invited to watch. We were not bringing God to Kensington: he was there, already, inviting us to join him.

And we were not going to solve the problems we encountered: we were going to spread them out, together, in prayer, and watch for God to move.

And solutions, direction, answers, vision, were not my responsbilitiy alone, as the leader of our little group. Just as God spoke through Jahaziel, never mentioned before or after, he could, and did, speak through any member of our team.

Every evening, after our two hour program with the kids of the neighborhood, we’d gather to debrief. We’d write accomplishments and challenges on the big whiteboard in the room that served as meeting space, practice hall, women and girls’ sleep space, then we’d spend time in prayer, inviting God to show us his love for the kids who showed up at our gate: eager, disruptive, hostile, hungry.

The next morning, after the leaders had gathered again in prayer, after we’d read through a chapter of the gospels together, we’d listen for ideas for the day ahead.

 “Do the music and drama in the courtyard, with the building as a backdrop."

“Let’s go over early and worship and pray in every space.”
 “Let’s use tickets for face painting, so we know who’s next, and it feels like something special.”
 “Let’s move the big kids to the parish house, so they get used to coming inside here, and have somewhere comfortable to sit.” 

“Serve snacks right from the start, so hungry kids can eat before they play. And snacks again for the big kids during small group time, so they can eat and talk. They’ll talk more.” 

I loved seeing our time together take shape in a way that made clear that God’s vision was greater than ours, his love deeper and wider than ours. That vision and love spoke to all of us, in little details that made our time smoother, and in larger ways that brought lasting fruit.

I thought of that time, and that passage, as I read Bethany Hoang’s Deepening the Soul for Justice. She describes a similar passage, a similar threat.

Sennacherib, king of Assyria, attacked and captured the fortified cities of Judah, then marched toward Jerusalem, where he hurled threats at King Hezekiah, and laughed at the idea that God would intervene: 

Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be delivered? Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed by my predecessors deliver them—the gods of Gozan, Harran, Rezeph and the people of Eden who were in Tel Assar? Where is the king of Hamath or the king of Arpad? Where are the kings of Lair, Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah? (Isaiah 37:11-13)

Hoang, as member of the staff of International JusticeMission, describes her own experience of the taunting threats that oppose the vision of justice and peace: 

When I hear the king of Assyria threaten violence with laughing hubris, I can’t help but see the face of a rice mill owner in south Asia, throwing his head back and smiling as he bragged in sinister delight about how he violently prevents his slaves from leaving the compound.

I see the faces of government officials who coldly considered a mother’s testimony, who unflinchingly skimmed over the crime scene photographs of her little daughter’s rape and murder. I can eel their limp hands, hands which had accepted bribes from the defendant, shaking my and my colleagues hands and glibly insisting that justice was likely impossible in this case.

I hear the words of officials throughout the world telling my colleagues that justice for the poor is not possible, trying to convince our tireless staff to go home rater than stay through the watches of the night waiting for these officials to make good on their own laws.

 Just as Jehosphat described the ways God had led in the past, described the current overwhelming need, then confessed his own inadequacy, and willingness to do what God instructed, Hezekiah took the letter from Sennacherib and spread it out before the Lord in prayer. 

“Every day, each one of us receives ‘letters,’ not unlike Hezekiah. Though perhaps not in written form, we encounter great discouragement in our lives that, in as little as one word or one image, threaten to lock down our hearts in deep burden. And as we pursue justice as integral to our daily lives, there will be times when we will be tempted to believe that our God does not hear, that our God does not see, that our God is not able to intervene. 

But as these ‘letters’ come our way, these discouragements that threaten our commitment to seeking justice, even our own disbelief in God’s power or willingness to act, we are invited like Hezekiah to spread all of this out before the Lord. 

When we spread out our discouragements before the Lord – the lies waged against the reality of God’s reign, the taunts hurled against our belief in God’s power to intervene and to heal and to redeem – this simple act of choosing to come before the Lord and seek his face is an act of proclaiming the truth that God is the good, the just, the sovereign Ruler of the ages over and against the brutality of the moment.” (33) 

Hoang describes the way the staff of IJM starts each day in stillness: setting the schedule, the challenges, the perplexities of the day before God and waiting for direction. Later in the day, together, the staff meets to pray, and in gatherings around the globe, staff, volunteers, whole churches wait on God together.

She insists that the global reach of IJM, “the tangible relief for those who suffer from violent injustices such as slavery, forced prostitutuion and illegal detention,” the accomplishments in transforming broken justice systems, holding perpetrators accountable, providing aftercare and support for survivors, are all made possible by the consistent discipline of spending time in prayer, listening in stillness, acknowledging our inadequacy and waiting for vision from the God whose desire for justice and love for the weak are greater than our own.

I wrote last week about the lure of disengagement, the struggle to connect what we know with what we do, what we believe with how we structure our days.

For me, this discipline of listening in prayer is the heart of any engagement.

With limited time, energy, resources, I struggle to know where to invest, when to draw back, how to make a difference. The needs of family, friends, community near and far are too many, too complex, too demanding. I am not wise enough to meet even the simplest.  

Yet, as I spread them out before God, like Hezekiah, or share them in prayer with others, like Jehosophat, as I confess, yet again, "I (we!) don't know what to do," opportunities become visible, next steps become clear, and I’m reminded: it’s not my plan I’m pursuing, but a greater plan I’m privileged to be part of.

Some next step applications:

Spend time in prayer about areas of need, asking God for insight and instruction.

Consider exploring The Essential Question: How You Can Make a Difference for God (a book by my husband, Whitney Kuniholm, just released by InterVarsity Press).

Read and reflect on Hoang’s Deepening the Soul for Justice, and think about ways to grow in spiritual disciplines that make engagement sustainable.

Gather to pray and share vision with others who would like to learn more about showing compassion and seeking justice.

Watch for unexpected opportunities to learn, grow, and serve. ( Here’s one opportunity I’ll be exploring: Bridges Out of Poverty Workshop, on October 18, at Church of the Good Samaritan, Paoli, PA.)

  

This is also the last in a series exploring words and practices that help or hinder our ability to serve our communities in love while renewing a web of compassionate engagement. 

Next week I'll begin looking at specific issues and arenas for engagement, in preparation for the November elections, as an extension of last year's "What's Your Platform?"

Earlier posts:  

Wisdom, July 6, 2014

Liberty and Constraint, July 13, 2014

Justice for All, July 20, 2014  

Appalling Silence, August 3, 2014 

The Role of Rules, August 10, 2014 

Disengagement and Connection, August 17

 As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Just click on   __comments below to see the comment option.   

Lenten Song: Remembering Ranan

Dancing Clapping Trees, Gwen Meharg, 1990s, US

  You will go out in joy 
   and be led forth in peace; 
the mountains and hills 
   will burst into song
   before you, 
and all the trees of the field 
   will clap their hands.
         (Isaiah 55)

My yard is full of birdsong: song sparrows, tufted titmice, wrens setting aside their normal complaints to celebrate spring from a perch along the picket fence. Even the blue jays’ metallic squawks sound more melodic than usual. Spring is here, the daffodils are blooming, and the tree tops are exploding with exuberant calls.

At this point in Lent, I often feel an inner disconnect. The world is brightening, days are lengthening, yet I’m still in a place of prayerful grief.  My experiments with fasting remind me of how many hungry children hold life by a thread. My next meal is just steps away, while millions of mothers have no next meal to offer their starving children.

This world is a broken place, and feels more broken by the day. Our food supply is held captive by a narrowing handful of global agri-monopolies. Our water supply is threatened by ever-more-reckless strategies for maintaining dependence on fossil fuel. Our health is jeopardized by genetic modification in everything from popcorn to sugar to canola oil. Our fragmented society hides its wounds behind closed doors, but the pain spills out in addictions, homelessness, spiraling anger, epidemic depression. Think and pray too long in any one direction and I find myself deep in lingering lament.

One of our Lenten readings this past week was the servant song of Isaiah 52:13 through 53, a Messianic prophecy written seven hundred years before Christ's birth and painful death:

Christ is Nailed to the Cross, Anna Kocher,
 2006,  US

Surely he took up our pain 
   and bore our suffering, 
yet we considered him 
   punished by God, 
   stricken by him, and afflicted. 
But he was pierced 
    for our transgressions, 
   he was crushed for our iniquities; 
the punishment that brought us peace 
   was on him, 
   and by his wounds we are healed. 
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, 
   each of us has turned to our own way; 
and the Lord has laid on him 
   the iniquity of us all.

Reading a few verses before, to catch the context, I was struck at this command:

Listen! 
Your watchmen lift up their voices; 
   together they shout for joy. 
When the Lord returns to Zion, 
   they will see it with their own eyes. 
Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, 
for the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.

It would make sense to burst into songs of joy when the restoration is accomplished, when the promised redemption is accomplished. But this instruction is given to “you ruins of Jerusalem.” The restoration promised is nowhere in sight. The book of Isaiah was written during a time of deepening disobedience, on the unavoidable eve of invasion, captivity, destruction. Burst into songs of joy in the middle of that? How?

Digging back through the early Hebrew words, I find eight words for “singing,” thirteen more for “sing.” Some of the words have interesting double meanings: one, “massa'”, can mean singing, lifting a load, carrying a burden. Another, “`anah,” can mean affliction, humility, songs of lament.

The word used in Isaiah is anr, transliterated “ranah”, which can mean to overcome, to cry out, shout for joy, give a ringing cry, rejoice.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite Old Testament stories, from 2 Chronicles 20. The people of Judah were confronted with a “vast army” and came to King Jehoshaphat in fear. Jehoshaphat, in front of his people, cried out to God: “Are you not the God who is heaven?” He recounted the times God intervened for his people, described the danger confronting them, and confessed: “We have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.”

from Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, Frans Boels,
16th century, Flanders

God spoke through a man in the crowd, Jehaziel, an apparent nobody, who promised that if they went out to a nearby pass to watch, God would defeat their enemy for them.

“After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.’”

As thy began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes agains the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”

The story ends:

“The fear of God came upon all the kingdoms of the countries when they heard how the Lord had fought against the enemies of Israel. And the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was in peace, for his God had given him rest on every side.”

There’s much in that story that captures my interest, but the idea of singing in the face of fear and danger has always challenged me. How do we sing, or shout for joy, when the evidence around us points to disaster?

Back to Isaiah:

 Burst into songs of joy together, 
   you ruins of Jerusalem, 
for the Lord has comforted his people, 
   he has redeemed Jerusalem.

I don’t know much about Hebrew tenses, but there’s something odd happening here: right now, in ruins, burst into song. Because you’ve been comforted. Because you’ve been redeemed.

Really? What if I don’t see it?

Reading on through the servant song, I come out the other side to a similar instruction:

“Sing, barren woman, 
   you who never bore a child; 
burst into song, shout for joy, 
   you who were never in labor; 
because more are the children of the desolate woman 
   than of her who has a husband,” 
            says the Lord.

In a patriarchal culture where status depended on producing sons, where the future was guaranteed by multiple descendents, the barren woman was an object of scorn or pity, marginalized, deprived of future joy.

Yet she’s instructed to shout for joy anyway, to burst into song. Because she has more children (already?) than those less desolate. It doesn't seem to make sense.

Yet Isaiah insists that we live in the knowledge of God’s faithfulness in the past, and in celebration of his goodness in the future. Even in the pain of the present.

Rejoice, Monica Stewart, ca 2005, US

I find that hard. Praying this past week with a friend whose present is painful in the extreme, we wondered together: How do we live joyfully, right now, when every day hurts? How do we stay completely present to those around us, to the needs of the day, not shut it out, not medicate it away, not close ourselves off while we wait for that far-ff “someday” when things will be better?

Isaiah’s answer is strange, yet powerful. Ranan. Sing for joy. Sing in the promise of redemption, in the brokenness of today.

If you need logic, don’t even bother. It defies logic. Yet, the reality holds true. As Jehoshaphat and his people learned, as David and the other psalmists demonstrated, as Paul and Silas found, singing in prison while an earthquake opened the doors, joyful praise leads to freedom, sometimes opening doors in the physical world around us, more often allowing us to stand in a reality invisible to others, but no less real: the kingdom of God unfolding, here yet not here, now, not yet.

This joyful song is personal, but also political, as the stories in New and Old Testament suggest, as Freedom Riders of the sixties found, as the Singing Revolutions of 1987 to 1991 made clear: the internal freedom that comes with joyful song can bring the courage to trust God’s work in the broken halls of power, the disrupted dialogue of politics. Germans in Liepzig, fueled by the words of the Sermon on the Mount, filled the streets with singing in defiance of the Soviet police.  Lithuanians in Vilnius sang hymns and folk songs in public squares, then joined with Estonians and Latvians in a human chain of more than a million people stretching four hundred miles, a chain of freedom that helped lead to the dissolution of the USSR.

Where does that courage come from? It starts in honest lament, grows in times of prayer and study, finds power in the knowledge that God has been faithful to his people, across time, across all human borders. Alive in the present, we stand in the knowledge of the past, and celebrate the invisible, promised future. Waiting for Easter, for change, for healing, we sing. Awake, my heart. Burst into song. Rejoice. Ranan, ruined cities, for you have been redeemed.

Mu süda, ärka üles
Ja kiida Loojat lauldes,
Kes kõik head meile annab
Ja muret ikka kannab.  


Awake, my heart
And praise the Creator in song
Who provides us with all that is good
And bears our burdens too. 
  (Estonian folk song 
  sung during the singing revolution)


This is the sixth in a Lenten series:
     Looking toward Lent
     Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham
     Lenten Silence: Charash, Be Still
     Lenten Sweetness: Tasting Towb    
     Lenten Submission: Rethinking Hupotassō

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Click on the  _comments link below to open the comment box.

Wondering about Wealth

The Synchroblog topic this month is “extreme economic inequality”. Since I’m not an economist, don’t really like numbers, have other things I’d much rather write about, I was tempted to let this topic pass.

But I’m afraid, as I think and pray about it, that this may be one of the most important topics of this election cycle, this decade, maybe of my remaining lifetime.

Economic inequality isn’t a new thing. There have always been rich and poor.

But we seem to be in a new place. The income gap between rich and poor is the greatest it’s been in decades. There are plenty of statistics on this –Forbes, Reuters, the Economist. Choose your favorite financial source and take a look at the troubling graphs.

But the real issue, from what I can see, isn’t income, but wealth. Wealth - net worth - can be defined as financial assets (stocks, bonds, savings) plus real assets (primarily housing) minus debt. Credit Suisse, a multinational finance group, provides some interesting data in their 2011 Global Wealth Report: 

• The average net worth, globally, in 2011 was $51,000 USD (that’s US dollars).
• But the median net worth, globally, was $4,200. In other words, half of the world’s population has a net worth of $4,200 or less.
• The top 10%, globally, has net worth of $82,000 or more.
• The top 1% has net worth of  $712,000 or more.
• The richest 10% owns 84% of the world’s assets.
• The top 1% owns 44% of the world’s assets.
• The bottom half owns just 1% of the world’s assets. 

The report discusses “Ultra High Net Worth individuals”  (UHNW), noting, without explanation, that “to assemble details of the pattern of wealth holdings above USD 1 million requires a high degree of ingenuity. The usual sources of wealth data – official statistics and sample surveys – become increasingly incomplete and unreliable at high wealth levels.”  Is this because the very wealthy hide their assets and their earnings? Is it because their wealth is in off-shore tax havens, invisible to all eyes but their own?

For those with net worth from 50 million and upward, “very little is known about the global pattern of asset holdings.” What is known is that “the United States has by far the  greatest number of members of the top 1%  global wealth group, accounting for 41% of those with wealth exceeding USD 10 million and 32% of the world’s billionaires. The number of UHNW individuals with wealth above USD 50 million is six times that of the next country . . .Although comparable data on the past are sparse, it is almost certain that the number of UHNW individuals is considerably greater than a decade ago. . . [N]otwithstanding the credit crisis, the past decade has been especially conducive to the establishment of large fortunes.”

I’m not an accountant, economist, or historian. But what seems clear, in these terse financial statistics, is that a small handful of very wealthy Americans have been busily consolidating their wealth at the expense not only of their fellow Americans, but at the expense of the poor and struggling in nations around the globe.

In trying to understand this, I came across a Bill Moyer interview with Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner Take All Politics, a recent book investigating this consolidation of wealth. Here’s just a hint of what the authors, and book, have to say:

JACOB HACHER: these large shifts in our economy had been propelled in part by what government has done, say deregulating the market, the financial markets, to allow wealthy people to gamble with their own and other peoples' money, and ways to put all of us at risk, but allow them to make huge fortunes.

And at the same time, when those risks have become apparent, there has been a studious effort on the part of political leaders to try to protect against government stepping in and regulating or changing the rules.

BILL MOYERS: You write, we have a government that's been promoting inequality, and at the same time, as you just said, failing to counteract it. This has been going on, you write, 30 years or more. And here's the key sentence: Step by step, and debate by debate, our public officials have rewritten the rules of the economy in ways that favor the few at the expense of the many.

The Price of Big Oil

As Hacker and Pierson make clear, as has been made clear by others before them, money equals influence equals power equals money, and as money, influence and power become more and more concentrated in the hands of the few, real democracy, real justice, real opportunity disappear.              

Picture a Monopoly game. Your opponent owns the utilities, the railroads, all the properties, and has two hotels on each property. He’s rewritten the rules so every time he passes GO he collects $20,000, while every time you pass GO you collect $20.  There’s no money left in the bank, so he’s written elaborate IOUs from the bank to himelf. Each time around the board he writes another IOU.

Are you having fun? Do you have a come-back plan? Are you ready to quit?

Profit comes from somewhere. Assets have some connection back to the material world.  What happens when foreign investors own the best farm land in Africa? What happens when foreign corporations determine what happens to mountains, forests, oil fields in small hungry nations?

Bolivia v. Bechtel

What happens when international financiers pressure desperate countries to open their markets to companies like Monsanto, or to sell their water supply to private corporations? What happens when debt-ridden communities sell their hospitals, airports, bridges, schools, prisons?

Are we really hoping the new owners and investors will, from the goodness of their hearts, subsidize these efforts to serve the common good? A short reading of the water wars of Bolivia might be instructive, and a growing body of research makes clear what should be obvious to all but the most determined libertarian: privatization of public resource yields unchecked profit for the investor, higher cost for the public, greater suffering for those already struggling to survive.

I don’t hear our Christian leaders speaking out on this, but the Old Testament prophets had plenty to say about justice and injustice, and about those who become wealthy at the expense of the poor:

“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people.”

“The plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?” 

“You do as you please, and exploit all your workers.”

 “The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice."

“They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. “

“You take interest and make a profit from the poor. You extort unjust gain from your neighbors.”

“The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice.”

Is this something we should be talking about, praying about?

WaterJustice.org

Should we be asking our representatives to explain their preferential treatment of the rich?

Should we be organizing as citizens to demand justice – not for ourselves – but for those being forced out of their homes, bankrupted by their hospital bills?

Should we be paying attention to the ultra high net worth individuals whose profits are maximized at the expense of child slavery, sweat shops, misuse of resources stolen from indigenous people who lack the power to stop them?

Should we be wondering where those graphs will end? Where the consolidation of income and power will lead? What happens when not just 44%, but 100%, of the assets are held in the hands of the wealthiest one percent?

In Isaiah 1 the prophet, himself a grandson, nephew, cousin of kings, one of Judah’s wealthy one percent, explains to his people that God is not convinced by their offerings, their spiritual words, their observance of feasts, their religious gatherings. According to Isaiah, here’s what God has to say. The words echo across thousands of years, timeless, clear, convicting:

Stop doing wrong: Learn to do right; seek justice.
   Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless;
   plead the case of the widow.

I’m not sure yet how to do that, but, as Isaiah says, maybe it’s time to learn.

As always, your comments are welcome. Click on the ___comments link for the comment box to appear.

This post is part of Synchroblog, a group of Christian bloggers posting on a common topic. Other posts about extreme income inequality are listed below:

Marta Layton - Fear Leads to Anger. Anger Leads to hate …

Kathy Escobar - Pawn Shops, Empty Refrigerators, The Long Hill Up

Glenn Hager - Shrinking The Gap

Jeremy Myers - Wealth Distribution

Liz Dyer - The First Step Is Admitting There Is A Problem

Ellen Haroutunian -Economic Inequality: Coming Back To Our Senses 

K. W. Leslie -  Wealth, Christians, and Justice. 
Abbie Watters – My Confession

Steve Hayes - Notes from underground: Obscenity