The Nightmare of Empire

Our church has been studying the last half of Genesis. My morning reading with Encounter with God this week landed in the same chapters. The title for yesterday morning's notes was ominously titled The Temptations of Empire:

As the famine continues and extends its reach across the whole region, Joseph achieves the pinnacle of his power in Egypt. He devised a system which kept mass starvation at bay, and the writer records that “he brought them through that year with food”. However, this success came at the price of the liberty of the people who were “reduced… to servitude”. The devising of an economic system which kept the population alive was a great achievement, but it resulted in a dangerous centralizing of power which, as the story of Exodus will reveal, led to oppression and slavery. 

Walter Brueggamann makes this point in a sermon called "The Fourth-Generation Sell-out." He asks why, given four sets of ancestral stories in Genesis (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph), God is spoken of repeatedly in reference to only three: “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." 

Why wouldn't Joseph, most powerful of the four, be included?

According to Brueggemann, Joseph’s name was dropped because he conducted the imperial work of Pharaoh. Given opportunity to be a blessing to the nations he became instead an agent of empire:  

Joseph proceeds to do more than interpret. He advises. He is a "consultant." . . . Joseph achieves for Pharaoh, by his rapacious, ruthless wisdom, a monopoly of food that becomes for Pharaoh an economic tool and a political weapon." Joseph victimized the Egyptians and eventually his own people as well.

 According to Brueggemann, "he becomes the manager and chaplain of the nightmare of empire." 

We are in a nightmare of empire of our own.

Our democracy, our country, our state, our political parties are all in upheaval: all held captive by powerful men who have compromised with evil and used privilege to harm those they promised to protect.

I believe many of our leaders start out, like Joseph, determined to serve well, then fall prey to temptation.

Surrounded by privilege and power, it's so tragically easy for them to lose their way.

I met one state representative who never stays in Harrisburg because, he says, "It's too easy to be sucked in. To think it's normal to be wined and dined by lobbyists. To think it's okay to use power to maintain my own position."

I've spoken with legislators who were genuinely thankful when they lost a race for re-election: "I'm not sure I realized how dysfunctional it was until I was forced to step away."

The people of Joseph's day had no choice about who ruled them. 

They had no say in the way the drama played out. 

Struggling to survive, they acquiesced to Pharaoh’s power and Joseph's ruthless greed.

We do have a choice.

And the moral responsibility to watch, pray, learn, speak, vote.

Our choices impact not just us but those who have far less choice: children in impoverished communities, men and women incarcerated without fair trial or reasonable bail, refugees fleeing oppressive regimes, people in nations across the globe who watch with alarm as our country careens toward war with Korea or capriciously withdraws from carefully drafted attempts to manage pressing concerns.

On a global scale, our voices are loud.

Our choices matter.

Even off-year elections matter. 

They determine what kinds of policies will move forward, what tone will govern party platforms, what kinds of leaders will be encouraged on their way.

And conversations matter.

What we repeat. Who we applaud. What we hope for. How we pray.

I pray for leaders who demonstrate humility, wisdom, courage.

I pray for Christians able to hear, discern and speak the truth.

I pray we remember the command to love our neighbor and the promise that perfect love casts out fear. 

I pray for a platform of justice and mercy, a church that remembers God's heart for the poor, the defenseless, the stranger, the worker. 

We bid you, stir up those who can change things;
do your stirring in the jaded halls of government;
do your stirring in the cynical offices of the corporations;
do your stirring amid the voting public too anxious to care;
do your stirring in the church that thinks too much about purity and not enough about wages.

Move, as you moved in ancient Egyptian days.
Move the waters and the flocks and the herds
toward new statutes and regulations,
new equity and good health care,
new dignity that cannot be given on the cheap.

  (From Walter Brueggemann: A Prayer of Protest, 2010)  

Some earlier posts about political issues can be found here: What's Your Platform

Several that consider Walter Brueggemann's discussion of scripture and kingdom:

Anxious in America, February 19, 2011

An Alternative Narrative, February 10, 2013 

And one on voting: 

Who Is Allowed to Vote? September 21, 2014

Lent Two: Eluding Privilege

When we’re considering what to give up for Lent, privilege is rarely on the list of options.

William Brassey Hole, Forty Days in the Wilderness,
England, 1906

Yet Jesus’ second temptation shows him sidestepping an invitation to demonstrate his privilege as the Son of God: 

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:“‘He will command his angels concerning you,    and they will lift you up in their hands,    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”Matthew 4:5-7 

There are moments in the gospel narratives when it seems the Pharisees would happily have welcomed Jesus into their leadership club if he’d only agreed to share their privilege, endorsing theirs with his own. But he insisted on eating with sinners, talking to women, honoring Samaritans, touching unclean lepers. From his days in the desert to his death on the cross, he deftly eluded any privilege thrust his way, weaving his way toward the margins until he finally hung outside the city, taunted and reviled by those who passed by.

This eluding of privilege was no accident. Paul tells us in Philippians:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

A few sentences later, Paul describes his own task of eluding privilege in his quest to know and be like Christ:

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law,a Pharisee; as to zeal,a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under th law,blameless;But whatever gain I had,;I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

Part of the goal of Lent is repentance and sacrifice, but part is the pursuit of deeper knowledge and joy. Paul understood that it was impossible to fully know Christ while holding on to privilege, and he was articulate and self-aware about the forms of privilege he could claim: religious birthright, exceptional ducation, endorsed experience, sanctioned racial identity.

He chose to count it all as loss.  “worthless,” in some translations. “Liabilities,” in another.

The Academy Awards last week stirred ongoing conversations about white and male privilege: all of the actors nominated were white; all the directors and screenwriters were male. In the fallout, the International Business Times reported that “the Oscar winners are voted on by members of the academy, and there are 6,028 voting members; 94 percent of them are white, 77 percent are men and 86 percent are over the age of 50.”

I’m not that interested in the Oscars, and no, I didn't watch them.

But I am interested in whose voices are heard, whose stories are told, and whose voices are excluded.

I’m also interested in the way privilege -acknowledged or not - becomes a liability and snare.

For years I attended the National Youth Worker Convention and grieved at how rarely there was an opportunity to hear from women, or non-white males. I watched with dismay as male youth leaders left the room at the start of the one set by a female band, and I listened to the disrespectful side conversations during the one female plenary speaker of an entire weekend. Apparently, I’m not the only one to feel concern: an online exchange about lack of diversity at one Christian convention prompted religion correspondent Jonathan Merritt to do a simple count: he found 19% female representation (20% at the National Youth Workers Convention, that’s an improvement, but not an impressive one), and 13% minority speaker representation. Minority female? Not sure – but from what I’ve seen, 1% might be overly optimistic.

This is not so much a political issue to me as a spiritual issue.

Read scripture, or church history, and the evidence is clear: it’s hard to hear God, or to represent him well, from a position of privilege and advantage.

Prophets, reformers, monks, desert fathers and mothers: their lives all suggest that the first step to listening well is breaking free from the voices of flattery, status quo, self-promotion, rationalization.

I started this week praying to see my own privilege more clearly, and looking for ways to set that privilege aside.

I’m not sure it can be done without completely breaking free from the systems and structures that hold privilege in place.

But I have some ideas about where to start.

Back in Philippians 2, Paul says 

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion,  then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

We can't look to the interests of others when we've never taken time to learn what those interests are.

We show our value of others first by learning to hear what they have to say.

But look more closely at the example of Jesus in his encounter with the Samaritan woman by the well:

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman, 12th Century
 Tbilisi, Georgia

We all know how low this woman was in the social and religious hierarchy. She's a woman. That's low.

She's a Samaritan. That's lower still.

She's been married five times. Still lower.

She is currently living, in an unmarried state, with another man. Lower.

If the Samaritan woman isn't at the absolute bottom, she's got it pretty well in sight.

But here's the amazing thing. Jesus finds a way to place himself lower, to lift her up to the superior position.

"Will you give me a drink?"

Jesus doesn't come to her with answers or gifts or power or miracles or a sermon or a program or an invitation to come to church.

Jesus approaches this woman and simply asks for help.

He asks her for help. And it blows her heart wide open. 

When we start from a place of privilege, we assume we have the answers.

But we've never even taken time to understand the questions.

Our wisdom is one-sided, and our good news one-dimensional, until we find a way to elude the privilege that blinds and binds us.

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

 This is the third in a Lenten series.

Other Lenten posts:

2015:
    Ash Wednesday: Confession Booth, February 15

    Lent One: Embracing Hunger: February 24

From 2013:

    An  Alternative Narrative: February 10

    Seeking Blessing in a Fracture Land: February 17

    The Poor in Spirit and Those Who Mourn: February 24

    Hungering Far Past "Rightness": March 3

    Guns, God, Mercy: March 10

    Making Peace: What God's Children Do:  March 24

    Where is Newness Needed? March 31

From 2012:
     Looking toward Lent
     Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham
     Lenten Silence: Charash, Be Still
     Lenten Sweetness: Tasting Towb
     Lenten Submission: Rethinking Hupotassō     

     Lenten Song: Remembering Ranan   

What Do You Have that You Didn't Receive?

The Synchroblog topic this week is "What’s In Your Invisible Backpack?" a reference to Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 essay, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." McIntosh suggests ways that privilege shapes our daily lives, and gives examples of the  “unearned advantage and conferred dominance” enjoyed by white Americans.  She states:

“It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power, and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.”

The issue of meritocracy seems even more relevant today than it was in 1988. This question of privilege, and of meritocracy vs. plutocracy, is at the heart of the Occupy movement, and dominated the 2012 World Economic Forum summit in Davos in January.

How possible is it, in our current economy, for those without the privilege of family wealth to work their way from poverty to success?

According to a growing number of economists, it’s increasingly impossible. We’re warned that unless we’re in the top 1%, our children should expect less in the future than their parents. We already see this taking place, as so many recent college graduates look in vain for jobs that match their education or ability.

If middle class kids are struggling, what happens to the poor?

Last fall Forbes magazine published an article by Gene Marks, If I Were a Poor Black Kid.  Marks, a middle-class white man, offered ideas about opportunities available to poor, black, urban teens, with an airy sense of “success is always possible, you just need to work smart. Here’s how.”

The Marks article documents, with amusing, tragic clarity, the utter cluelessness of so many born to privilege. It misses the complex burdens of poverty and the amazing array of benefits lived, without awareness, by those given more than they choose to admit.

A quick sampling: “If I was a poor black kid I would first and most importantly work to make sure I got the best grades possible. I would make it my #1 priority to be able to read sufficiently.”

Starting when? Knowing how to read anything, at all, is a privilege easily missed by children who grow up in households without books, in homes with parents who can barely read. A friend of mine never made it to ninth grade: her mother was an addict, and her father died the summer she was thirteen. She now has two small children, already far behind. The kindergarten class her daughter attended this year had thirty children. All behind when they started. All behind as they finish.

Yes, reading is important. As are good grades. But knowing that is a gift, having the help, tools, exposure, ability to learn is a gift.

Here’s another of Mr. Mark’s points: “If I was a poor black kid I’d be using technology to research [private schools with scholarships] on the internet . . .  and making them know that I exist and that I get good grades and want to go to their school.”

That’s the voice of privilege speaking. Ignore the questionable grammar, and the obvious questions about assumed computer access and coaching on Internet research skills. Just focus on this embedded idea: “Let people know what you need, and no worries, it will happen.”

By the time a poor kid is four or five, she’s already learned a sad lesson of poverty: it doesn’t matter what she wants, it’s not happening, so why keep asking? For children in unstable households, unsafe neighborhoods, surrounded by unpredictable people, invisibility is an essential line of defense. The smarter the kid, the more likely the habit of disappearing into silence. And once a child has practiced invisibility long enough, the assured “make them know I exist” is beyond imagining.

Yes, there are some amazingly resilient kids, with high IQs and resourceful dedicated parents, who manage to climb out of poverty and find a way to move toward privilege. There are highly gifted people of color who learn to navigate the structures of power and attain the success their parents only dreamed of. There are strong, smart, determined women who get up every time they’re knocked over, start again every time they’re interrupted, and with steely resolve assert their right to speak.

But those brave, successful few are a small, shrinking percent. Statistically, the privilege gap is growing. As of 2009, the median wealth of white households was 20 times that of black households, 18 times that of Hispanic households, the largest gap in at least twenty five years. While more women than men are now finishing college and graduate programs, women working full time still earn only 77 percent of what men earn. While some of that wage gap can be attributed to choice of occupation, work experience, race, or union membership, fully forty percent is “unexplained” by any cause other than  unacknowledged male privilege.

Forbes posted links to some responses to the Marks article; I was struck by this thought, from Kelly Virelli’s “If I Were the Middle Class White Guy Gene Marks” (my own emphasis added):

“Now, it’s obvious that hard work, intelligence, and assistance from others are necessary to succeed. I grew up in a trailer in rural Alabama and I graduated from Stanford University. I am publishing this blog post at a start-up magazine that I founded with capital that I — along with my African-American husband, a Brown University graduate — saved from our wage earnings. We work hard and our families have always worked hard too (See slavery). The problem is that Marks seems to think it’s okay to require black kids to be “special” to “succeed.” I don’t.”

I've been spending the weekend at the National League of Women Voters Convention in Washington, DC, surrounded by very intelligent, impressively accomplished women. But the question echoes inside me: why did it take so long for women to get the vote? (1n the US, 1920.) Why are there still so few women in politics, or in CEO offices? (A record 3.4% in Fortune 500 companies.)

The voice of privilege controls the conversation about taxes, budgets, priorities, policy. Those struggling to survive rarely have the opportunity to speak out in their own defense, to question systems so complex even the experts lose track of the details, to ask why only "special" poor kids, children of color, middle-class girls, succeed to their full potential.

I wouldn’t wish poverty on anyone. Yet I’d challenge those like Gene Marks who offer simple solutions to complex problems to set aside assumptions and look for ways to see beyond the blinders imposed by privilege.

Live, shop, or work, if only for a short season, in a neighborhood where your color sets you outside the norm. Or join an organization run by a group other than your own (like those few brave men in the League of Women Voters) and see how it feels to be the odd man out. Befriend an unemployed single mom and learn to navigate the confusing web of inadequate assistance. Volunteer in an urban school and rethink what you know of opportunity. Offer long-term friendship to someone with less privilege and learn to listen carefully.

Those of us with education, access to technology, adequate income, “freedom of confident action,” can use that privilege to endorse the even greater privilege of the wealthy few, we can speak out for ourselves and our children, or we can insist on genuine equal opportunity for all, and a place at the table for those whose voices are least likely to be heard.

Shouldn’t nutrition assistance policy be shaped by those who know first hand the challenge of feeding a family in an urban environment with no car and no good store nearby?

Shouldn't discussion of policies regarding women’s health be led by women who have struggled with teen pregnancies, inadequate health care, medical conditions unique to women’s bodies?

What would happen if drug sentencing proposals were debated by those who have overcome addiction, watched drug sales on their own street corners, lived the day-to-day reality of drug-afflicted neighborhoods?

What we need most, in churches, schools, assembly halls, all the places where policies are formed, are leaders who understand the answer to that question the Apostle Paul asked a group of boastful men, blindly secure in their own privileged opinions: “What do you have that you did not receive?” (I Corinthians 4:7).

The answer?

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

Here is the list of links for the June Synchroblog, "What's In Your Invisible  Backpack?"

• Rebecca Trotter at The Upside Down World – The Real Reason the Term “White Privilege” Needs to Die
• Glenn Hager at Glenn Hager – Unjust Justice
• K.W. Leslie at More Christ – Sharing From The Invisible Knapsack
• Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes – My Black Privilege
• Alan Knox at The Assembling Of the Church – Knowing Who You Are and How Others Identify You
• Leah Sophia at desert spirit’s fire – backpack cargo
• Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – Christian Privilege
• Kathy Escobar at Kathy Escobar – privilege.