I read this somewheres and it resonates with my limited personal experience.
When we tell stories, we start at the chronological beginning and move to the chronological end. The most important part is the *plot*.
When the poor tell stories, they start at the chronological *end* or the part with the greatest emotional intensity. They tell the story in vignettes with audience interaction in between. It ends with a comment about the character’s values. The most important part is the *characterization*.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say that different classes have different bodies of common / assumed knowledge, and to change classes or work to interact well with a different class might necessarily involve a sacrifice of ease in ones current relationships.
This last weekend Doug Wilson urged us to keep our priorities straight, and I think that this is an excellent point to keep in mind, especially as economic and food security issues speedily crowd the intellects of some of us here on this blog. In particular, Wilson points out that the fight against abortion is not over, and the importance of this fight rightly eclipses many lesser issues.
Cruelty to an animal is one thing, but murder of a helpless child is yet another. These are both offenses of the same species – oppression of and cruelty toward the weak – but also of a different order. Abortion is murder, and all of our exulting about the sturdy yolks of our granola-fed chickens looks pretty silly in comparison.
So yes, we should be thankful for this reminder.
But.
I think it is clear by now that we require a mass shift in mores, a near-universal cultural and spiritual repentance, before abortion will go away. This will of course come through the Gospel. But since the Christian witness is an incarnational thing, it is legitimate to ask about practical ways that we can become Gospel for people who need to experience this change. I have been attracted to issues like economics, and eventually food, because I see in them an additional – and chronically underemphasized – tool for bringing about some of the cultural change that is needed in The West.
I think here specifically of the girls who decide to abort. Some do so because of uncaring callousness; others, many others, do so because of cultural and economic pressure. This is true especially for the poor. If you’re poor, having a baby means dropping out of school, perhaps your only way out of poverty. If you’re not in school, you are likely working long hours at multiple jobs to make ends meet, and you’re going to have to stop that. A baby is a game changer for the rich, but it’s often a total forfeit for the poor.
It’s true that these folks made certain recreational (and procreational) choices, and they should be held accountable for them. But it is the first place of the Christian to remove planks, and this includes broad-brush cultural judgments we pass on our society. Abortion is murder; we would do well to contemplate the many lesser murders in which we participate daily. Since we really do inhabit a culture of death, it is likely that this death has worked its way into the corners of our culture and lives as Christians.
The Conservatives with whom Christians overwhelmingly identify have been busy for decades napalming indigenous peoples and bombing deserts to glass. Our food system reeks of death and trades the dignity of God’s creatures for efficiency and commerce. Our political discourse is inhuman and uncharitable. Countless racas are uttered against our political enemies, our denominational oddballs, and even those who share the pews with us weekly. Lesser murders are all around us, and it’s time that we got to work fixing them.
Moreover, our economics reinforce this problem in many ways. Modern American Corporate Capitalism has done much to harm the family, which in turn has eroded our sexual standards, the economic stability and centrality of families, and the economic safety of women. We must now have two working parents to make ends meet; we must now be mobile and more committed to career than family or family life; we must depend on paychecks, which is to say that our livelihoods often depend on shareholders reviewing balance sheets or a capricious market that may finally force the innovation that makes us obsolete. If the church were doing her job, many of these girls would have economic security, a community to fill the gaps in family security, and a robust morality upon which to base their decisions. If our economics promoted dignity and charity over merit and profit, the dividends for abortion could be huge.
It is worth considering that ministry to the poor – an aggressive ministry, central to the church – could be introduced as an important element of the battle against abortion. Here we find the vulnerable and oppressed, those who share a fellowship with the aborted fetus that the rich often do not properly understand. We have spent our days puzzling endlessly over even lesser problems of theological accuracy, and have delegated the problem of the poor to the economists and politicians. But clearly, voting Reagan in wasn’t enough. The ever-widening wage gap in the US tells us that the economists have blown it entirely for the last century. It is widely believed and almost universally undisputed that Pat Robertson, and much of the rest of Christian media, are out of their gourds, or at least ineffective.
When we come to the poor, politicians and economists cease to matter. We not only find some of the oppressed, but we find that these oppressed are also the oppressors of their unborn children. The opportunity for twofold good is apparent.
This is, of course, all tied to food. Economics is simply the ordering of a household. People consume water and food more than just about anything else, so in a very real sense an economic problem is a food problem. I won’t belabor this point, except to say that all of these issues are intimately related. The same corporations that are patenting our seeds and growing our food are feeding and employing our poor, and fixing our distributive problems will go along way to recreating a societal architecture that helps young vulnerable girls make the right decisions.
Please don’t hear me as saying that the poor just can’t help themselves, and that unless we repent of our economic or “food” sins abortion will not be conquered. Of course not. Abortion is murder. Food is, well, food. But the problems are related, and we should avoid the false dichotomy. My argument is that if we get to work fixing our food system and our economics – or, more simply, if we get to work helping the poor – our currently intractable abortion situation may become tractable. Put another way, only the Gospel will ultimately win this bloody war, but there are many types of soil in the famous parable, and our economics have much to do with how rocky, thorny, or rich and loamy our society is.
When ordering our problems and distributing our cool cups of water accordingly, we must take account of “the least of these.” Current wisdom counts the unborn as the least of the least, and I certainly agree. But next in line are often the poor who we then condemn as murders, abandon to the cities, and leave to be ravaged by the excesses of welfare and the predations of an upside-down food system.
Finally:
I present to you two problems. I say: “Your neighbor is having an abortion, and your other neighbor is abusing his beast and then selling it to you for food.” And I ask you: what do you do about it? The answer to the second neighbor is quite easy: buy your meat elsewhere. So that is what some have begun to do. The answer to the first neighbor is much more difficult. You may go and speak with this neighbor, minister to her, protest before her house with signs, write letters to your legislator; at the end of the day, she may still have that abortion.
One of the reasons I am going on about this food thing is because I can do something about it. It presents a very real way of “fixing culture,” and it is a way that I can deliberately pass on to my children. Not as in “I have guilt to atone for, and laying it on the Altar of Whole Foods seems like a hip way to go.” But I, and a growing number of people, look around and see all sorts of cultural sin. Like the many, I wish to do something about it. As with our fathers, I believe that the battle against abortion in our generation is an important one, but I also believe that there is utility in other pursuits like feasting, publishing magazines, starting schools, and fighting for strong families. These all contribute to culture; I wish, with no moral superiority or conviction that this is “the answer,” to contribute my garden to this project. With it comes gratitude, hard work, health, tradition, freedom of the individual and the necessity of community. My hope, eventually, is to share the real-live fruits of this garden with the poor, and in so doing bring them the Gospel, in order to set them free.
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves…. It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
Something Davey wrote inspired a little thought I wanted to share here.
I get easily frustrated with discussions/arguments about economic or political issues. Truth is, I hate both topics with a passion. Most such discussions end with me feeling a little sick. This may be different for the rest of you, but I find them to be terribly abstract and hypothetical. I’m fighting about something that I really don’t care about, and yet I fight anyway, which is why I generally want to vomit afterwards.
Davey mentioned three different economic thinkers (von Mises, Friedman, and Hayek). I don’t have any problem with how he disagreed with them; however, it is interesting that these disagreements always revolve around books. It’s even more interesting when I hear what Davey, Chris, and others want to see economically speaking (care for the poor, end of third world oppression). Ironic, even. Because the people I grew up with (many of them free market, capitalist proponents) achieved these ends fantastically.
Truth be told, the most giving person I’ve ever known never cared for these discussions. Or books about these things. Sure, his understanding was simple, but it was shaped by a simple principle that I’m sure he picked up from his Mennonite upbringing: “Love thy neighbour.”
Davey is fond of telling me that I compartmentalize too much. And that may be true. I admit it. But I also know from experience that I don’t need to study economics to be responsible with my money or loving to my neighbors. In fact, given my frustrations, it’s better if I avoid these discussions and focus on my beloved stories, or hockey, or whatever else God puts in front of me. Because right now, economics isn’t something I’ve been called to study, and (as Davey knows) I’ll be sure to get it on the sly anyway.
This is not finger pointing. If I’m accusing anyone, I’m accusing myself and admitting my weakness. I can’t argue on these topics responsibly or fairly, so it’s better for me not to. God’s given me other insights, other loves, other directions, so I’ll be content not to know very much about economics and do my best to love my neighbor economically with a poverty of such knowledge. Because I know it can be done.
This is a response to Chris and Davey, from the recent economics post…
Chris wrote:
The poor deserve our compassion, not our scorn. They deserve our charity, not the short end of the capitalistic stick. That poor folks got loans is the one bright spot in this whole despicable mess.
For the record, I don’t believe that Card is blaming the poor. To read his article that way seems unfair. Perhaps blaming the Democrats (as he does) is also unfair, but why jump all over him for talking about unwise loans to the poor?
Contra Chris and Davey, I think his point is an astute one. You both assume that if someone is criticizing loans given to the poor, then they’re obviously doing that with unbiblical, elitist, “he doesn’t want the poor to be blessed” motives. This is not always so.
It is not a bright spot that the poor got loans out of this. As Proverbs teach us, loans enslave. The fact that many poor people got loans probably means that many poor people are now in worse shape than they were before. That sure isn’t compassion.
To emphasize what I said before, we need to give the poor people real help. Not try and get them caught up with our lifestyles. I told it this way to Davey—if you meet a starving former prisoner, giving him a steak dinner will likely hurt him more than it will help. You have to give him what he needs, not simply what you yourself might want. The same thing applies to the poor around us.
Chris, if credit is the real problem, then in what way are we pointing fingers at the poor people by suggesting that giving them loans that they can’t repay is a problem? Try for a minute to read that sentence without reading anything into it. In fact, I’ll make it easy for you: I am not saying that they shouldn’t be helped, or that being poor is their own fault, or that they don’t deserve a house. I’m just suggesting that such loans may hurt and devastate instead of helping.
Thoughts?
