Christians of the World Unite!

Occupy Wall Street Protesters

A Tea Party Gathering in Boston

You know, I find it very interesting to watch the debate out there concerning the two most recent socio-political movements in the United States.  On one side of the spectrum, you have the Tea Party movement.  On the other side, you have the Occupy Wall Street protests.  To be honest, from my view, they both have legitimate concerns.  They are both protesting power structures in the United States.  Who has the money?  Who decides how it is spent?  Who decides who does what with which thing and how often and to benefit which class in society.

Really, they are two sides of the same coin.  If you think about it, they could probably, if they set their political differences aside, move this country SERIOUSLY back into a socially just track where the power structures are not centered on a particular elite group of people.

Got this linked in from a friend on Facebook

So, on some respect, both these movements are something that I believe followers of Christ can engage and converse with on some level.  For the Tea Party Movement, there is an emphasis on morality, on taking personal responsibility for our lives and our mistakes and not foisting the responsibility off on others.  It's about people taking care of people instead of governments and institutions doing so.  For Occupy Wall Street, it's about governments and greed and corporations not ignoring their obligations to society, that power is given to people not for their own benefit but for the benefit of others.  It's about communal responsibility for the world and about challenging materialism, greed, and the lure of more money.

However, I put this out there:  NEITHER MOVEMENT IS CHRISTIAN.

I know that there are folks on both sides that will, at this moment, either rant and scream at me or put my blog on their "ignore" list because I must be blind.  Can't they see that Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street is all about what Jesus wants?

There's a picture floating around out there showing Jesus driving folks out of the temple calling him the original Occupy Wall Street protester.  There are people who use similar images of Jesus to justify their Tea Party protests and use phrases like "God Bless America" and so on.  But you know, both of them I have serious problems with.

Occupy Wall Street - Let's look at this once.  Here we have a bunch of people who are complaining about big corporations, big government, greed, and saying that they should give up their money and profits to share it around to those with debt and need.  On the surface, that sounds good.  But in what I've seen and heard, it sounds more like "Give us the money" rather than anything altruistic about taking care of others.  In fact, there are stories coming out about how the restaurants and businesses in the financial district are losing their livelihood because they are getting no customers because people are afraid to go downtown any more.  While the protests are protesting the big corporations, the business and franchise owners are going out of business.  So much for jobs.  Add to that the people running around with their iPhones, laptops, Gap jeans, sporting their J Crew and Ambercrombie fashions.  Then you have the kids complaining about education when they are privileged to go to $200,000 a year colleges.  While not all in this movement are like this, it makes me wonder about the true motivation.  If this is really what they are all about, why are they wasting their time on Wall Street rather than taking some of that extra money they have and doing good with it?  There's a rampant hypocrisy present here as well as a violent under-current where, if they don't get their way, you better watch your back.  This is not the way of Christ.  Jesus spoke out against power structures and the establishments of his day and called for justice for the poor, but he also lived a morally right life and lived out justice in his own every day actions.  His words were backed up by his deeds and at no point in time did he forget that there were human beings involved.  Even when he engaged people like the rich young ruler, the Pharisees, and others, he spoke to them as human beings and treated them like humans, not like mindless, faceless villains.  The CEO's at the head of the corporations are people, too, and do not deserve how they are being pictured in society.  Yes, they have made some bad choices, but haven't we all?  So, as a graceless, hypocritical movement driven mostly by envy and a mindset of "I am as good as you" (see C.S. Lewis "Screwtape Proposes a Toast"), I don't think this is a movement that Christians can claim for their own.

Tea Party - How about them?  Are they any better?  Well, again, they are complaining about big government and the greed of the elite and the overwhelming almost totalitarian positioning of politicians in our government.  Again, it is an anti-establishment movement, aiming at refocusing the United States away tax and spend politics and back to government remaining within the bounds described by the central law of the country.  Along with that is the underlying morality of a sense of personal responsibility for your own choices and to not depend upon bail-outs, either to corporations or to individuals, to make up for mistakes.  This all sounds well and good and, to be honest, I align myself more closely with Tea Party politics than with any other group out there.  However, there's one really important problem that I see with this movement.  Nationalistic pride and the idea of "This is God's country" or "This is a Christian nation" I see as serious problems for any Christian.  While there is something to be said about the underlying morals and ideals of the country being based upon many of the teachings and understandings of the Protestant reformation and that, at the root of many of the ideals of the Constitution, are morals and ethics that can find their root in Christian theology, there has been only one politically organized nation in the history of the world that God himself established and that is Israel.  And, really, even that is the Israel that was established by Joshua, upheld by the Judges, and initially ruled by David.  Post-exile, even Israel couldn't necessarily claim God's blessing any more.  As the apostle Paul puts it, Christians are aliens, strangers, foreigners, sojourners in this world.  We are here, in the world, living amongst the people, but this is not our home.  The ideals, the rules, the ethics, and the morals by which we live find their home in a Kingdom that is both here and not yet.  As much as I like living in the US and am proud of the freedoms we enjoy, I realize that even the US is a temporary thing. It will not last forever.  What we call our democratically formed republic is a shadow of what God's Kingdom might look like.  It is distorted, imperfect and is certainly NOT the end of things.  No human system can claim this, no matter how much they claim to be inspired by God's kingdom.  Plato had it right when he commented that what we try and do in this world is only a shadowy reflection, warped and twisted,  of the perfection that God has in mind.  So, while our country is a good country, we cannot hold it in such a high regard that we think that it is God's blessed country and everyone else must emulate us.  Add to that some of a similar hypocrisy that, what the Tea Party criticizes (government involvement) is something the Tea Party reaps the benefit of (public transportation, social security, roads, bridges, etc).  Jesus did not support Rome, nor did he support the established Temple hierarchy, nor did he support the Jewish monarchy, nor did he put forth some sort of revolution or rebellion where he would supplant the existing power structures with one of his own.  This was not the way of Jesus and we should not think that such is our way.

So... what does this mean?  It means that we can take the good things from both these movements and use them to talk about the injustices in society, about reforming and redeeming the existing power structures, and about personal issues of personal morality, ethics, and justice.  But we cannot take these movements and say one is more Christian than another, that one should be adopted by Christians and backed by Christians.  They are political movements, aimed at politics, looking at changing earthly structures.

Think of the problems in our country as symptoms of a disease.  There is greed running rampant.  There are morality, ethics, and justice issues on all fronts.  There are people killing others, either directly or indirectly.  There are people taking power that doesn't belong to them or demanding power that they have no right to demand.  There are people looking to earthly systems to fix their problems rather than looking to the spiritual realm for answers.  The disease is sin, both personal as well as communal.  Any socio-economic-political system put in place without addressing the disease is like putting bandage on a scratch when there is a cancerous tumor underneath.  It's like giving someone over-the-counter cough medicine to treat the viral pneumonia.  It's like giving ibuprofen to bring down the fever caused by viral meningitis.  Treating the symptoms is a temporary problem.  To bring about permanent solutions, you need to treat the disease.

And as I said, the disease is sin.  When individual people sin, the result is an overall communal sin.  Communal sin has as its root problems in the hearts and minds of people because it is people who make up communities.  If you really want to change the world, you can rage all you want at the systems, the structures, the organizations that grow out of communities but it will not fix the problem, ultimately.  So, what will fix it?

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Romans 12:1-2, The Message

So, by all means, speak out if you feel you need to.  Speak against the injustices you see around you.  But your words will mean nothing if you don't point people to the real answer.  No amount of political movements will mean anything of any lasting value.  As The Teacher points out in the book of Ecclesiastes, it's all just so much vapor.  It's all temporary and meaningless in the light of eternity.  The only thing that really matters is to live a righteous life.  And the only way to achieve that is through the transforming power of the grace and mercy of God given us through the life, death, and resurrection of God's son, Jesus.  Before we can change the structures of the world for any lasting good, we first need to change the people.  We need to get out there and tell them, as Paul told the Athenians, "Hey, you are definitely a spiritual people.  You have so much right.  But let me tell you more about this Unknown God..." and then show them the Truth that is Christ.

Christians of the world unite!  We have a mission, and it is not on Wall Street and it is not in Washington, DC.  It is in the hearts, minds, and lives of the people we see every day.  When the power of God breaks through in their lives, everything else will fall into place.  People will start acting justly to their neighbors.  People will start valuing ethics and morality over greed.  People will start thinking more about how they can help other people than they will about personal gain.  Christians off the world unite!  We have been given a mission and we are late in the game, a mission to speak the truth and live like we believe it.

Remember, it's our job.