Category: #money

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Wokeism vs. MAGA…

Here’s a thing I would very much like to understand: how the word “woke” can be used as an insult by Christians.

Look up “awake scriptures” on your search engine and see what comes up. Awake is a GOOD THING for a Christian. It is literally all over the New Testament.

Background Image by KBCH from Pixabay

Honestly, I don’t really understand what “woke” even means to the people who use it as a pejorative. It seems to be just the latest demeaning, un-Christlike insult for people who lean left. (Feminazi, libs, libt—(will not finish that one, you get the idea).

Last week, I decided if I am looking for podcasts, I should try to find some that are specifically Catholic. So I did a basic search, and I happened across an episode that featured a woman talking about being “awake, not woke.” I had a pretty visceral knee-jerk reaction against this, but I thought, perhaps this is precisely the thing I need to listen to. Maybe this idea of “awake, not woke” is the middle ground I am looking for.

It wasn’t. Middle ground, I mean. No, it was a laundry list of why everything about “woke” culture was evil. I believe that word was even used.

The history this woman claimed was presented as a settled fact with not one detail of evidence that would help me even know how to begin fact checking it. So I’ll leave that aside.

But among the other arguments presented against “wokeism” were a plethora that were listed with no self-awareness. In other words, every single one of them applies to the MAGA crowd just as much as it applies to the “woke” crowd. For instance:

Wokeism functions like a cult, wherein people stop thinking critically. (Also true of MAGA? Yup.)

It’s all about power. (Also true of MAGA? Yup.)

People cut others out of their lives because they disagree. (Also true of MAGA? Yup.)

It leads naturally to violence, i.e. the BLM riots. (Ummmm…. January 6, anyone?????)

It is about indoctrination. (And laws that suppress historical realities because it might make whites “feel bad,” allowing only a narrative of American greatness narrative? That’s not indoctrination?)

Using “privilege” as a pejorative. (Like using “liberal” or “woke” as pejoratives?)

Targeting Christians with violence. (Like… I don’t know, the increase in hate crimes?)

It has control of media, which misleads people via bias. (Ummmmm…. in the last week we learned that Fox News knew they were telling lies about the election and about Dominion, and kept doing it because they thought otherwise their audience would jump ship for more extreme far-right sources… How does this not count toward calculations of media bias?)

I am laying all this out because I am honestly baffled. I look at everything in the world through the lens of my Christian faith. Through the teachings of Jesus. And for sure, some things in our culture are really far out there. (Although a lot of it has to do with greed and the idolatry of money, and nobody in Christian World ever seems to see that as a problem…)

I would have much more sympathy for someone who wanted to call out the problems in the far left if they would acknowledge that THE SAME PROBLEMS EXIST ON THE FAR RIGHT. At least as much.

But instead, there’s a double standard. All these things are problems when it’s on the left, but when it’s on the right, it… makes us a Christian nation? I don’t get it. Why is “wokeism” bad, and MAGAism isn’t?

There’s an old truism about how eventually, when you go far enough left and far enough right, you end up in the same place. Hence, you have Hitler on the right and Stalin on the left. But they’re both brutal dictators. Eventually, the extremes wrap around and hold hands.

I know this sounds like my usual rant, but I am genuinely baffled. I really want someone to explain this. Because from my point of view as a Catholic, we cannot demonize one variety of extremism while wholeheartedly embracing another. That’s not Christ at all. Jesus had plenty to say about people who held one standard for themselves while condemning others.

#unworthyofchrist

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The social quality of personal property

I know this is kind of a long quote to process, so let me rephrase it to clarify why it struck me so forcefully. If we forget that our personal property has a “social dimension,” we’ll end up making an idol of it, making it all about ME and what I want. Getting resentful at the suggestion that the “social dimension” exists at all.

And when that happens, it’s easy for people to say, “See? This system of private property is corrupt. It doesn’t serve the common good.”

In other words, if we are too grabby about what’s MINE, it’s going to give people ammunition to suggest that the whole system is flawed.

The writers were undoubtedly thinking of giving ammunition to communism when they wrote this, but given the unpardonable and growing disparity between rich and poor these days–underscored by who gets COVID and who doesn’t; who has to put themselves at risk to go do low-income “essential” labor while the rest of us work safely from home–it seems like a pretty spot-on reminder for our day and age, too.

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Ruled by economics

Background image by HealthWyze from Pixabay

Ever since “it’s the economy, stupid,” this has been how every issue is approached, both personal and societal. Who am I kidding? If the Vatican II bishops were talking about this, clearly it’s been this way since before the 1990s. But it’s impossible to escape the message these days. No matter what crisis is happening (coronavirus is one, but there have been plenty of other instances), the go-to response is always “how is it going to impact the economy?” As if that were the only–or even the most–important factor.

As a Catholic striving to put my faith above all else–far, far above money, which is supposed to be how we survive and do good in the world, not the defining factor of existence–I find this fixation problematic. We say we want to be a Christian nation, but that only holds as long as the topic is some moral issue that costs me nothing, because it doesn’t impact me personally. As soon as it’s a Gospel directive that affects *my* pocketbook, it’s a whole different story.

God vs. mammon, indeed.

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“Another Self”

“Another self.” It’s hard enough to view others this way in family life. Half of Godly parenting–maybe three-quarters of it–is trying to get kids, who are supremely selfish beings, to recognize the other as not only equal to themselves, but “another self.”

But take this beyond the confines of those we already love, and it’s downright superhuman.

-the three people you most dislike in the world, you should view as “another self.”

–the people who are a continual thorn in our sides are “another self.”

–the people living in the woods and holding signs at intersections, whether they’re drug addicts or lazy or criminals or whatever assumptions we might be tempted to make about them, are “another self.”

–the refugee, asylum seeker, and yes, even the genuine “illegal alien” is “another self.”

And as a Christian it is my *job* to enable all these “other selves” to live with dignity. This is a conciliar document saying this, not one priest or one bishop. This is the Church speaking as clearly as the Church can speak.

Now, we can argue about what is the best way to enable human dignity. That’s a totally valid argument.

But those aren’t the discussions we’re having.

Instead, almost all our arguments are focused on whether we *should* help people–whether they *deserve* it and whether “there’s money” to do it. But let’s be honest: in America, there’s plenty of money to do what needs to be done. The argument is between those who think it can’t be done piecemeal, and should therefore be done at the level of society, i.e. through higher taxes and governmental administration, and those who think government is intrinsically evil and taxes are to be avoided at all costs–that charity should be entirely a private matter, even if that means many people will get missed.

This is the fundamental logjam in America today, and the trouble is that people on both sides view their own position on that question as universally-accepted truth–a settled reality. And so instead of figuring out how to strike a balance between personal rights and societal responsibility, we end up bickering about who does and who doesn’t deserve help. We start labeling asylum seekers as criminals, and conservatives as racists, and it all falls to pieces.

Our opponents, too, are “another self.”

The following quote is too long to put in a graphic, but it’s well worth putting at the center of our minds in an election year:

…there must be made available to all men everything necessary for leading a life truly human, such as food, clothing, and shelter; the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a family, the right to education, to employment, to a good reputation, to respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the upright norm of one’s own conscience, to protection of privacy and rightful freedom even in matters religious.

This social order requires constant improvement. It must be founded on truth, built on justice and animated by love; in freedom it should grow every day toward a more humane balance. An improvement in attitudes and abundant changes in society will have to take place if these objectives are to be gained.

Gaudium et Spes, #26

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Primary Motivator

The readings this weekend were all about money. Amos was talking about the dishonesty of those with money–how they were so focused on their own profits that they didn’t really care what happened to the “have not”s of the world. And Jesus said, “Guess what? How you use your money matters.”

Listening yesterday at Mass, it really struck me how those readings should skewer America. The obvious application is the question of income inequality: how many of the huge profits made by companies are held by those at the top of the food chain, how little is actually shared with those down the ranks.

But you know, so much of what we talk about in America centers on money. Many would like to believe we’re a Christian nation, but money–capitalism–is the primary thing that preoccupies our social and political discourse, even among Christians. So many things come back to money: health care and social programs would require more taxes, and we can’t possibly suggest raising taxes. Immigrants are perceived as a threat to American jobs, so again–it comes back to money. The question of whether a president deserves re-election is always about the economy. We’re having all these discussions about China and intellectual property and trade fairness, but nowhere on anyone’s radar is the question of just wages for labor, which is–let’s face it–the only reason manufacturing went overseas in the first place. It went overseas because we, the rank and file Americans, aren’t willing to pay what it would cost to make a product while paying a just wage to the laborer who made it.

We have a lot to answer for, and I don’t pretend to have a pat solution. I personally try to take a step back from the consumer culture by starting with secondhand clothing purchases as much as possible. But those clothes, too, were made by cheap labor overseas, and I order from Amazon just like every other red-blooded American. What do I think God will say to me when it comes time for me to answer for my choices? I don’t like pondering that question any more than anyone else.

In any case, when I was looking through the possibilities for things to share today, this quote from my Beatitudes book seemed to dovetail with what we heard at church yesterday. Because what if? What if, instead of money, we made God’s will, God’s kingdom, God’s priorities, the central principle that guided every other choice?

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