Look Closely

An image that was rejected for the cover of Fortune magazine. Click on it to enlarge and get a really good look at the detail. It's exactly right.

Why Your Job Is Evil

I really despise most "vocational theology" out there. It amounts to little more than comforting people in their miserable jobs, or convincing ourselves that pointless or even horrific activities are part of God's purpose for our lives. I get what Luther was trying to do by saying that being a good baker is as important as being a good priest, but it has led us to a state of puerility where whatever you're doing right now must be what God intends for you.

Most jobs are not vocations. No one has a vocation to make photocopies and fetch coffee. Saying that some people have a vocation to work a shitty job is just a tool the Church uses for keeping a nice orderly society. The protestant work ethic is a stroke of genius for ingratiating the Church to the Government.

Furthermore, many jobs are not even suitable vehicles for fulfilling your universal vocation of discipleship. Some jobs are just Evil (with an Austin Powers emphasis) and if you think you are living out God's purpose for your life you are gloriously deluded. Here are some reasons why your job is Evil...

Servants of Mammon

Sales: If you want to get some practice at lying, become a salesperson. If you want to hone an overdeveloped sense of self-interest, work on a commission. If you want to belong to a fraternity of braggarts, work in corporate sales. The quintessential Evil moment for a salesman is when you give a fist pump after walking away from the trailer park having indebted another family by persuading them to buy the deluxe set of Henckel's serrated knives...

Marketing: If sales is lying, marketing is preemptive lying - brainwashing. Whereas Sales is intimate, marketing is impersonal. If anything though, marketing is far more Evil. Marketing is about denigrating human beings, society, and life in order to create false desires. You then seek to manipulate these false desires so that they build up your wealth, while impoverishing everyone else. If you make a living putting people down for a profit - your job is Evil.

Other Evil servants of the Evil lord Mammon include: Stock Brokers, Investment Bankers, Oil Speculators, Insurance Claim Denial Specialists, "Consultants"...

Servants of Mars

Soldier: Let's face it, at root a soldier's job is about killing people. Killing people is Evil. Worse than just killing people though, by agreeing to the entire military culture of obedience soldiers are participants in the single largest fictional justification of murder down through history. Because as long as it is "soldiers" doing the killing instead of, you know, people, we call it war and invest it with faux virtues like honor, duty, and sacrifice. By enabling this mass delusion soldiers make us all liars and hypocrites. More Evil than any soldier, though, are officers.

Politicians: If soldiers are Evil and officers are even worse, then politicians are really blackhearted infernal vermin. It is the job of a politician to maintain power and order through a steady diet of war, police enforcement, and ideological vitriol. The ideal accomplishment of a politician is for foreign enemies to be murdered, domestic foes discredited and imprisoned, the populace confused, afraid, or infused with a fanatical fever, and the status quo absolutely unaltered.

Other Evil servants of the Evil God Mars include: Mercenaries, Defense Contractors, the Media, Police Officers, Security Guards, Customs Officials, a variety of Government Functionaries...

Servants of the Morning Star himself...

Clergy: Few professions have the deleterious effect on humanity that the clergy do. Not only do clergy justify every form of gross moral abuse and ease the troubled consciences of many a murderer, sexual predator, and thief, but clergy serve by their very existence as a universal excuse for the irreligion and vice of lay people. It is a stroke of pure Evil genius that the presence of a clergy person can at once represent a harsh esteem-crushing judgmentalism and perpetual indulgence for unsavory behavior. Furthermore, a clergy-person's claim to metaphysical authority bestows upon them an unimpeachable power of persuasion over the weak-minded. It is, of all the professions, one of the most Evil.

File This One Under "Awesome!"

Talk Talk an internet broadband company in Britain apparently being run by mad geniuses has started a new program. They're sending ex-pickpockets into the streets of London to surreptitiously deposit small amounts of cash in people's wallets.

They're calling them "putpockets" and they are putting up to 20 pounds sterling in total stranger's pockets. The plan is to give away at least 100,000 pounds in small increments.

This story has everything: atonement for criminals, random anonymous generosity, inverting a common fear of pedestrians in urban areas.

The effect of this idea is to turn what would otherwise be dull, crowded, or even threatening daily commutes in the London Underground, into something exciting - even hopeful. Original and awesome.

Get Rich Biblically

This kind of stuff turns my stomach.

There will always be snake-oil salesman, but when the marketing (read: lying) is pulled from scripture and wrapped in the trappings of Christianity I take personal offense. I spend my life trying to persuade people (including myself) that the meaning of human existence is giving ourselves away in order to be truly found - and then someone like Dave Ramsey comes along and tells my parishioner that God wants them to hoard.

Blessed are the poor, Mr. Ramsey.

Indeed, since you're so concerned about what the Bible says about money, let's take a look.

Against our notion of private property contrast this: The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. (Lev 25:23)

Read that whole chapter about Jubilee which is a regular redistribution of wealth that would pretty much kill our credit economy.

The book of proverbs which you quoted as if it were supportive of your money-management scheme has this to say: He who trusts in riches will wither. (Prov. 11:28)

Jesus is the harshest critic of all. He said, "No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon." (Luke 16:13) Mammon means wealth in Aramaic.

"Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20)

"Woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation" (Luke 6:24)

"Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again" (Luke 6:30)

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth" for "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matt. 6:19, 21)

The Bible frequently counsels an inner attitude of detachment from wealth, "If riches increase, set not your heart on them." (Ps. 62:10)

But Jesus goes much further instructing the rich young ruler to sell everything he owns (Matt. 19:16-22), and when the man can't he says, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matt 19:24)

"Take heed," Jesus says, "and beware of all covetousness; for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions... Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail." (Luke 12:15,33)

Between those two verses Jesus tells the story of a rich farmer who hoards a good crop. By our standards he is savvy - Jesus calls him a fool. (Luke 12:16-21)

Pastoral advice about money abounds in the epistles as well.

Paul says, "Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction." (1 Tim. 6:9)

"Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, 'I will never fail you nor forsake you'" (Heb. 13:5)

Greed is idolatry. It is as bad as adultery and thievery. It is the source of violence; "You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war." (James 4:1-2)

I'll stop here. As I've been admonished before, anyone can use a concordance. It will do no more good to continue piling up quotes.

But this is more than a selective list of proof-texts. This is a dominant, even overwhelming, theme in scripture that is exactly the opposite of what Mr. Ramsey says. He says on his site that money is mentioned in scripture over 800 times, but never bothers to let his readers know that nearly every single time it is in a negative light. It's demonic.

Don't listen to me, though. I'm depressing. Go listen to Dave Ramsey. He can tell you how you can get rich biblically.

"The Problem Is Us"

Here's a moment to remember - utter depravity clearly reflected in This American Life. The time-stamp is around 38:00 if you go to listen, and I highly recommend that you do.

I don't understand the current banking crisis, but I am listening to an episode of This American Life aimed at explaining the crisis in simple terms, and I just heard something that seemed profoundly true to me - "The problem is us."

We currently owe, as a society, 13 Trillion dollars. The GDP for the entire US economy is 13 Trillion dollars. To be clear, that means that we collectively owe as much as the entire US economy combined. The only other time in recent history that this was the case was in 1929, just shy of the economic collapse and the Great Depression.

The problem is us. We owe too much. I myself owe more than Pam and I make combined in a year, almost all of which is educational debt. This is even after spending three painful years getting out from under commercial debts we couldn't handle. I'm part of the problem - in fact, mathematically I'm contributing more than my 'share', it looks like. So the problem is also me.

Yes, we have a bunch of millionaire and billionaire bankers who are hysterically greedy and desperately trying to avoid suffering any kind of consequences for stupid decisions they made while grasping insatiably for profit. They made bad decisions and we are going to bail them out, apparently, dollar for dollar. But they are not the whole of the problem. The problem is us.

This is a problem in all of our hearts - something that, frankly, religion is specifically and superbly equipped to identify and begin to address. It is an insurmountable battle, but the lines, for once in our lives, will be clearly drawn as banks fail and bailouts balloon into the trillions of tax dollars and jobs disappear.

The line is this. We throw our lives away in the pursuit of things which do not, will never, satisfy. And the time always comes when we pay for it. We pay for our trust in eternal growth without consequences. We pay for idolatry.

I'm afraid of what's coming for us, but I can't pretend that it is undeserved, that it is solely the purview of fat, chuckling villains smoking cigars made of $100 bills and taking private jet trips to visit child prostitutes in Thailand. Those villains are still there, but I can't pretend I'm not a villain too. A villain of a lesser sort, but less villainous? Ultimately, perhaps not. Perhaps the difference is only in means.

The problem is us. The problem is me.

Sin is fractal - the edge of every shore is the same no matter how high up or low down you are.

The Solution is Jubilee

I am not an economist. I do not pretend to know exactly how we've gotten into the situation we're in economically. I don't know if a disastrous depression is avoidable, or if avoiding it would be right in the long run. Even the supposed experts seem pretty stumped right now. But that isn't going to stop me from commenting from my perspective - that of a pastor.

Debt is the basic problem. Our economy is a credit economy to such a degree that everyone, at every level, functions continually by manipulation of debt. Debt, in fact, is practically the real currency of the land. Debt itself is what banks trade back and forth with one another, regarding interest accruing loans themselves as assets, even though all such money is speculative - it depends on the ability to actually collect it. For a long time our faith in the basic engine of this system, consumer spending, has kept us multiplying and accruing debts assuming that all of them were of value, because they would eventually be paid. What has become clear is that the debt has grown to such a volume that it is really impossible to collect. Panicked lenders have foreclosed like mad, hoping to scrape some tiny fraction of the supposed value of those debts out of the wreckage.

The scale and intricacy of this credit system is novel, but the basic problem is not new at all. The ancients knew everything we do about burdensome debt. It has been the practice of the elite in every society to maintain power partly through leveraging debts on the lower classes. Whether this was in the form of latifundialization as in Israel, or the enclosure system in industrial England, or our own credit economy, the effects are similar. At some point all such systems become imbalanced by a preponderance of debt resulting in social and economic crisis.

To counteract the injustices which occur when one group of human beings is excessively indebted to another, the Torah prescribes Jubilee. In every 49th (or 50th year depending how you read it), all debts were to be forgiven and all property held as collateral to be restored to its original owner. The effect of this is to completely wipe the slate clean every so often. Furthermore, Torah instructs us not to deny anyone any loans even the day before Jubilee begins.

Jubilee has almost certainly never been practiced as it is described. The effects of such an event would be radically egalitarian. Since the wealthy are not permitted to deny loans and the poor are automatically forgiven their debt, it amounts to redistributive justice on the largest possible scale. At some point, in practicing Jubilee, no one would be poor and no one would be wealthy. For all of these reasons people will say that it is impractical or even unfair (though it is really the definition of fairness), and one can easily see why it has never actually happened.

Imagine, though, if we decided to try and enact it in some form. Imagine if the government, for example, started by forgiving all student loans, all loans to the banks through the Federal Reserve, and instructed the banks to do likewise. Even if the banks were required only to forgive the highest interest loans to those with the lowest incomes - imagine the effect it would have on families. Declare a moratorium on all foreclosures, and a temporary period of penalty-free bankruptcy. Even if we set conditions on those bankruptcies (such as only families or individuals below a certain income level), how many people could we rescue from homelessness or total poverty? What if we did a host of other little things to help eradicate debt - such as set low maximum limits on credit card interest, or removed penalties for early repayment? What if we used money from these massive stimulus bills to set up a debt registry and allowed people to apply to receive grants specifically to pay down debt?

Of course, I'd love it if we would just declare an actual Jubilee and forgive all debts tomorrow. Wipe the slate clean. Yes there would be enormous consequences. It would mean the end of our credit economy as we know it. Citibank and Capital One and Bank of America and others would probably be destroyed. Some people would lose their jobs (but keep their homes and be debt free!). We'd have to pick up and figure out how to start again. Furthermore, it couldn't be completely accomplished unless it was worldwide, because our economy is global. So no one would really be able to say the final result of such a cataclysmic decision. But I have faith that it would lay the foundation for a better world, because Jubilee is about forgiveness.

Just think about it, what if everyone in the world forgave everyone else tomorrow?

Are We Crazy?

Giant stone heads on the slopes of Rano Raraku are all that remain of the culture of the Rapanui on Easter Island. These heads have come to symbolize widespread cultural obsession. They stand for self-destructive excess. Like the Mayans, the Minoans, and countless others the Rapanui are no more. They are the historical Atlanteans, sunk by their own hubris into the ignominy of unexplained extinction.

We are erecting stone heads, nowadays, grander and more impressive than ever before. A few months ago Congress passed a $700 billion bailout plan, and now we are considering an $825 billion dollar stimulus package to go along with it. The voracious appetite of American consumer culture, sponsored and fomented by extremes of corporate greed impossible to fathom, has brought us to the point where we seemingly have no option but to dump everything we have into the abyss.

This is not a Democrat vs. Republican issue. It is a bipartisan suicide pact. True, the Republicans are not happy with this current plan which has too much social services and infrastructure in it for their tastes - they prefer the money go directly to banks and businesses. But there are only a few lonely voices in the wilderness actually crying "madness"!

In general, I would prefer a government interested in infrastructure, and healthcare, and education, than one interested in war and defense. In general I agree with Obama that most of these areas are worth investing in, but I completely disagree that the proper response to economic turmoil is spend more money. Obama has joined right in with everyone else in Washington talking about defending "our way of life" and "securing the American dream". We are suffering from a national delusion that we are entitled to our present standard of living.

We are not entitled. We are using a vastly disproportionate amount of the world's resources and creating a vastly disproportionate amount of the world's waste. This has to end. It will end, one way or another. It can either end because we finally wake up from our insanity and begin to submit to the demands of justice, or it will end catastrophically and someone centuries from now will stand looking in amazement at the absurd stone heads we've left behind.