Stephen
Terry, Director
Waging Love
Commentary
for the March 13, 2021 Sabbath School Lesson
"Is not this the kind
of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of
injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed
free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share
your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with
shelter---
when you see the
naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh
and blood?
Then your light will
break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your
righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear
guard.
Then you will call,
and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say:
Here am I."
Isaiah 58:6-9, NIV
Throughout my
lifetime, it seems that the United States has been almost perpetually involved
in undeclared wars in hot spots all over the globe. When there are not
clear-cut reasons to go to war, we seem to have few qualms about manufacturing
them as in the Tonkin Gulf Incident that greatly escalated our involvement in Vietnam
or the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that justified our invasion of Iraq.
However, we have discovered repeatedly as the British did in India, we do not
have the political will to sustain such ventures when the body counts begin to
climb and the cost in resources escalates. The conversation quickly switches
from justifying the pursuit of a righteous cause to how to get out of yet
another quagmire. It seems we always have the budget to jump into these
military ventures with little questioning of the expenditure. Granted that
later wars like Iraq and Afghanistan have seen nowhere near the American deaths
that we saw in the Vietnam War, yet thanks to embedded reporting, those deaths
are made more real if not more numerous. The Afghan War, at two decades, is our
longest running military engagement to date, and like all the others, we are
seeking disengagement as we withdraw, tails between our legs, knowing that the government
we supported there is just as likely to fall as the South Vietnamese government
fell after our withdrawal there. We fail to learn from our own American Revolution
that indigenous insurgents are far more committed to whatever it takes to win
than foreign invaders could ever be. This is especially true when the economic cost
of military adventurism begins to be felt at home through crumbling infrastructure,
growing poverty, and the declining willingness of the wealthy to use what they
have hoarded for anything beyond supporting their vapid narcissism.
There is a war that
has raged longer than the Afghan War. But it has not been waged overseas. It is
the War on Poverty begun by President Lyndon Johnson with the signing of the
Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. It created the Office of Economic Opportunity
which oversaw more than three dozen programs intended to lift people out of
poverty and into the middle class. But like every other war since World War II,
we could not find our way to win it. After it was implemented, poverty rates
dropped by over a third, but when Ronald Reagan became president, he abolished
the Office of Economic Opportunity and cut the taxes paid by the wealthy by
almost two thirds. If actions speak louder than words then this boldly declared
that the rich have little to no responsibility to the poor, and the poor were
not deserving of the help they had received. Recently things have gotten so bad
that the $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage has been in place for over a
decade. While that wage has not increased, the average cost of renting a place to
live has more than doubled, sparking a concurrent rise in homelessness in America
such as we have not seen since the Great Depression. At the same time, cuts to
public assistance leave many scrambling to feed, clothe and house themselves, a
condition only made worse by the Coronavirus lockdowns. This is a milieu that
allows criminal enterprises to grow as crime bosses willingly offer a living
wage to desperate people in return for them helping to build illicit empires.
Perhaps this is one reason America has the highest percentage of its citizens imprisoned
than any other similar country. While the wealthy do not want to pay taxes to
fight poverty, there always seems to be a will to fund more prisons. Like
Scrooge, in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," when asked about caring for
the poor, he replied "Are there no prisons?"
It seems that such heartlessness
has long been a part of the human condition. Over three thousand years ago,
after Israel fled Egypt, the Pentateuch had laws for dealing with poverty that
would have given everyone a hope and a future, even in desperate times. But
then, as now, those laws were ignored or subverted. Slaves were not allowed to
go free. Property seized for debts was not allowed to revert to its original
owner. Moses knew that this would happen after his death and the laws would be
ignored as corruption replaced righteousness.[i] For over five hundred years,
God continued to call people back to the plan he instituted through Moses, sending
prophets, who were at best ignored or at worst slain, as King Manasseh did when
he executed Isaiah. Even after the Babylonian captivity, when Israel finally abandoned
the worship of idolatrous images, they still struggled with their treatment of
the poor.[ii]
Things have not
changed much today. As Christ said, "The poor you will always have with you."
(Matthew 26:11a) But he did not say this from the perspective that it is useless
to help them. Instead, it was a recognition that the hardness of our hearts
would ensure that the poor would continue to live in poverty. Despite so much
of scripture invoking us to care for one another, he knew we would not do it.
Perhaps he foresaw the modern Christian who would rail about the government taking
his hard-earned money to help the poor. These same individuals often assure us
that it is the government forcing them to do so that is the problem, that if
they were not forced, they would gladly help the poor. Yet, they do not do it
even though the government rewards them for doing so with tax breaks. They say
they would help the worthy poor. But when pressed, they do not know any worthy
poor, so they effectively exclude all the poor.
Some like to quote
Paul, insisting that the person who does not work should not eat.[iii] But then they support
keeping the minimum wage at a level that will not sustain them, even if they
are working. It is hard to understand, in the light of such attitudes, that we
could rightfully call ourselves a Christian nation. As Isaiah says in the passage
at the beginning of this commentary, nothing we do will more fully show our
relationship to God than how we treat one another, especially those in need. Do
we think Jesus had the disciples ask if people were working to see if they
deserved some fish and bread at the feeding of the five thousand? Do we think
he had them ask people about their lifestyles before quieting their hungry
stomachs? Since the Pharisees seemed to follow him everywhere, there were likely
some of them in the crowd. Do we think he excluded them from the meal because they
hated him? He modeled the exact opposite in all these situations, encouraging
us to show love to our enemies. How many of us find the compassion within our
hearts to do that?
Our normal nature is
to have hearts of stone, and we see far too much of that even in the precincts
of the church. There are many who read and listen to these commentaries each
week who have had their hearts broken by the harshness they have received from
their local churches despite their obvious need of love and compassionate
support. Too many of those no longer attend, relying on a personal relationship
with Christ to sustain them. Sadly, they often find the help they need only through
the taxpayer funded programs that some Christians would rather defund. I cannot
help but wonder who would help these lambs if the church does not and the Christians,
who want it, succeed in defunding government programs that help them? Isaiah
seems to say, "What goes around comes around." If we help others, we will find help
and healing in the day of our distress. This implies that if we do not, the
opposite will be true. Perhaps this is what underlies the command to love
others as we wish to be loved. If we do not, our harshness may come back to haunt
us.
We may think it is too
difficult to change.[iv]
But God promises that he will change our heart that has become as hard as a
stone, into a heart of flesh filled with compassion for others.[v] What way of thinking are we
willing to give up that prevents us from receiving God's offer to give us that
heart?