What if Steelworkers Ran the World?

I read earlier this week about a federal government official, a lawyer, who has been nominated for an important judicial position. It seems that several significant examples of plagiarism have been found recently in his academic writings. Some in congress have said the plagiarism issues demonstrate a disqualifying lack of integrity. Those who support the appointment cite the man’s professional experience, and that he is a graduate of Yale Law School.

It hit me as amusing that being a graduate of an Ivy League college should be a positive credential. I mean, haven’t grads of Ivy League schools like Yale and Harvard, along with other elite universities, been the ones leading this country? And look where they’ve led us. Maybe it’s time we stop accepting “graduate of Yale Law School” as a badge of honor, a credential conferring a right to leadership. Maybe it’s time we start searching news stories for words like, “a graduate of Eastern Carolina University,” of Northern Illinois, or Berea College. Can you imagine a voter leaning over the back fence to tell a neighbor about a congressional candidate and saying, “you know she was tops in her electrician apprenticeship class.” The neighbor nods and you can hear him thinking, “that’s good enough for me.”

There’s a commercial running on television right now that asks the question, “what if steelworkers ran the world?” It’s meant to be humorous, but in the ad this group of dirt covered, burley men fairly and efficiently take care of business in a manner you have to admire. What if steelworkers ran the world? The answer seems to be that it would be a better place.

There is little doubt we’ve become an increasing divided society. The most obvious marker has been the growing income disparity between average workers and top management. But economic equality is the smallest hope we’ve lost from democracy’s promise. We now readily accept education as occupational training, treating our children as future bricks in the road of commerce connecting industry and consumer. Respect for the arts, music and literature are gone, except when they lead to a commercial product. All that matters is generating workers with the tools in science and mathematics to keep the machine running. Why would a worker need the arts and humanities to do his or her job? These things are liable to encourage too much independent thinking.

It once was charged that nations encourage religion in order to drug the people and keep them in line. True enough, the practice of religion has often been stripped of its spirituality and made into a method of behavior control. Today the church has been eclipsed as chief “opium of the people” by action films, virtual reality games and mixed martial arts fighting. But inside many people lives a hunger for meaning that these cheap, hollow thrills can’t satisfy. If leaders in the church have their eyes open, they might see this as an opportunity to reassert the original purpose of faith, which is to create a new form of being out of simple flesh and blood.

Since the days of Machiavelli we’ve known that people who have enough of the expected comforts don’t often stop to consider how much greater life could be. But we could now be entering a new era in which our culture’s ability to deliver material benefits is in doubt. Instead of asking “what if steelworkers ran the world,” it might be time to imagine how the world would change if faith in God’s will drove reality. Can you imagine a world in which we awoke each day bathed in the joyful light of God’s Spirit?

When Scriptural Truth is Found, Grace Prevails

When sports teams fall on hard times they often get back on course by going back to basics. In football that would be blocking and tackling; in basketball, defense and rebounding. If you’re failing with the fundamentals, nuanced systems and fancy plays aren’t going to help.

Going back to basics could be good advice for the Christian faith at this moment in time. Lord knows change was needed even before conservatives started pointing fingers over their exclusive little manias. We took a step closer to the breaking point this week as angry Anglican conservatives met in Africa to stomp their feet over gays in the church and women in the pulpit. They claim to be doing this in the name of Christ, but as one prominent politician said recently, “Some people aren’t reading their Bibles.”

I don’t remember much from my college class in Principles of Biblical Interpretation (insiders call it hermeneutics to scare off lay people), but the one principle I do recall is really the only one worth recalling: Rule No. One -- “Let scripture interpret scripture.” This means that any individual verse or point of belief has to be understood within the comprehensive message. As I said, when in doubt, go back to basics.

I suppose not everyone is going to agree, but it seems to me the main defining ingredient of the Christian faith is grace. Some people, following the footsteps of those who opposed Paul’s message, hate that fact. They would prefer to give obedience to the law equal standing in a kind of offsetting tension which keeps us from going overboard. Unfortunately, that’s not the Bible’s message. That’s the message of men who lack faith in the message. The message of scripture is freedom, not constriction. God asks us to have faith that freedom will lead to better behavior, that grace and freedom will transform us into spiritual beings with a new capacity to follow the fundamental commands: to love God and our neighbors as ourselves.

Unfortunately, while many have faith in God they lack faith in other men and women. So just in case grace doesn’t get the job done, they start making rules such as no women in the pulpit and no gays or lesbians at the communion rail. I guess they figure Jesus -- and God -- must be so naïve that they need a little help understanding just how bad these humans can be. Still others, desperate to justify their human doubt, try to find little passages to support themselves, or attribute grace to Paul and say Jesus never mentioned it. To those people I repeat, you aren’t reading your Bible. Grace is there from cover to cover, and certainly in the teachings of Jesus. To illustrate how grace is central to Jesus’ teaching, this quotation from Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Assurance of Grace:

“… The knowledge and the certainty of God are a gift to those who strive after perfection without the illusion of having attained it — the ‘poor in spirit,’ and those who ‘hunger and thirst after righteousness’ (Matt. 5:3, 6). Those who imagine themselves righteous are consistently condemned. Those who strive after pure spirit are consoled in the inevitable frustration which attends their striving, because in their very search after perfection they are initiated into the true character of spirit and realize that perfection is love and not justice. Thus they obtain mercy while they learn to be merciful.”

As I said, back to basics: The message of God’s word is trusting love over justice, knowing we have the gift of God’s mercy and the power to pass it on. In the shorthand of our faith, we call it grace.

I’ve been on sports teams where players who insisted on being divisive, who ignored the fundamentals and did things their own way, were allowed to say goodbye and go their own way. With the doubters gone, the team was able to pursue its true potential.

So, let them seek their twisted little pathways. I plan to stick with the basics and walk in God’s grace. If God has a better road to success than the one in scripture, wouldn’t we have been told of it?