nickels, dimes, America, & Jesus
Here’s something I’ve been delinquent with, so it’s about time I got to it. Lisa and I had to travel down to Louisiana this spring to close up her granny’s home. She had died a few years ago but it had taken things this long to develop to the point where we could finally take care of things. On my way down there I bought the marvelous book, Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
“Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them, inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the ‘lowliest’ occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.”
My favorite quote of the book comes from a passage where she relates going to a Christian tent revival meeting somewhere in Maine just to escape her cramped apartment on a Saturday night, and to her it “sounds like the perfect entertainment for an atheist out on her own.” Here’s the quote:
“The preaching goes on, interrupted with dutiful ‘amens.’ It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and the need for a hike in the minimum wage. But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth. I would like to stay around for the speaking in tongues, should it occur, but the mosquitoes, worked into a frenzy by all this talk of His blood, are launching a full-scale attack. I get up to leave, timing my exit for when the preacher’s metronomic head movements have him looking the other way, and walk out to search for my car, half expecting to find Jesus out there in the dark, gagged and tethered to a tent pole” (p. 69).
I found it a sometimes sad, sometimes funny, sometimes fascinating but always shocking book. I think we need to hear her scathing critique on popular forms of Christianity that neglect the issues of justice. You’ve got to read it.
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Wow - great quote. I often wonder what Jesus or the apostle Paul would think of what most North American Christians call Chrisitianity. It seems that spiritual people who have a passion for justice issues, poverty, equality, etc. are somehow branded “liberals” or leftists. Our “burdens” as followers of Christ should reflect both the Crucifiction & the Resurection of Jesus — the pain and the prosperity — the bad and the good — helping the needy and rejoicing with those who have just had a need met.
Regarding this book I think Canada (with its social safety net) is probably a better place to be poor than the US — even though people say we are not a “Christian Nation” anymore — I’d say our overall Government services are more “Christian” than the USA’s “every man for him(her)self system.
thanks richard… i’ll loan you the book if you want to read it
It can be argued that the church gave up much of it’s duties to government. The very poor are very often assisted. We only have to go to the poor in some other countries to understand what “poor” really means. No money to buy food. No money for pencils and paper for an otherwise free education, hence, no school. No money, no doctor or too sick to get there. The list could go on. Yet, with all we have here, there are so many that miss our attention. When I say “our”, I mean me and the Christian Church. Some think it enough to do a meal around Christmas and that is it. It has been said that if we have food on the plate, clothes on our back, a roof and change in our pocket, we are in the top 8% of the world’s population. I really wonder what Jesus is going to say.
We live in a land that has made the accumulation of stuff a divine right AND a divine attribute surrounded by a consumer culture that has ’shoved us into it’s mold’ while we weren’t looking. We’ve got a Church that is more concerned about our kids reading Harry Potter books than they are about the average amount the kids are spending on everything from fast food to video games.
I’m not anti-stuff but I think the points made here are well taken and the church in North America needs to start paying attention to - that means me. We can’t become “all about” economic equality but we can care more about the lives of the people around us and reclaim the value Jesus placed on feeding, clothing, visiting and inviting in.
The ‘revival meeting’ is a powerful metaphor for a segment of the church that has pursued a ’spiritual experience’ contained in a meeting or series of meetings for the biblical/Jesus spiritual experience of laying our lives down for each other and taking care of widows and orphans.
There’s a whole other segment that’s traded ’spiritual experience’ for political power and the exercising of our ‘rights’ in exchange for the exercise of our gifts and sharing the love of Christ. How ironic that the one force that could make someone love me who hates me has been set aside for the pursuit of the power of the law to make you like me.
Sorry all, I’m cranky today. I just sent my son and one of my best friends off to Northern Ireland.