A Growing Evil

In 1923 G.K. Chesterton was writing for the paper called The Illustrated London News. In March of that year he was in the middle of a debate between Socialism and Capitalism. He argues that neither of the speakers knew what they were talking about and neither of them knew the real problem in England. "They do not refer to the real problem of the present civilisation, which is not property, but the disproportion of property, and, for most people, the absence of property." He complains that the small farmer can not make a living from his own farm and has to go to work as a farm laborer on a commercial farm. Chesterton sees that the small craftsman cannot compete with factories. He concludes, "If we want property to be a part of the commonwealth, we must make it common, not in the sense of a communal ownership, but in the sense of a common experience." (March 31,1923).

The amazing thing is that Bob Herbert in the New York Times (November 30, 2010) reports the same evil in American economy. The bankers, the corporations have been experiencing the greatest profit period in the history of American economics. At the same time that people have been losing their homes, the unemployment rate has been at high levels, the profits of American corporations have been rising and the salaries and bonuses have continued to rise. The gap between the elite rich and the average American citizen has continued to grow and the number of people in the poverty level has been increasing. More and more wealth has become concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. The billionaires have continued to buy political offices and to buy government positions either by running for office themselves or by paying for others to run.

It does not take a Ph.D in history to know that such a growing division is not good for the future of a country. It is the fertile ground for revolution. It is the condition out of which terrorists grow. It is the condition for all kinds of "populist powers" to arise. It is also the sign of a very evil and demonic system which can only end up in its own destruction. If dealing with this problem is condemned as socialism by Glenn Beck and others, then I would urge us to be socialist. If dealing with this is Social Gospel and a heresy, then I want to be a heretic and promote the Social Gospel. There runs throughout my reading of Scriptures the expectation that we will share the blessings of creation together.

The Good News and the Bad News

If I was reading the papers correctly, things have begun better this holiday season than last year. More people at the mall; more people buying big ticket items; more people shopping and spending. That is the good news. Americans buying things is the engine that drives our economy. And the holiday season is the month that makes or breaks most retailers. Which puts us as a society in a very strange place. We are desperate to encourage shopping in this month after Thanksgiving. We want people to buy and buy in uncontrollable excitement.

And yet there is the every increasing pressure to divest our society of its Christian trappings. There is this economy need for the holiday season to be big and to be a time of great shopping and gift giving. But there is an alternative pressure to diminish the reason for the celebration. There has been some effort to try to commercialize the religious traditions of other religions and to create new holiday celebrations which could be used to fuel shopping. It is not an easy tight rope to be walking.

So one might read the data that was being reported as another piece of evidence for good news. The retailers were reporting this week that there were more and more shopper out this Black Friday and that most of the shoppers were out shopping for themselves. They were not buying gifts for others. They were buying items they had been wanting and waiting for the sales. The consumer is back and he/she is just as selfish as every. That is the good news. Buying for themselves the big ticket items, the high tech gadget, and the luxury item long delayed. That is good news from two sides. One, it may mean that this year's bottom line will be black and two, the more selfish the shopping the further it gets away from the Christmas spirit and Christian concept of gifts for others. We will have a robust economy and we will not have to worry about the shopping being inspired by the Christian ideals of gifts for others. That may be both the good news and the bad news.

Job Openings

In these tough economic times with unemployment at such high levels it is important to keep an eye out for job openings. I don't know a lot about the position but I did read a report that said that the Roman Catholic Church was in short supply of Exorcists.

Maybe like a lot of people at my age the only exposure we have had to the work of an exorcists is at the movies. If that is the case then one can understand why the position has not had a lot of people volunteering for it. The report I read did not talk about how many positions were open nor what the salary was nor what the requirements for the position were.

The whole idea of Exorcists raises so many questions about life and the world in which we live. There are so many cases in life where people try to say that they were not responsible because something else made them do it. Flip Wilson always gave the Exorcists an opening, "The Devil made me buy that dress." There are defenses made that abuse as a child made a person do harm to another person. There are defenses that drugs made people do things. Jealousy or hatred dominated a person and made them do some evil. There have been stories of young people who have become possessed by some of the on-line video games. So the idea of being able to cast out those powers that have "taken control" over an individual is a logical solution to the problem.

The idea of an Exorcists also is a logical occupation in a world that is seen as a battle ground between the forces of good and the forces of evil and that some of those evil forces can capture human subjects. St Paul talks about the battles and not all of them are human powers. "And though this world with devils filled, should threaten to undo us" sang Martin Luther in his hymn. If the world is filled with devils, then we need all the different departments of war and the Exorcists would make sense.

Maybe the job of Exorcists is going begging because there are fewer and fewer people who believe in that kind of warfare. Maybe we think that different kinds of weapons are needed. Maybe we think we have better weapons for the battle. Maybe some are like me and are not sure about all the ways that evil can be present in our lives. But somewhere it does suggest that all of it can be cast out by prayer so maybe if we engage in regular devotions we can avoid the need for exorcists.

"Back When We Were Grownups"

I am about to finish another novel by Anne Tyler. This time the novel is called "Back When We Were Grownups." As I think about the other novels that I have read by Tyler, it seems to me that she, like most preachers, has one major story line and she tells that story in a lots of different ways. Anne Tyler seems to spend a lot of time and thinking about the way people look at their own lives. She suspects that most of us think that our lives should have been different. We wonder how in the world did we ever get here. In this version of the story, there is a fifty year old widow who looks at her life one day at a picnic and suddenly realizes that she has been living somebody else life. That somewhere back there she took one fork in the road and it was the wrong fork. She was in college, dating her high school sweetheart, and suddenly at a party a new older man with three little girls sweeps her off her feet and in two months they marry. She drops out of college and she takes on the responsibility of raising those girls, having one of her own, and running the business for the extended family.

She thinks that she was a victim of fate. That events just happened to her so fast that she was swept along. Other people's decisions and wishes were followed and she lacked the courage and the will to take charge of her life. She tries to go back and see what it might have been like to take the other fork in the road. The story is the consequence of that examination.

Surely there is a great deal of material for the question of free will and the providence of another will. Is she being molded to become whom she was created to be even if she did not know that she was supposed to become this new person? How do we make our decisions and what credit or responsibility do we have for what happens to us. Tyler works in a strong sense in some of her works the obligation to accept and live with the consequences of our actions. The interplay between "stuff happens" to us and makes us do things and our human responsibility to make decisions is a major part of her novels.

So often when we do look back at our history and the things that have happen to us that were surprises and that came unwanted there does seem to be a connected thread of Providence that seems to be moving us towards a place that is good for us.