Make love, not gongs

I will scratch my original idea about writing on Fridays and will instead write whenever I feel moved to do so.

Recently I saw an email about the direction the American government is going. I don't want to post the long email here but you can read a copy of it on another blog: http://monroetalks.com/forum/index.php?action=printpage;topic=12120.0 While I understand what the writer is trying to say, the part of the diatribe that really makes me cringe is this:

"The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check? Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this country."

This writer and all propagators of this email just became clanging symbols. In an ancient Greek letter, the writer Paul says, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." This email lacks any sense of love and is thus one long clang on an incredibly complex issue. You see, this email is a polarizer. It's going to make people deal with each other out of fear, not love. It's going to push people to extremes, not bring them together. It seeks to over-simplify and not discuss how difficult the issue really is.

You see, that single mother with four children probably grew up as a single child. Did she deserve to be born in that situation? No. Why she grew up there is a mystery of God. The pompous boss probably grew up in a loving and hard working family. Did he deserve to grow up there? No. Why he was born into that family and not some poor family in Africa is a mystery of God. Did he work hard? I am sure of it and he is apparently very proud of it. But he also had supportive parents who nurtured him. His parents probably knew that the first three years of his life were the most important in regards to cognitive development. The single mother possibly grew up in a family that had no idea what cognitive development event meant. Did he deserve his nurturing home environment and she deserve her poverty stricken environment? No. Should I go on?

Everything we have in life is a gift. A free gift. Just because one person seems to have more gifts than another does not mean they deserved more gifts because that’s called a fancy term by theologians: works righteousness. Dave Ramsey is this personal financial guy I enjoy listening to and when someone on his radio program asks how he is doing, he always responds, “Better than I deserve.”

The issue is complex. Not simple. Why that woman is at home, dependant on welfare, is not a simple issue, it is complex. The email attempts to oversimplify the situation and paint her (and all similar poverty-stricken people) broadly with a single lazy brush. There is no love. Only a harsh clanging tirade is heard and only appreciated by those whose ears are still ringing with the ignorant reverberations of other bigoted propaganda laden with fear tactics.

Additionally, we don’t even know the accomplishments that the young woman has made. C.S. Lewis challenges this email writer when he said:

C.S. Lewis 'Mere Christianity' page 86-87
Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. When a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God's eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown in winning the V.C. When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.

It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as friends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But god does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological make-up is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or worst of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to good digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was. There will be surprises.
http://www.geocities.com/ilgwamh/cslewis.html

So to the writer and promoters of this email, please stop. This is not the type of rhetoric that is going to win anyone to your side. It’s only going to further darken the perspectives of a people already possessing a fading view of love. While I may find myself agreeing with much of the political reasoning of the email, I find myself completely devaluing the email due to its fear laden and distasteful approach.