COWS, Q & A
Fielding questions about COWS OF BASHAN
Q: How do you account for the fact that most people didn't choose the economic system they inhabit — they were born into it?
A: In the words of Dorothy Sölle, “I am responsible for the house I did not build, but in which I live.”
Q: Chrysostom's argument that all wealth has unjust roots is theologically provocative, but does it hold universally? Is the teacher who saves modestly for retirement morally equivalent to the billionaire who hoards?
A: No, they are not the same. But they are both enmeshed in the same system. To the point, it is very likely that the teacher who struggles to save enough money to live into old age is struggling precisely because of a system that allows obscene, unfathomable, disproportionate wealth (billionaires) to exist unchallenged.
Q: Is there such a thing as responsible wealth? And if so, what does it look like?
A: What is responsible is compassion and communion (sharing). Wealth cannot be anything but a means. What is responsible or irresponsible is the use. When we turn wealth into "the ends," that is irresponsible. Gregory Nazianzen wrote: "Poverty and riches, social contrasts and other such distinctions were late arrivals among human beings. They spread like epidemics. They were inventions of sin. But in the beginning, it was not so (Matthew 19:8)... Hold fast then to that primitive equality, forget subsequent divisions. Attend not to the law of the strong but to the law of the Creator. Help nature to the best of your ability, honor the freedom of creation, protect your species from dishonor, come to its aid in sickness, rescue it from poverty... Seek to distinguish yourself from others only by your generosity. Be like gods for the poor, imitating God's mercy." This is responsibility.
Q: Does prayer risk letting us off the hook too easily? Is "Lord have mercy" sometimes a way of outsourcing responsibility rather than accepting it?
A: Action that does not begin with prayer is simply a reaction. Prayer gives us the gift of time and contemplation so that our actions may be mindful and prayerful. Prayer void of practice becomes mere well-wishing. In the words of Rabbi Heschel, we must pray “with our feet.”
Q: You write and preach from a position of relative comfort. Amos was a shepherd and dresser of sycamore trees, an outsider. How do you preach this text authentically without performing guilt or distancing yourself from the very critique you're making?
A: Respectfully, you don't know my life, my story, nor my current reality. And we would agree, it isn't yours to assume. Even more, at the core of the human condition is poverty. We enter this world with nothing; we leave this world with nothing. It is a Franciscan idea that at the center of human reality is poverty. All attempts to flee this reality are mere projections. When we remember that we come from dust and to dust we shall return, we are reminded of what it means to be a human being — "born between urine and feces... to one day become the culinary delight of terrestrial worms" (Dr. Cornel West). When we remember this, our nature, we recognize that poverty affects all… one day we will all face something we cannot afford, buy our way out of, or finance into a different state. To be a human being is to be utterly poor. The only difference between the rich and the poor on earth is that the poor are blessed with this realization. The rich can float along in delusion.
Q: Does the Franciscan notion risk equating ontological poverty with material poverty in a way that minimizes concrete suffering?
A: Poverty is not only about having no food. Poverty is having food but no one to eat it with (Chris E.W. Green). Poverty affects all because all will discover, at some point in their lives, a lack that they cannot overcome (whether health, material, educational, or physical). To act as though one is not poor is to think that one can negate or transcend the human condition. When Christ says "blessed are the poor," what I believe he is getting at is: blessed are those who realize the state of the human condition. They are closer to reality. And when one awakens to reality (to God) there is a blessedness, because it is then that we realize that, in the end, all we truly have is God. Blessed are those who recognize the fragile, vulnerable nature of the human condition and never think they can evade it.
"The realm of God rests among those who have nothing but God." (David Ostendorf).
"What unites those addressed in the beatitudes and pronounced blessed is this: that they are driven to the very end of the world and its possibilities." (Günther Bornkamm).
It is at the end of the world and its possibilities (its delusions of self-security) where we can begin to rethink life in a generative way. In the words of the Proverb, give me neither riches nor poverty. For in my riches, I may arrogantly forget God, and in poverty, I may be tempted to dishonor God and steal.
Q: Does the Proverb risk spiritual bypassing, letting people feel something without changing anything material?
A: I don't think so, because it recognizes the real risks (hunger, disparities, and the rest). I think this places a greater responsibility on us. If poverty is an invention of sin, then our work is clarified: we are here to undo and loosen the bonds of oppression, to bring good news to the poor and undo these inventions.
Q: Is there a difference between respecting your congregation's agency and protecting yourself from the discomfort of naming something specific? Shouldn't a preacher tell people what to do?
A: If I have to tell people what to do, they are not truly doing it. A true action comes from within. I can encourage, edify, reprove, rebuke, and invite. I cannot force people, whether intellectually, homiletically, spiritually, or otherwise, into right action. For it to be true, it must emanate from within. Force, whether spiritual, psychological, or theological, is a dirty word to me. And force has many companions: compel, obligate, and so on. "To know God is to know what to do." (Dorothee Söelle). I am here to help facilitate that knowing. Then, the responsibility of knowing what to do becomes theirs. Genuine transformation can only take place from the inside out. Anything less would be mere externalism and behavior modification. This is why we end our services (Word and Table, Scripture and Eucharist) with the post-communion prayer: "And now Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do." To know what to do is the very heartbeat, the holistic spiritual and physical dynamic, of the Christian life.
Q: But isn't that vague? Didn't Amos name specific people and specific practices?
A: I agree, specificity matters. And the essay was specific, on numerous levels. But it does not lay out a moralistic plan. There is a difference between moralism and prophecy. Moralism says: “here is the list, now comply.” Prophecy says: “here is the reality, can you see it?” Formation says: “keep seeing it together, keep breaking bread together, keep praying together”… and invites us to say “yes” to what the Spirit is saying and doing, through and in our work.