Prison is a GROWTH INDUSTRY???

The other day I was listening to NPR doing a piece on how the downturn in the Stock Market was affecting small towns in New York state (as one example of a larger problem).  The global economic crisis is causing states and municipalities to slash their budgets which has a bigger impact on small towns that may not have access to as many resources as a larger city.  But, the stock market downturn is also causing businesses to lay-off and close down which greatly affects small towns where a major portion of the economy is fueled by one or two businesses.  A corrections officer for a detention facility located in one of these New York towns was interviewed for this piece voicing concern over the state cutting positions in the prison system and stopping some of the prison programs.  This correction officer referred to prison as a growth industry during economic harship. 

My reflections are in no way intended to criticize or demean the correction officer’s comments.  This is a person who works in a occupation that involves an incredible amount of risk and danger and should be commended for being willing to take on a dangerous responsibility.  But, his comments reflect our culture’s perspective and view of the world being shaped by business mindset.  This is not necessarily wrong but neither is it necessarily healthy for all circumstances.  To refer to prison as an industry transforms convicts into products to be packaged and marketed to borrow business terms. 

This business mindset allows government, society in general, to develop institutions and programs for accomplishing tasks that fail to realize or account for the humanity of people.  People are not objects that are bought, sold, traded, or manufactured like lifeless commodities in the business world.  People are beings of love whose significance and meaning in life is not given by ecnomic/business models no matter how hard we try to make this so but in relationships that reveal ourselves to one another.  True, authentic relationships can’t be commodified but are freely entered into with no strings attached. 

The prison system is not a business or an industry but a means whereby society attempts to bring justice (no matter how flawed) for the victems and transformation for the victimizer (or at least this should be the goal).  To say prison is an industry not only dehumanizes criminals who, according to the teachings of Christ are still human beings (Jesus ate and had fellowship with the criminal elements of his society such as the woman caught in adultery and Matthew the tax collector) but it sells justice to the highest bidder.  Industry is about producing a product that a business markets to people in order to make a profit.  Prison is about justice and peace in society.  It’s not a business or a growth industry but a part of society whose goal isn’t growth or decline but ensuring society is able to function in a holistic way.

The Machine (Reality Check Conversation)

Every year as Christmas approaches I often say or hear people saying “Christmas comes earlier and earlier every year”.  This year with the economic turmoil found around the world it will probably come even earlier so that those retailers that are still alive will be able to make a profit in this increasingly unprofitable quagmire.  And so once again we’re confronted with the spectacle of a consumer Christmas from which there appears to be no escaping. 

That Christmas is a time to make money shouldn’t surprise us because it’s a natural part of the system we’re all connected to.  A system that promises to satisfy our need for things that give us happiness and pleasure because it tells us that if we’re not happy then we’re not living.  To be happy is to have anything we desire so long as it doesn’t harm any other.  But, if we don’t have access to fulfilling these desires or they’re threatened by others then we find means to keep and protect the very stuff that rots when we leave this world.  Of course, some have more than others and this upsets the balance of the system forcing us to create means for all to have an equitable share in the pie and ensure that the whole enterprise keeps on functioning (government bail out plans). 

On and on the wheel of consumption turns like a great machine that continues to generate and produce services, products, materials, whatever it is that a person could ever want to be happy.  But, we’re never happy because our faith is in a product, a thing, an object that in and of itself is nothing without the power given to it by our desire for it.  Once we desire this thing, believing that possession of it will lead us to happiness then it controls us; we’re willing to do whatever to get it from borrowing to credit, any financial means provided to us to allow us to monetarily access happiness.  This is a fundamental ingredient for successful advertising in that it motivates us to desire something by informing us that true happiness is to be had.  

But, if we were truly happy then we would no longer need to purchase things and the economy would come to a stand still.  Fortunately, for marketing and the economy we’re not happy and so we need, or so we believe, to purchase new products that are constantly being created to fulfill that elusive need.  Except that true happiness can’t come from having something but only comes from living a life of significance and meaning in the context of community.  Our humanity is relational in nature and without fulfilling that relational need we’re left feeling empty and anxious.  So the true need is not happiness but peace between self and neighbor. 

This Christmas we’ll opt out of this peace because it can’t be purchased and therefore can’t be boxed into pretty wrapping paper that allows us to take it home and put it on the shelf and say now I have one too.  This Christmas we’ll feed the economic machine that has given birth to our false desire for happiness thru materialism, consumption, and desiring the latest thing.  And this Christmas more land, more water, more air, will be stripped, raped, abused, polluted to provide the material output that leads to a happiness that’s over as soon as the wrapping is off of the gifts.  This Christmas we’ll destroy more of ourselves and the world we live in like an addict who can’t escape their own prison.

It’s a machine that sucks blood like gasoline

Demanding our life to grease it’s gears

Till there’s no green left 

STORY OF LAZARUS

A wealthy man once owned a vast estate where the basic needs of life were never in doubt.  He never knew what it was like to wonder whether you would have a roof that didn’t leak or bread to feed your children.  The man’s power was like that of a god who has unlimited resources for fulfilling their needs.  He found significance, a sense of self-worth in the accumulation of his wealth.  No longer was living about enjoying Creation but about getting, getting, getting more and more of whatever he desired and whatever filled life with happiness.  Worse yet, the more he had the more power coursed through his veins making him drunk with greed and allowing him the horrible ability to destroy others as needed. 

At the gates to the vast rich man’s estate sat a homeless beggar named Lazarus who lost the little he had and held little if any hope of having anything.  Day in and day out Lazarus understood what it was like to starve and wonder if this was the end as the rain, sun, cold, and wind beat upon his bare skin that was never washed and smelled like a rotten stain.  He could gaze upon the rich man satisfying every desire of his heart desperately wanting nothing more than moldy bread that sustained his miserable life.  One day death relieved Lazarus of the hellish life he lived on earth and to Heaven he went to rest with father Abraham. 

The rich man while relieved to not have to be reminded of life’s precariousness in Lazarus’ begging discovered that no matter one’s riches death comes knocking to everyone’s door.  Upon crossing into death the rich man found himself in a place of torment and burning fire that stripped away all the things he’d ever accumalated except his naked desire that could never be met adding fuel to the fire’s torment. 

The rich man looked up to see across a great divide Lazarus in a place of peace and light resting in father Abraham’s company.  His ensnared and burning mind still saw others as his means to self pleasure and begged Abraham to send Lazarus with water.  But, Lazarus was free from suffering, enjoying the life that was never given to him before death and no longer answered to the rich man’s schemes regardless of his pleas. 

So the rich man begged Lazarus to send someone to warn his brothers who were still living that Hell awaits those who live for themselves and don’t provide for others.  But, father Abraham told the rich man that he and his brothers were already told everything there was to know about how to live a real and true life by the prophets.  Even if someone came back from the dead to warn them they wouldn’t listen because of their self-centeredness. 

In Christ’s death meaningless consumption is confronted

At the cross the wounds of the machine’s teeth are healed

Death’s corpse is buried to fill our veins with the Resurrection’s life

In the Body of Christ we become human in the communion of peace

All we need is love that makes the world turn round

Coming Together (Reality Check Conversation)

How do we bring the world together to be united without forcing our opinions and perspectives upon one another?  We live in a day of ideological battle and blood shed where beliefs become weapons of mass destruction motivating whole groups of people to slay and mutilate another human being and at times even take up arms against them.  Beliefs, the system of assumptions and perspectives we construct to understand the world are transformed into ideas considered to be facts, reality making what is created to become a god who avenges the other, those who do not adhere to the same set of beliefs.  

What motivates a person or group to dehumanize, demonize those who are different from them?  How does following Christ’s command to love our neighbors as ourselves lead us away from beliefs into a lifestyle?  What keeps us from eating with those who are our enemies?   

The event, the story of the cross challenges all of life not because it’s a belief created by religion but because it’s an event that confronts the injustice of the world.  The unjust death of a person who, because of love, willingly died, effects every human being throughout history with a call to love others as human beings and resist, fight against the self-centered desire to force oneself upon another.  With the cross there is no longer divisions of rich and poor, ethnicity, race, or position because everyone is the same at the cross in being confronted with their own selfishness by a love that calls everyone to follow the way of love.  (Colossians 3: 1-12)

bound by the ego’s desire for power

we rape and kill to accomplish our will

seeking to gain to hide our heart’s pain

our song of death masks the need to belong

to the love on the cross where all become one in love

In a neighborhood shattered by economic despair with people chained to a past where those with power used them for their own purposes.  A place where houses sat burned out like souls without a body when the heart becomes too heavy and no longer cares.  That the continuing struggle for a new way, a new humanity, a call to change that transcended despair and healed the souls of the broken with the salve of love.  Where possibility confronted the chains of slavery and lies of powers that demonize the good God created and heal the image of the Divine humanity was blessed with.  

A black man walked down the street, his street, his neighborhood, where he lived.  A black man walked in peace with no ill will and no malice other than to play a joke on the white boy whose parents he was friends with.  A white boy behind his fence, at his house, in his his neighborhood, the same hood, saw the black man and was gripped fear of one who seemed a stranger.  Running to a place of safety the boy fled being driven by fear.  But, what was he running from? 

How does the cross of Christ bring the world together? 

consumer faith: what, which, god

I recently read about a pastor praying for one of the candidates and mentioning the prayers of the other party as being to another god.  Religion, in particular Christianity, always plays some role in presidential elections and politics in general.  But, this election seems to highlight more than ever a divide within Christianity which isn’t necessarily bad until it becomes a means for judging and condemning those who don’t share one’s  own views.  This is ironic in that Christianity is a religion that claims adherence to a Christ who preached love for enemies and forgiving those who have sinned against you.  Considering this justaposition between the Christian faith(s) being embodied in the presidential election and the faith espoused by Christ there is a need to deconstruct what passes for Christianity in the US. 

The revelation we find in Christ of a transcendent God who steps into our world and becomes one with it through the Incarnation of Jesus having taken on flesh thru the Virgin Mary challenges the notions, ideals and systems of belief found in much of American Christianity.  Starting with the Incarnation of Christ we are confronted with the Transcendent fused with humanity which deconstructs American idolatry by asking what are we putting our faith in?  What ideology have constructed based on our own self-centered notions of truth?  Have we recreated god in our own image(s)?  How can a Christian assume or infer that the Jesus an opposing political campaign is praying to is a different Jesus than the one they’re praying to? 

We can assume the other’s Christ is not our Christ if we have reduced him to an impersonal ideology void of the transforming power of the Incarnation and Resurrection.  The Christ of Scripture has taken on flesh and blood to conquer death and give new life to all humanity transcending economic, social, political or cultural barriers.  At the cross there is neither republican or democrat but raw humanity stripped of it’s ideology, religion, beliefs, prejudices and perspectives so that we stand naked before the God whose love is so powerful that it faces and conquers death even for those who are enemies of God.  This love transcends human efforts to do good and exposes all political systems as self-righteous means to power.  It’s not that the efforts of either or any political party don’t have good intentions because I think there is good in every religion and every political system.  But, every religion and political system also has greed and self-centered seeking after power to fulfill personal agendas; this is reality.  It’s also why Christianity should never identify with a political system but seek the welfare and good of all humanity and every part of the world. 

I think it’s time to put a challenge to Christianity especially those forms that use politics to promote their agenda.  Either preach the gospel of Christ where there is suffering on the way to the cross of death giving salvation and new life to the world in the living resurrection or shut up and stay out of politics.  The political bantering on the part of most religious groups in the election season is sickening, dangerous and a hinderance to the real issues facing the American people.  If Christianity can’t preach, reflect, reveal, uncover the true and living Christ who has conquered death to give hope and new life then what passes for Christianity is a shame and needs to be done away with. 

Both candidates for president are making appeals to the Christian community and both candidates have different perspectives on faith issues and moral issues.  These differences or the candidates positions should never garner allegiance from any Christian who claims to follow the Christ who has transcended human barriers to create a community of people where there is no longer a division based on ethnicity or beliefs but one Body of Christ.  Instead it’s time for the church to challenge all political parties, regardless of their claims, to stand up for the poor, protect the widow and orphan, and stand for justice (not Quantomino bay style but Christ justice).  The church can only truly be prophetic in this cultural arena when it submits to no candidate but understands all candidates as being created in the image of God and worthy for office based on their abilities and calling.