We sang, “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.” Now Christians climb the economic ladder. Rung-righteousness or “keeping up with Joneses,” is not the same as following Jesus.
But here we are. Marked by million-dollar homes and flashy cars, blessed are the richest of the rich. The top 1% are going to heaven.
A prosperity gospel, God’s love has been monetized. So, we are the apple of God’s eye if we have the biggest slice of the American pie. It is difficult for me to digest this and daily bread.
Blessed are they when they can afford private jets. Where is North American Christianity going with Jesus’ gospel?
I thought we were one body, members of one another. The Trinity—Source/Creator, Son and Spirit—could serve as a model of absolute equality, coeterni et coaequales (coeternal and coequal). But it is up for debate like the technical vocabulary and representation used to explain the coequal relationship of God in community.
Early Christians sold their possessions and shared property and resources based on need (Acts 4:32). Now we live as if the person who dies with the most toys wins.
“His special ministry to the poor, his beatitudes for the marginalized and the oppressed, his scathing condemnation of mammon and greed all resonate with the denunciatory power of the Hebrew prophets, whose descendent and heir he took himself to be,” Darrin M. McMahon writes in “Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea.” How did American Christians move so far away from Jesus’ position?
Maybe it was when we were getting into position, climbing to the top of the heap-hill to be named king and queen. Now status is everything.
“Status ultimately describes our specific placement as individuals within a network of others and how we are treated in that position,” W. David Marx wrote in “Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion and Constant Change.” It is used to “describe an individual’s position in an informal ranking of social importance.”
However, before wealth, power and positions divide us, we belong to the fellowship of human beings. Besides, these positions are moving pieces. Jesus said, “The last will be first and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16).
The prophet Jeremiah recorded the voice of God saying, “Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom; do not let the mighty boast in their might; do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth” (9:23). Because the focus of a believing community is not what you possess but what you pass on to others.
The non-canonical book of Enoch warned, “Woe to you who devour the finest of wheat, and drink wine in large bowls, and tread underfoot the lowly with your might” (96:4-5). And the prophet Amos agreed (2:7).
The Jewish Promised Land and the Christian’s kingdom of heaven both claim a future fellowship. But both monotheistic religions had provisions for annihilation, domination and exclusion as God’s chosen people for the former and as children of light regarding the latter.
“The monotheistic religions were in that respect both universalistic and dualistic: they proclaimed fellowship among the children of God but generally were quick to banish from the family those who rejected the faith,” McMahon wrote in “Equality.” He says, “Even in the most tolerant circumstances, infidels, unbelievers and apostates were rarely treated on equal terms. Distant human relatives at best, they were more often regarded as enemies and inferiors.”
Many Christians are taught to be “in the world but not of it,” to stay away from unbelievers and to rise above temptation, only later to look down our noses at those who were unable to. “To explain away the many differences that divided human beings on earth by reference to their ritual purity, their proximity to the sacred or their possession of virtue or grace was a common practice, and it allowed whole classes of sages, monks and priests who raised themselves above the rest,” McMahon explained. So, celebrity pastors join a long-standing tradition of “authority ranking.”
Mega and franchise churches match the American business model. Proof that some Christians pay lip service to higher ideals to include the redistribution of wealth, debt forgiveness, the release of prisoners and an egalitarian social order. Maybe we need to wipe the slate clean and start from the beginning.
Because the struggle for equality starts “in the beginning.” Christians have yet to settle on whether we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27) or born of men (Genesis 2:23). And maybe that’s why there remains a status-seeking church.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
