The Radical Christian

“WHERE THERE IS NO VISION, THE PEOPLE PERISH” (PROVERBS 29:18 NRSV) No vision and you perish, no ideal and you’re lost. Your heart must ever cherish some faith at any cost. Some hope, some dream to cling to, some rainbow in the sky, Some melody to sing to, some service that is high.” ~Author Unknown

I began to write this issue of The Radical Christian a month or two ago. I had come across the above quote and intended to expand upon the thoughts it contains. I never got any further. The thoughts upon which the quote touches are important and profound and implicative. What was I missing?

Today it came to me in a jolt. I was watching a short, very short, documentary about the bus and lunch counter actions of the civil rights era and had just finished a conversation with someone about the generalized lack of vision in today’s world. People are suffering today: low wages, jobs without meaning, poverty, homelessness, hunger, incarceration, addiction, diminished standards of living, war, huge inequities in wealth and income. What is it that we, as a society, don’t/won’t/can’t see?

The anonymous author exhorts us that we must have a vision, or we will perish. Yet, before we have A vision, we must have vision itself. Why is it that a huge cross-sected majority of Americans cannot “see” the economic and social and political truths that lie before us in plain sight? Why aren’t we outraged, why aren’t we rising up against such a blatantly and patently unfair and unjust system? WHY?

Despite more than sixty years, nay 160 years, of civil rights work and progress in America, we are scarcely less racist. And much “progress” is being rolled back. Rights once won are being lost. What will stop the bleeding of American “values?” What will it take for people to say “enough is enough?” 160 years ago, churches were complicit in the maintenance of slavery and denial of civil rights to blacks. 85 years ago, they were complicit in the rise of Nazism and Fascism. Today, in their deafening silence, they are once again complicit in the rebirth of a vicious right wing that threatens freedom around the world. Are we blind?

The right wing, those elite who would deny the people fundamental rights, has always had an effective tactic for defending injustice. It’s called “division,” and it’s being used by the elite more effectively today that at any time since Hitler rose to power. We are a people being divided against ourselves. And the sad fact is that we are deeply complicit in assisting the dividers. We believe in the “American Dream,” where anyone can start out as a janitor and rise to be president of the company. That creates a socio-economic ladder, on which, in order to rise up we must defeat the person above us so we can take their place and, at the same time, kick down the person below us, so they don’t get up to our rung. We are driven by fear, instilled by the elite and powerful, but which we also adopt in our own lives. We stand up for ourselves, but not for others, and this means keeping others down. Hence the expanding division which we see daily.

What happened to the labor movement? Once upon a time not so long ago, one of every three American workers belongs to, and benefitted from, a union. Today, 5%. They got big and rich and then bureaucratic, now impotent. Churches have never responded to their clear call of moral authority in the name of justice; they, too, are complicit in their lethargy and quest for survival and power. To whom shall we turn for leadership, before it’s too late?

From whence shall come a vision behind which people will unite against the authoritarianism that seeks to enslave us? Is there any hope? Will people ever remove the log from their own eyes? Perhaps we don’t yet have answers, so the least we can do is see reality with clarity. Then we might become ready to say “enough is enough,” and THEN we might actually do something! Without leaders to lead, perhaps we will begin with developing eyes which see and tongues which speak and hands which help. So I pray.