Very Difficult To Do But There Is No Substitute For That

UNFORTUNATELY the next question that Walter Brueggemann took is inaudible.  From his answer I assume it was a practical question, as the most important questions we can deal with are, about how we can more effectively build the alternative to the predatory system, now.

HIS answer after joking that that was a question for Peter, that all he did was read "ancient texts"  was:

Obviously, it has to do with creating neighborliness.  It has to do with helping People position themselves in NETWORKS OF SUPPORT AND OBLIGATION.  And to abandon People without that kind of human network is to abandon them to death.  So, it is a matter of networking in very local ways, I think THAT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO DO,  BUT NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THAT.

And I think the case I cited about Nehemiah when he forced the have and have-not Jews into covenant with each other, he was creating a network of mutual responsibility and support.

And I think you can see that in Paul's letters as well.  You know, Paul in Galatians, almost back to back, he says "Everyone must bear their own burdens," and then, right quickly, he says, "BEAR ONE ANOTHER'S BURDENS."  You gotta do both.

That was my capitalization for emphasis.

I don't know about you but I've relatively frequently heard the first part of Paul's formula referred to by those who oppose benefits for poor People and those in destitution, pretending they're all about individuals being responsible for themselves.  Or from "new atheists"  who want to attribute lack of charity to Christians.   I've never heard anyone else cite the second part of it in which everyone is responsible for the burdens of their neighbors.  Perhaps liberals here pay a price for their Biblical illiteracy.  I don't know if in other places not so under the influence of what New England Puritanism decayed into, the stingy, self-righteous conceit of selfish individualism if the mutual sharing of burdens is mentioned but I never heard anyone mention that part of what Paul said.  I think that decay of Puritanism extends well into the middle-part of the country, by the way.  It would seem to be wide-spread among "white evangelicals" in Iowa.

And it's part of not only the selfish individualism of the Trumpian fascist right that is in opposition to networking of mutual obligation to those who have burdens heavier than our own, I found that well within the would-be hippy fad of my early adulthood.  I never could much buy into that because I'd seen a genuine alternative in The Reverend Martin Luther King jr's Beloved Community already.  And other never to be fashionable alternatives.  

The American myth of individualism, "rugged individualism" does decay into what Walter Brueggemann said, as posted yesterday:

So Donald Trump, for example,  has this long list of neighbors who he perceives as threats.  And it turns out that's a winning way to label People and then you don't have to be neighborly.

That's not only encouraged by personal selfishness but the paranoia instilled by TV and movies and pulp fiction.  Cabloid news specializes in that kind of acid thrown at any tendency towards neighborliness.  

Neighborliness, especially to People who have little to offer someone who has way too much already, is presented as a burden.  And there is a burden to it.  The exclusive neighborliness of the affluent based in a chance of taking or finding advantage instead of burden sharing is an entirely different thing.  It's easy for the affluent or those who aspire to be affluent to be nice to other rich people or those who can enhance their status, it's unthinkable for a Trump to do anything to the poor or destitute or even the middle-class but game them and exploit them for gain.  The American affluent ethos is the ethos of the con man.  

The entire success of American Republicans since Eisenhower and even before was the management of the worse and worst tendencies among the middle-class and working class, setting them against their neighbors, their fellow workers in competition, managing them and their often media created fears and anxieties and pressures to conform and then setting them against THOSE BELOW THEM IN WEALTH.  The insularity of white communities under a color line which could enjoy a pittance of privilege was enough to set them against Black People, other People, even other whites within that category, to their mutual harm and for the managed benefit of those with real wealth.  Our institutions are largely part of that, including the elite educational institutions and even the allegedly Christian churches.  That may be most true for those states which longest maintained legal segregation, which is reflected in their generally abysmal standard of living for even poor-whites and their depressed incomes, healthcare and education. But I doubt there is a single state in the United States where it is not true to one extent or another.  In New England it is often far less formal but it is there, often tied to where someone went to school or the wealth of their family.  

It even extends well into the would-be left in which snobbery and class is certainly a determinant of things.  Marxists who see the underclass as "masses" to be managed, not individual People to be supported and to support a local network of mutual love and kindness hold as ruthless a view of life as the financier and investor class who they allegedly oppose, which is why Marxism with real power instead of theoretical imagining turns out to be grindingly oppressive.  

The United States with its legacy of genocide and land stealing and slavery and, yes, subjugation of Women is an especially hard sell for what Brueggemann is pointing to in the Jewish tradition of Jesus and Moses.  Which is one of the reasons you can find Republican-fascists these days rejecting the Jesus of scripture for a comic book white-supremacist fascist superhero of their illiterate imagination.

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As I will never stop pointing out, lies and false witness and slander are an absolute guarantee that that kind of neighborliness can't happen.  The Constitutional permission to lie is one of the most serious obstacles to it because of our own indigenous founding myth.  I was thinking of hearing one of the liberal-lawyers of MSNBC, this one directly from the civil rights community, reciting the insanity that Donald Trump had "a right to lie" which always infuriates me.  I don't think the elite-university trained lawyer  even really thought about what he was saying as he said it.   He certainly didn't take the consequences of such an insane notion into consideration.  So much of the bedrock of predatory systems is a matter of such conventional thinking.  Even such obviously irrational thinking.   

I will try to conclude this series tomorrow with a rather chilling prediction about the future of the Church which could be the best thing that could happen to it.