On Being Biased Against Self-Serving Economics

We live at a time when a few influential oligarchs have successfully employed the power of money, mass media and political action to take control of the mechanisms of civil order.  First they deprived the government of the means to regulate their greed, then they reduced taxes to starve the government of income sufficient to sustain the services that it provides, and now they are refusing to insure the creditworthiness of the government.  When they are finished they will have succeeded in dismantling FDR's "New Deal" and thereby put an end to the ideal of a government that accepts the responsibility for the plight of the poor in times of economic disruption.

At times like this it is wise to remember the words of Walter Brueggemann in his book on Peace:

Jesus' popular and more effective ministry was among those who for one reason or another were shut out, excluded from the benefits of the system.  In the New Testament, Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, freed the demon-possessed.  These are not to be understood as simple acts of compassion, but as dramatic challenges to a system that had deprived some of food, cut some off from health, and denied their humanness.  What all these outcasts had in common was their failure to honor the law.  And those who did honor the law could not get good jobs or positions of influence; nor could they enter the holy place.  They were cut off from access to God and to human well-being.

It was the law, the principle of order, that excluded them.  And the benefactors of the law, represented by the chief priests, scribes and Pharisees, viewed the law as God-given and eternally ordained.  Jesus came into conflict with them on behalf of the poor.  He exposed their law as a human device for manipulating power for the benefit of some and the disadvantage of others (Matthew 15:1-20; 23:1-36).  Jesus critique of the law was not made because the law was bad religion, but because it was used in the service of self-seeking politics and self-serving economics.