Last week I wrote about one of Jesus’ more challenging teachings: It is a parable where the owner of a vineyard recruits laborers to work in his vineyard. He goes out to the marketplace, rounds some folks up to work, agrees on a price to pay them and puts them to work. Then he goes back to the marketplace a few hours later and recruits more. Then does this two more times during the day. At the end of the day, wherein some have worked the whole day and others have worked for only an hour – he ends up paying all the laborers the same amount of money: The amount upon which the first workers had agreed. This upsets the people who had been working longer, but the vineyard owner essentially says, “You got what you agreed to, you have no business being angry now. My generosity is not your problem.”
I argued a couple things, but chief among them, I said – and maintain – that Jesus is arguing that God believes that every single person should be included in the work of building community, that every single person should have enough, and that God is more concerned with this than with our limited human concept of fairness. The laborers who say this isn’t fair are summarily dismissed by the character who represents God in the parable. And to be clear again, Jesus is speaking neither of some idealistic unattainable utopia, nor of a literal heaven after we die: He’s describing the way we should be striving to orient ourselves and our communities in the real world here and now.
We should be creating communities of belonging where – on very practical levels, everyone is in and everyone has enough.
And if the point isn’t yet fine enough, that means that if our country is structured in such a way that some people are not included, that some are marginalized, that some do not have enough – then our structure is anti-Christ, we fundamentally misunderstand God, and we have no business pretending we are Christian.
And if I’m being honest, when I say things like this, I’m afraid I sound like a Commie.
I am reminded of a quote from a Brazilian priest named Helder Camara. He said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”
Any critique of our current American economic system is often perceived and dismissed as communist or socialist or Marxist – unless the critique comes from someone saying it’s not capitalist enough. Martin Luther King Jr. was investigated repeatedly by our government who wanted to call him a communist despite his repeated writings explicitly condemning communism. One reason was it was one of the easiest ways to categorize and dismiss his ideas rather than engaging in them seriously. But another is simply that in America, if you criticize capitalism in any way, you must be a Marxist. And of course, I know many people who are fine with that label, who think of themselves as Marxist or socialist or communist.
I am not one of them. I am persuaded by King’s assessment of Marx’s philosophy: that it is explicitly and intentionally godless and anti-religion, that it supports a moral relativism where the ends justify the means, and that any serious implementation of communism has led to totalitarian rule that completely disregards civil liberties and individual rights, while failing to actually foster economic justice and social equity.
But acknowledging the horrific failure of communism does not and should not mean allegiance to capitalism. It’s a forced and false dichotomy and we do not have to accept it.
For many years, I identified as a libertarian – essentially, I had a radical adherence to the free market and a deep belief in individual rights as the primary truth to be honored in a society. When people critiqued capitalism, I was always quick to point out that true capitalism had never really been tried: That if only we had the courage to institute a pure and unfettered capitalist system with true meritocracy we would be wildly successful. Any critique of American capitalism could be waved away by saying we weren’t capitalist enough.
And all the while I was defending my idea of pure capitalism, I was confronted by Marxists who argued the same thing when presented with the atrocities of Communist countries – that true communism had not ever been tried, and in fact if it had it would be wildly successful. I was able to recognize the speck of dust in the Marxist eye, while ignoring the plank in my own.
I see now an emotional immaturity in my own prior beliefs. The idea that something just doesn’t work because it hasn’t been tried in its purest form is an ideologue’s dream: It insulates us from having to face the real world and the people who are affected every day by policy decisions of so-called capitalist or communist countries. There is no perfect expression of any ideology in the real world. We get what we get, and unless we want to be delusional, we have to check our utopian ponderings at the door and deal with the world as it’s given to us, and we have to deal with the versions of capitalism and communism that are actually lived out here and now.
I am no longer an idealist. And I am not a communist – or any kind of Marxist. But I have to say I am not a capitalist anymore either. The inequity on which it seems to thrive is too much for me. And I am persuaded by theologian Walter Brueggemann’s observation that in a capitalist system everything – even human life – is commodified.
Any political or economic system that allows or even causes some to starve, to go without, to be deprived of housing while others are able to live in luxury is anti-Christ. This of course, describes both capitalism and communism. People my generation were taught to understand capitalism and communism as polar opposites that are forever competing for dominance in the marketplace of ideas. But any serious attention paid to how both systems are played out in real time and across the globe tells us they are two sides of the same coin: the ends justify the means for those in positions of power to maintain their status quo.
And the thing is, what I am, what I try to be, what I want to be, what I hope to be, is a Christian. I don’t mean that in a naïve wide-eyed head-in-the-sand pie-in-the-sky way. I mean that I believe in a God who does not see us as commodities; a God who is too generous to give us what we deserve; a God who does not accept meritocracy; a God who did not create us so that some would be wealthy beyond description while others starved in the streets; a God who does not accept moral relativism; a God for whom the ends do not justify the means; a God for whom totalitarianism, authoritarianism, fascism, and nationalism are all anathema.
And believing this requires me to try to move beyond the binaries that have defined our political and economic understanding and seek to create more just, merciful, inclusive, and humanizing ways of sustaining community. This is not idealism. This is seeking to live into Jesus’ vision for God’s creation.
