Jesus Is for Losers, John Boehner!

CROWLEY: This is a time -- an economic time when people are hurting and have been hurting for quite some time.
Do you think that someone who is as wealthy as [Mitt Romney] is, who has had as much privilege as he is, has a hill to climb to overcome that?
BOEHNER: No. The American people don't want to vote for a loser. They don't want to vote for someone that hasn't been successful.

Of course, Boehner may be speaking the truth, technically-speaking. The American people tend to get duped pretty easily and tend to think that being successful in the private sector (regardless of how he got successful in the first place *Ahem* Daddy's big bucks lead him to a vulture capital system where he takes over the acquisitions of businesses, bleeds them dry, lays off thousands of people, robs them of their severance and retirement funds, and has the government bail out those same retirements, while scoring big profits) means that one knows how to handle public sector money well, too - regardless of the fact that much of their private sector wealth was built from the public sector.

If the American people believe this, and believe that not being financially successful makes the vast majority of Americans losers, well, it's because we have our priorities f***ed the f*** up.

And by "we" I mean specifically "we American Christians". We still believe in the god of mammon rather than the God of Compassion. We still follow the path of The American Dream more so than the Way of the Cross. We still think in terms of failures and winners and losers in terms of how much money, how many children, how big a house, how much education.

But Jesus is for "losers." So should we be.


Steve Taylor, "Jesus Is for Losers"

For more, here is Catholic Moral Theology: Missing the Point on Poverty.

In her reflection on Matthew 16:15 “Who do you say that I am?” Mother Teresa offers a powerful answer, beginning with the standard theological statements from the creed (You are the Second person of the Blessed Trinity, etc) and concludes:

Jesus is the Hungry – to be fed.
Jesus is the Thirsty – to be satiated.
Jesus is the Homeless – to be taken in
Jesus is the Sick – to be healed.
Jesus is the lonely – to be loved.
Jesus is the Unwanted – to be wanted.

Jesus is not like the poor. Jesus is the poor. Jesus is not like the unemployed father who cannot find work and for whom food stamps are the only thing preventing his children from going to bed hungry. Christ is not like single mother working two low-paying part time jobs surviving only through access to housing and child care subsidies. Jesus Christ is that father. Jesus Christ is that mother.