Robbing Widows Blind

Thinking about a certain megachurch pastor in the area and how he connected himself with other megachurch pastors - one of whom is both unsavory and infamous - and how they are all about the money in the guise of being all about the ministry and God and how they have zero accountability because their churches are non-denominational and their elder boards (which in the schematic of CEO-like churches run by the head pastor act as, well, a board) are staffed by and headed by complete Yes Men.

Thinking in wider terms about how much is too much. Teachers are assailed for making around $50,000 a year with a kind of venom usually reserved for the evil landlord from vaudeville plays, while a "successful" (whatever that word means) pastor can make $600,000 (even as his church is millions of dollars in debt) a year. A "successful" businessman can make one-fourth to a hundred times as much.

Pastors Moneybags and Burns

The rubric for "successful" in this case is messed up, of course. How do we measure success? By the amount of money one is able to siphon from parishioners, customers, clients, workers, widows and the impacted communities? How we measure the success of teachers has already proven to be completely fallible, erroneous, and dangerous. So maybe we should redefine success, and re-calibrate its measurements thus. While we're at it, we we should reconfigure how we determine compensation.

Maybe success should look be assessed on the overall value our work gives to the world - in terms of the worker, her neighbors, the community, the world. In other words, the assessments should be tied to value and worth of the work and the worker (as they relate to the greater good of the world) as a much larger goal, rather than the explicitly limited topic of finances and how much money is generated/saved/returned. For in the former, we value people, we value work, we value life, we value knowledge, we value wisdom, we value relationships and everything that is good which we desire to share with one another. In the latter, money. When our work is tied into such a limited use, our work is of little use - it is stifled. And we, as workers and as beings, are stifled.

With this correction in goals, we must also ask what is it that we value. And who and how we value.

Additionally, when a pastor-as-CEO makes the primary goal money, he (or she) devalues the very flock that he is supposed to guide and care for. He looks upon his congregation not as fully human beings to be loved and nurtured and cared for, but as products and banks to be reaped and profited from. The widows no longer need care and solace, they need to be unloaded of their houses. The orphans no longer need protection, they are just in the way of the pockets of professional parents.

Now we must ask how to compensate. The worth is in the work and the worker, but again, we've tied it all to money and thus limited all three. Money should neither be the primary evaluation nor the primary compensation. For under that rubric, a few will position themselves to acquire the most while most are purposefully positioned to acquire little (and are thus sacrificed). Not only is this game not fair, it is not just. Not only are the rewards for the work not equitable, they are not humane. Some must starve while others have so much money they don't know what to do with it? This is cruel and unnecessary and does no promote value or work - it promotes brutality. A brutality that makes itself exceedingly well-known in Third World conditions that live within First World nations.

This is what I say: Let every teacher make just more than living wage. Allow every pastor to also make as much as a living wage. Every executive? Also, frame it on the living wage. Every farmer, harvester, technician, politician, homemaker, lawyer, accountant, mechanic, doctor, journalist, bureaucrat, deliverer, janitor, etc - all should make roughly a living wage - with modifications weighted to the worth of the work provided.

That may sound cruel. But this is also what I believe: Every home should be available and affordable and safe and functional for every person and family unit; every part of medical and dental care should be completely accessible, qualitative, and covered; every meal should be accessible, healthy, adequate, and free from poisons and heavy process,.

So, maybe that means a re-assignment of value and property. And maybe a James MacDonald won't have as much monetary property as before. But then, he won't have as much debt to worry (or make his congregation worry) about either.

That would seem to go well with the whole Jesus thing anyway. 

Three Things to Remember About Wealth, Work, and Those Diapers You Can't Afford

One:
Effectiveness of spending is related to how that money is put back into the economy. The richer one is, the less likely that money will go back into the economy. The poorer one is, the more that money will actually be invested into the economy itself.

Courtesy of Media Matters for America

Read over that a few times. Let it soak in. When the rich receive tax breaks, the US economy loses money. Not gains it. The money doesn't go into creating new jobs. They don't have a desperate need to spend that money on food, clothes, rent, transportation. Where does that money go?

Two:
Excessive wealth for the super-wealthy goes into tax havens. Into hiding. Literally.

Tax havens: Super-rich 'hiding' at least $21tn

That's 21,000,000,000,000 dollars US.

Twenty-one thousand multiplied by a million - a thousand times.

This is the amount that two billion people combined would take home if they were paid what I hope to be making by the end of this year. Let's keep in mind that roughly half the world is working for two dollars a day, for what that's worth.

That's the entire economy of the US and Japan - combined.

And this is a conservative estimate.

And this is just actual financial wealth hidden in banks and investment accounts - far from investing in jobs or being subject to taxes. This money is money that won't go towards infrastructure spending, or extending unemployment insurance. Or feeding the hungry.

The twenty one trillion dollars here doesn't even account for other properties that belong to the super-wealthy. Land, houses, boats...

Nor does it account for the fact that the very same people who are hiding all this money did not actually made this money by themselves. This wealth is the work of workers, of those the super-wealthy have hidden their earnings from: the assemblymen, the miners, the shippers, the farmers, the hands, the distributors, the drivers, the retailers. The workers CREATED these earnings - they created this wealth and surplus. But the men at the top decided that they own the workers and their earnings and have decided to withhold them from the workers, from their families, from taxes which can be also be invested back into the community, and from the economy itself.

Remember these three simple facts:

1. Giving more money to those who do not have much is better for the economy.
2. Those who have much have so much they don't know what to do with it. So they are hiding it away from the economy. Which means there will be more poor people, and more, and more. But at least they'll be okay.
3. The worker is worth her wages. If she earned you money, please pay her appropriately. 

The Business of the American Church

It's probably not a secret that I'm not a fan of Business-as-Usual in the American Church. I don't care much for consumerism in general (though I admit to being a consumerist), and as such, I don't care for the monster offspring of the American Church and Consumerism, MegaChurch.

Having said that, I can't help but fight the feeling that the following video is a bit of a hit job. It raises some important questions, but I'm not sure I don't have more questions about the accuracy of the video than I do about the business of the megachurch. Either way, I'm embedding the vid because I do think some questions need to be asked:

• Is the American Church a business?
• If not, then why is it run like business, with head pastors as CEOs and boards and committees and all that (not just in the megachurches, but in smaller ones too)?
• How do we settle with the passage of Jesus clearing the Temple of the moneychangers? Wasn't it convenient business?
• And didn't that convenient business prove to be a stumbling stone for those who couldn't get in the Temple to worship God?
• What is tithing?
• What is tithing good for?
• Shouldn't churches be more accountable than corporations and small businesses? Especially if they make as much money but do not have to pay taxes?

h/t to Jesus Needs New PR

For us, my wife and I do tithe. We feel that our church works within the community in a way that is loving, accepting, and taking care of the least of these, as well as in a serving and ministerial way to those who may already have. And we know for a fact that our pastors (currently car-less) are not eating high off the hog.

But most of the times when I've seen giving to the church used in the New Testament, it's been to support people in need. And I have to wonder: How much of what is given to American churches are given to those in need? How much is going to the already-wealthy? And how much is going to overhead, to continue the Church as a Business?