Status Quo

Honesty does not come painlessly: “The truth will make you free” (St. Paul), but first it makes you miserable! That God is against the status quo is one of the hardest things to believe if you are a Christian who happens to profit by the status quo. In fact, most of us don’t really believe it, not in our hearts of hearts. We comfort ourselves with the thought that because our intentions are good (nobody gets up in the morning and says, “whom can I oppress today?”), we do not have to examine the consequences of our actions. As a matter of fact, many of us are even eager to respond to injustice, as long as we can do so without having to confront the causes of it. And there’s the great pitfall of charity. Handouts to needy individuals are genuine, necessary responses to injustice, but they do not necessarily face the reason for the injustice. And that is why political leaders and so many business leaders today are promoting charity: it is desperately needed in an economy whose prosperity is based on growing inequality. First these leaders proclaim themselves experts on matters economic, and prove it by taking the most out of the economy! Then they promote charity as if it were the work of the church, finally telling us troubled clergy to shut up and bless the economy as once we blessed the battleships.

from "Creedo" by William Sloane Coffin