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Sunday, January 01, 2012

Basic Human Needs
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 422 Views :: 2 Comments :: Dr. Michael Brown

Before the tents came down, I walked through Occupy Wall Street, read the signs, listened to the voices, and tried to discern what was at the heart of their message. What I heard was: “We want jobs, we want affordable mortgages, we want to be able to feed and educate our children. And the current economic system is not delivering.”

You know who else is saying that? (And when I had this epiphany, it almost knocked me over because the two groups are polemically opposite.) The other group who has been saying, “We want jobs, we want affordable mortgages, we want to be able to feed and educate our children, and the current economic system is not delivering” is the Tea Party. How strange to realize that those two groups, so profoundly different, are singing the same refrain.

The followers of those two movements will vote for different slates of candidates next autumn. Their proponents have very different ideas as to how the economy should be strengthened. The Tea Party challenges labor unions to soften their demands and make it possible for corporations to hire Americans and produce goods at home. Occupy Wall Street challenges corporations to use more of their stored resources to hire Americans and produce goods at home. Those are very different philosophies, but the desire is the same. And it reflects a desire that most of us more moderate Americans who live in the great middle understand and endorse. The fundamental desire is that everyone should have access to the basics: to shelter, food, and the possibility of employment. In short, everyone should have enough.

That is, in fact, a biblical concept. Read the very earliest story of the Christian Church (found in the 2^nd chapter of Acts). There you will find that a stated intent of that community of faith was that persons be assisted “as any had need.” In short, from the outset, the Christian Church has believed and proclaimed that everyone should have enough. That does not mean that everyone should have the same amount. People of faith are intelligent enough to understand that some services demand greater levels of training and very specific sets of skills and incredibly exacting schedules of labor, and therefore those endeavors deserve to be compensated in ways commensurate with what is required. “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” still makes sense. The Church has simply said form the beginning that everyone should have enough – and that there is, indeed, enough to go around.

Having access to a job, to a home, to food, and to providing for the well-being and education of one’s children are basic human needs. How do we provide for those needs? How do we make certain that they are met? That is a job for economists and politicians to figure out. But, the economists and politicians need to know that all voices now are calling for solutions, whether those voices are being raised from the right, the left, or the middle. And it is a challenge as old as the 2^nd chapter of Acts. Our Faith proclaims that all of God’s children should have enough.

Comments

By gregfarrell @ Monday, January 02, 2012 7:11 AM

As caring so deeply for us I'd must believe in God's, availability as guide, through competing interests on the playground. Along slippery walks to the news stand and rowing past nearly ubiquitous sound bites (a commerce), offered is a whisper. That systematic neglect is not the ruler, one need not sell out here; God's hope, through light today, a need most true and met, ever loving.

By tfolkert @ Thursday, January 05, 2012 8:07 PM

I am reminded of what Mother Teresa once said, "Live simply, so that others may simply live." God bless you in your work at Marlble.

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