{"id":6271,"date":"2014-02-07T13:31:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T21:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/?p=6271"},"modified":"2014-02-07T15:30:04","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T23:30:04","slug":"rich-lang-looking-good-on-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/rich-lang-looking-good-on-wood\/","title":{"rendered":"Rich Lang: Looking Good on Wood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking Good on Wood<\/strong>
\nBy the Rev. Rich Lang<\/em> | Image by Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bible\u2019s definition of economic justice is the Jubilee, a far more radical break with capitalism than socialism.\u00a0 The Jubilee posits that the earth and all its resources belong to God.\u00a0 The implication is that we the people are to share the resources so that all survive and thrive.\u201d
\n-the Rev. Rich Lang<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With the election of a socialist to Seattle\u2019s City Council, economic discourse is going to get a bit testy this year.\u00a0 The bottom line is that a person making 20K has different interests and needs than someone making 50K, 100K and even more.\u00a0\u00a0 The truth is that political decisions are mostly made for those north of 100K.\u00a0 It\u2019s only a matter of time before all heck breaks loose.
\n
\nI\u2019m hoping that preachers will find their voice so that we too might enter this public debate.\u00a0 One hears from time to time a plea for economic justice from the pulpit, but mostly this plea is just warmed over rather standard free market fare.\u00a0\u00a0 But if the Church took seriously its own Book there would be a much different application of its proclamation.<\/p>\n

The Bible\u2019s definition of economic justice is the Jubilee, a far more radical break with capitalism than socialism.\u00a0 The Jubilee posits that the earth and all its resources belong to God.\u00a0 The implication is that we the people are to share the resources so that all survive and thrive. \u00a0In order to do this, societies should have built-in legislated limits on wealth accumulation, and debt.\u00a0\u00a0 Every fifty years wealth should be completely redistributed so that there can be no more aristocracies nor generational poverty.\u00a0 Practically speaking this means that although Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos can, in fact, live and die as wealthy kings, their descendants will need to figure their own privileges out from scratch.\u00a0\u00a0 It also means that the child of the family on welfare will be given a boost into new opportunities to escape poverty.\u00a0\u00a0 This is what the Bible means by justice: wealth redistribution legislated by government.\u00a0 It might be thought of as FDR on steroids coupled with Socialist Kshama Sawant\u2019s threat of taking back the infrastructure we the people built for corporations like Boeing.<\/p>\n

Now, of course, you never hear your preacher going that far but the Bible goes even farther.\u00a0 It legislates year-long sabbatical rests for the land which means that the earth has \u201crights\u201d that trump the desire of entrepreneurs to exploit and seize its resources.\u00a0\u00a0 Labor also has a right to rest.\u00a0 Every seventh year, financial debt was forgiven, and if someone had fallen into hopeless poverty they were to be given the means to become economically self-sufficient.<\/p>\n

In this new year when things get really rockin\u2019, I\u2019m hoping that preachers find their voice and organize their congregations to speak truth to those who troll within government, military, and corporate bordellos.\u00a0 I hope that Christians will get out of their pews and into the streets.\u00a0 I hope the Church will practice solidarity with the left out and the least.\u00a0\u00a0 I hope we will follow Jesus, even though we\u2019ve been warned by Jesuit priest Dan Berrigan, \u201cthat if we want to follow Jesus, we better look good on wood\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

The Rev. Rich Lang serves as pastor of University Temple UMC (Seattle, Wash.)<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looking Good on Wood By the Rev. Rich Lang | Image by Wikimedia Commons \u201cThe Bible\u2019s definition of economic justice is the Jubilee, a far more radical break with capitalism than socialism.\u00a0 The Jubilee posits that the earth and all its resources belong to God.\u00a0 The implication is that we the people are to share […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":6277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[111,6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-channels","8":"category-conversation"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/INSIGHTS_Rich.jpg?fit=700%2C357&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-1D9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6271"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6286,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6271\/revisions\/6286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}