John's Blog: Distributive Justice (Part 1 of 2)
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Distributive Justice (Part 1 of 2)
The following essay is a guest article from my friend Mark Tesny in Cleveland. He wrote it (paraphrasing The God We Never Knew, by Marcus Borg) as an email message to a bunch of us, and I am posting it here with his permission.
I'm wondering why I have no faith in American politics. I'm trying to. Oh, and Happy belated Super Tuesday. I voted for Dennis Kucinich because he supports a national health care plan and equal education for all. I thought he had the most passion for social justice and he would not be influenced by the elites of our country. We have an elite driven social and economic policy. I believe in a different political vision. I believe in the dream of God for a just society. Even though we will never reach it on earth it is an ideal to strive for. The fact that we cannot perfectly embody it does not mean that it should cease to be an ideal. The prophets understood God's dream for us:
The dream of God is basically a vision of shalom, a hebrew word often translated as "peace" but meaning much more than the absence of war. It means well being in a comprehensive sense. It includes freedom from negatives such as oppression, anxiety, fear, as well as the presence of health, prosperity, and security. Shalom thus includes a social vision: the dream of a world in which such well-being belongs to EVERYBODY. It has it's roots in the Exodus and in prophetic theology which is concerned about working toward a just society.
How did the dream of God come about?
Basically, it was because of the enormous economic gulf between the urban elites and the rural peasants. In pre-industrial agrarian societies, elites and their retainers (together, less than 10 percent of the population) acquired about two-third of the society's annual production of wealth, with about half of the total going to the top 1 to 2 percent. Rural peasants (90 percent of the population) made do with the remaining one-third. No need to say the cumulative effect on peasants was dreadful. Peasant existence was vulnerable to subsistence diet, drought, illness, war, even the death of an animal. Life expectancy was very low.
In societies like these, religion most often functioned to legitimate the existing social order: God had ordained that it be this way. At least the religion of the elites did, as it has come down to us through their retainers of priests and scribes. By the time of ancient Israel's origin, this type of society was firmly entrenched in the ancient Middle East. In the social world of the Bible, such societies, ruled by elites, were intrinsically hierarchical, economically exploitative, and politically oppressive.
Enter prophetic theology. The prophet Micah cries out that the Lord requires that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. I have come to realize that the passion we see in the prophets is a protest against systemic evil. Systemic evil is an important notion: it refers to the injustice built into the structures of the system itself. Embedded in oppressive and exploitative social structures, systemic evil is a major source(perhaps the greatest cause) of human suffering.
Importantly, the issue is not the goodness or wickedness of elite individuals. Elites can be good people: devout, responsible, courageous, kind, gentle, charming, intelligent, committed to family, friends, and so forth. Moreover, systemic evil is not necessarily intended even by some who benefit from it. So the issue is not character flaws among the elites. The issue, rather, is a system in which some people sleep on beds made of ivory while others end up being sold for the price of a pair of sandals.
The passion for social justice does not focus on individual change but on structural change. Of course, individual persons can be converted to a passion for justice (and such conversion is important), but when they are, their concern is not to maximize charitable giving within the existing structures but to change the structures themselves. The prophets were not simply saying to the elites, "Be good people, more charitable to the poor, and worship the right God." They said in Amos's words, "Seek justice, and live." The problem was not individual sinfulness but a social system in which the poor of the land were brought to ruin. The prophets wanted a just society where everyone could benefit.
That, is the dream of God. It's a social and political vision of a world of justice and peace in which human beings do not hurt or destroy, oppress or exploit one another. The prophets understood the relationship between the individual and the community. They knew that God is concerned about us as individuals. The prophetic voices of the tradition show a deep awareness of how individuals are victimized by society. Passion for the well-being of individuals and passion about the shape of the community go hand in hand. Because individuals matter to God, political structures matter to God, because political structures impact the lives of individuals in a profound way. Thus the dream of God combines an emphasis on the value of the individual with a passionate concern for a just society.
Needless to say, the dream of God has not fared well throughout history. And it has been submerged by the the individualism that characterizes much of our culture. The dream of God is quite different from contemporary American dreams. The dream of God--a politics of compassion and justice, the kingdom of God, a domination-free order--is social, communal, and egalitarian. But our dreams--the dreams we get from our culture--are individualistic: living well, looking good, standing out. One need only look at "American conventional wisdom." Our quest--in our work, relationships, families, ambitions, organizations, often our religious practices--is the personal fulfillment of the individual, however we define that fulfillment.
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