Jim Wallis Indy 2014

During the Life Together event of 2014 in Indianapolis, Jim Wallis was one of the speakers. I could appreciate his brief reflections on the tyranny of the urgent. It reminds me of the Stephen Covey distinguishing between the urgent, which often receives are attention, and the important, which often receives a push into the background of our live.

            John Randall, a friend on facebook, was able to get this list of what Jim Wallis concerning what we can do for the common good.

Here are ten personal decisions you can make to help foster the common good.

 1. If you are a father or a mother, make your children the most important priority in your life and build your other commitments around them. If you are not a parent, look for children who could benefit from your investment in their lives.

 2. If you are married, be faithful to your spouse. Demonstrate your commitment with both your fidelity and your love. If you are single, measure your relationships by their integrity, not their usefulness.

 3. If you are a person of faith, focus not just on what you believe but on how you act on those beliefs. If you love God, ask God how to love your neighbor.

 4. Take the place you live seriously. Make the context of your life and work the parish that you take responsibility for.

 5. Seek to develop a vocation and not just a career. Discern your gifts as a child of God, not just your talents, and listen for your calling rather than just looking for opportunities. Remember that your personal good always relates to the common good.

 6. Make choices by distinguishing between wants and needs. Choose what is enough, rather than what is possible to get. Replace appetites with values, teach your children the same, and model those values for all who are in your life.

 7. Look at the business, company, or organization where you work from an ethical perspective. Ask what its vocation is, too. Challenge whatever is dishonest or exploitative and help your place of work do well by doing good.

 8. Ask yourself what in the world today most breaks your heart and offends your sense of justice. Decide to help change that and join with others who are committed to transforming that injustice.

 9. Get to know who your political representatives are at both the local and national level. Study their policy decisions and examine their moral compass and public leadership. Make your public convictions and commitments known to them and choose to hold them accountable.

 10. Since the difference between events and movements is sacrifice, which is also the true meaning of religion and what makes for social change, ask yourself what is important enough to give your life to and for.

            Part of his assigned task, apparently, was to share about the beginning of his organization, Sojourners. His story involved rejection of what he perceived to be lack of care or concern for the racial issues of his youth, which he started seeing as a teen. Since he and are the same age, it reminded me of the debates that my father and I had concerning race. He had stories of “niggers” when he was in the Navy. The conversation went downhill from there. As for me, the little bit I could know of Martin Luther King Jr in the largely white town of Austin, MN, I liked and agreed. By then, I had also made a commitment to Christ and to the little non-denominational and evangelical church in Austin, MN. Where our experiences diverge is that I did not pick up any racism in the church in Austin or in the evangelical schools I attended during my late teens and twenty’s. In fact, I found confirmation of something I instinctively knew. I could not imagine how the color of skin could make any difference as to my relationship with anyone. It did not take long to reflect on biblical passages that moved me in the same direction. In fact, I would say that one of the gifts of the baby-boom generation to America has been to move America to overcome its bigoted and racist past.

            Jim Wallis also made it clear that as the “religious right” rose in the 1970s and 1980s and that he opposed it. Of course, I lived through these years as well. Although I agreed with many of the conclusions of the religious right, especially with limited government, respect for life, and strong national defense, I disagreed with its approach to the Bible. It never made sense to me to find solutions to modern political issues by referring to biblical passages. It also felt to me like the Bible and evangelical theology had become a tool to advance a particular political agenda. Even if I had some symmetry with the agenda, the method did not strike me as authentic. Thus, my reaction was to reject the method. Jim Wallis, on the other hand, adopted the method of using the Bible and a different interpretation of a biblical literalist to advance his political agenda, which is progressive, far-left politics. All Jim Wallis did was exchange baptism by the religious right of conservative politics with baptism by the religious Left of progressive politically Left politics. It would have required some actual intellectual effort to choose a different course, an engagement Jim Wallis was unwilling (clearly he is able) to have. For him, the way you are close to Jesus is to care for the least of these, understanding Matthew 25 as saying the progressive and politically Left politics is the only way to care for the least of these. The notion that someone with a conservative political ideology may have just as much desire to minister to the least of these does not seem to occur to him. I refer to Marvin Olasky as an author who has written well on this topic over the years. The approach by Wallis is no more authentic than that of the religious right.

            I agree with Jim Wallis that Washington DC is a dysfunctional place. It has more concern for large political agendas than for actually solving some of the social issues that face the nation. His conclusion is that we should not expect concern for the common good to come out of Washington DC. All right, I can agree with that, but have a problem with his solution. Being solidly on the political Left, every solution he offers centralizes economic, health care, and poverty solutions in Washington DC. He wants to move increasing amounts of power to Washington DC, the dysfunctional place he has described. One of the things that people like Jim Wallis seem incapable of understanding is that the federalist system works. It breaks down a large and diverse nation into manageable units. You let the states and the people work out many of the social issues that face us. The exception, of course, is if any state imposes rules against the constitution, but let us put that aside for a moment. The states could become laboratories of social experiments with many of the social issues that face us. Matters like abortion, health care, care for the aged, and care for the poor, find their best solution among the states, where government action seems needed, and among the people, where the free actions of groups (like churches) seems best. America is not a little island nation like Great Britain, or a little nation like France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, or Germany. The European model of the social welfare state is not working in that setting, let alone in a nation like this. In the federalist system, the best solutions will rise to the top. Further, many states find that while politicians fight in the elections vigorously, after the election, they work together on some issues to solve the practical issues the state faces. If a state becomes dysfunctional, it affects only the people in that state. If Washington DC is dysfunctional, it affects us all.

            Jim Wallis presented an example of his participation in the dysfunction by his reference to immigration issues. He said that fear of more non-white persons entering the country, of non-white becoming a majority, is what motivates the opposition to his position of largely open borders. I cannot speak for everyone who would differ with Jim Wallis on his open borders notion, but I know that is not my concern. The reason America needs measured immigration is that so many people want to come here. Many do not come from nations that value freedom. Measured immigration is about giving people time to understand what it is to be American, which means to treasure liberty of individuals and groups, understand the basics of governance, and learning the language.  If fear is behind any of the immigration debate, the fear is that America will become like other nations in their disregard for the worth and dignity of their citizens. Another concern, whether valid or not, is the pressure it seems to put on the criminal justice system and the welfare system. Jim Wallis participates in the dysfunction by failing to understand those who differ from him, willing to label his opponents as racist. Healing the dysfunction would mean he could state what his opposition thinks in a way the opposition could recognize itself.

            Jim Wallis came to Asbury Seminary while I was there in the late 1970s. Professor Robert Lyon brought him there. I always appreciate hearing from him. I have read two of his books with profit, but always come away disappointed. He has had the opportunity to be a genuine bridge that could encourage understanding between politically differing groups. However, when you conveniently label your opposition as racist and uncaring of the least of these, you have thrown in with one side of the political debate and increased the alienation that exists.