What defines us?

This country is ridiculously divided still. It's kind of a joke that people can speak about any sort of unity as Americans. Maybe if you live in one particular slice of America that's true, but that's not been my observation. We're fundamentally split by politics, for one thing, as witnessed by the recent furlough situation. In fact, we're so busy throwing temper tantrums about the other side that we're willing to totally ignore democratic process (isn't that the point of this country?) and screw over a lot of people to do it. But it's a lot more than that, too. We're divided over issues of race even today. If you think we're in a post-race society, go walk around the wealthiest neighborhood in your city and see how many people of non-white ethnic groups you see who are not workers (lawn crews, cleaning ladies, etc). Yeah. There are tons of these divisions, but the one which has recently caught my attention is the economic divide. The weird thing is that the wealthy people in this country seem largely unaware that it even exists.

There's a little quiz going around the internet called "Do you Live in a Bubble?" The idea is to find out how insulated a life you have led compared to the average American. I scored a 50 on this test because I grew up in working class neighborhoods. My parents are doctors, but were in school until I was ten or eleven, and then were just getting their feet under them for a few more years. I've always walked a really interesting line between working class and upper-middle class for this reason. My parents are professionals, but are super down to earth who know what it's like to use food stamps and buy clothes second hand. At the same time, they were often roaming professionally in circles where people had been doctors since they were 26 and either never knew what it was like to be poor or forgot once they "made it." I recently married into a similar situation. My husband grew up in another country not particularly wealthy, although he had many opportunities that his peers did not, and eventually came to the U.S. and became a professional. My friends are pretty firmly in the lower to middle part of middle class, but his friends and colleagues generally fall on the top end of the spectrum. I sometimes feel like an anthropologist observing different social strata.

Anyway, today I was browsing facebook and somebody had posted this quiz and there was some discussion going on. I saw this little gem, which I copy here not to shame, but to point out a pretty common mentality among affluent/educated people that I think is problematic. The commenter wrote: "Exposure to the masses gave me no benefit except a dread of the pending idiocracy, and in retrospect, my happiest day was when I got into that so-called bubble in high school. Today, I'd rather consider my true community to be intellectuals across the globe than average yokels or homeboys next door. In that community being in a bubble means being ignorant about logic, science, or philosophy rather than military ranks or foul-tasting beer." Perhaps this was meant to be somewhat funny, and I do not know this person's story, but it strikes me that there's a real edge underneath this that says that it's good to be unaware of "the masses" and that those people are not of the same worth and should be shamed for their social position. Yikes.

I can see how using somewhat derogatory language toward the upper class ("bubble") might cause some defensiveness or concern about certain ideologies (I'm not a Communist, okay?), but my understanding of this quiz is that it is trying to draw attention to this huge divide between different social classes. It's not just that the higher strata doesn't understand what it's like to be poor; it doesn't understand it, and in some cases has some really harmful ideas about such people being rubes, or ignorant, or whatever. This entire class of people have become "a bunch of yokels" protecting their guns and Evangelical faith, which paints a really unfortunate picture. 

I'm guilty of a little stereotyping here too, but this comment reveals just exactly how 2/3 of this country's population has become a caricature in the minds of many, and guess who it is that's making the legislation for that majority? Hint: it's not the poor. So here we have a class of people that not only highly misunderstands this particular social class, but has negative feelings about them, and no wonder we have harmful rhetoric out there about how lazy, ignorant, and unimportant these people are. It seems like these people maybe deserve to be in this position. If they didn't want to be there, surely they would do something about it? BOOTSTRAPS BOOTSTRAPS BOOTSTRAPS! Of course it looks that way if you refuse to really acknowledge the circumstances of individuals' situations and overarching culture.

1 Corinthians really speaks to this issue. People are coming to the Lord's Supper (the big meal after worship) but the wealthy are eating good food, and the servants are eating crappy food, or no food. This is creating huge tension within the community, and now people are fighting about it. We're fighting about it too. We're shutting down the government, we're filibustering by reading Dr. Suess, we're doing anything we can to get what we want and stop the other side from getting what they want, because we've stopped seeing people as people. They're just "those servants" or "those poor people" or "those yokels." Paul, as usual, is horrified by the mess he's found in the community, and writes a beautiful argument calling for unity, saying essentially: You are all one unified body. Your squabbling is like your hand cutting off your nose to spite your face. It makes no sense. He writes in chapter 12:12, "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." What he's saying is that being different ethnically, being of different socioeconomic status, being a slave or a slave owner, being a prophecier or a tongue-speaker is not the thing that defines you. The thing that defines you is love: the love you have received, and the love you are now able to give. It is the love that radically redefined creation, that crossed boundaries, that submitted to death for the sake of his friends--that is what defines us. In other words, you might not like each other, but you're going to love each other. After all, a community filled with hate and division is not bound to last long at all.

Notice something interesting here. Paul doesn't say that in Christ you are all feet or noses. He doesn't say 'absolutely, speak in tongues, every single one of you.' He never defines what a Christian looks like, but in fact uses the metaphor of the body because it is something which functions with unity but maintains distinctiveness. Understanding and celebrating middle America is not about denigrating affluent people. The world needs entrepreneurs and doctors and lawyers and professors. It's about saying that we all have our own functions and spheres and are called to be the best damn ear, eye, toenail, or whatever that we can be without striving to be any other part of the body, but that we are still bound by something because we have all, together, been named beloved by the radical love that knows no limits.

So can we stop with the "yokel" this and "trust fund baby" that? There are gifts of being in a working class community or a rural community that the affluent don't have, believe me. Having lived in small town America for a year, I saw how much we city dwellers miss out on the kind of neighborly support that such communities give in times of trouble. And there are gifts of being affluent, too. We aren't meant to pit these things against one another, but to share wisdom, to give generously, to use our social power to the benefit of those who are oppressed (or maybe even give it up??), and to stop "biting and devouring" one another in this way. We are all one community whether we like it or not, because God loves this whole ridiculous, screwed up world, and has unified it under a new label that we all share despite the superficial divisions: beloved. Let's look at one another with God's eyes now and then, and see how the love of Christ can transform even the deepest divisions into beautiful and harmonious unity.