Just like meritocracy, victimhood is a weapon of shame, a response by our psyches to counter perceived inadequacy while preventing us from healing. While meritocracy allows those who achieve cultural markers of success to celebrate themselves and look down on others, victimhood denies our culpability and points the fingers towards someone else. While meritocracy can only guard a few against shame, victimhood is a strategy everyone can use. This is why, when things go wrong, we all look for someone to blame.
[Read more…] about Victimhood Robs From the Poor
Meritocracy is A(n Unbiblical) Sham
The illusion of meritocracy, simplistically summarized in the line, “You get what you deserve,” is a dominant tool used to justify our societal devaluing of certain lives while propping up the value of others. As long as the idea, which both Barack Obama and Donald Trump made references to the ideal in their inaugural addresses, remains legitimized by public discourse, we will remain a society of inequality.
[Read more…] about Meritocracy is A(n Unbiblical) Sham
Which Lives (Actually) Matter?
Eight years ago Black Lives Matter burst onto the national scene as a line on a Facebook post turned into a hashtag. It became the rallying cry of a decentralized movement fighting against systemic police violence towards Black people. Some, taking offense at the highlighting of a particular group’s human value, fired back with, “all lives matter.” Others pointed to the example of violence against police and responded with, Blue Lives Matter. So which lives matter?
[Read more…] about Which Lives (Actually) Matter?
Afghanistan, War, and Becoming Human
What does Christian faith have to say about the crisis in Afghanistan as the US closes the almost two-decade war? That question came from a dear friend and an Abundance Reconstructed reader this week. It is a question I am sure we are all asking.
The result of the request is this significantly longer-than-usual post where two key ideas guide my thoughts:
- A Kingdom of God framework that interprets reality through the lenses of power and love, and
- Jesus admonition to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
Becoming Human
What does it mean to be human?
Are you truly and fully human right now?
Or perhaps there you are still in the process of becoming human?
When I think about the Bible’s third cosmological myth, the story of The Fall, I cannot help but think that it invites us to believe that we both lost an aspect of our humanity, but also gained an opportunity to be even more human than before. And ultimately, all of these posts about sex and gender, are really about the journey of becoming human.
[Read more…] about Becoming Human
Why Christianity Hates Wisdom (and Women)
How did Christianity become a faith that demands people suppress either their masculine or feminine, preventing them from embracing the wholeness of their humanity? Why is there a compulsion to suppress and subjugate women into “complementary” service roles? Could it be a misreading of the third great cosmological myth that opens the book of Genesis?
[Read more…] about Why Christianity Hates Wisdom (and Women)