I’ve spent time with people in Zuccotti Park. I walked along with the marchers from the Park to Washington Square.
I hear and see religious leaders marching, making pronouncements, building a golden calf. Do we have anything unique to say to a frustrated society other than jumping on yet another bandwagon?
Does Jesus really love an unemployed person more than a corporate CEO? Or, does Jesus wish both to reconciliation and transformation for the benefit of their own souls and society.
Do we honesty believe that Jesus is superficial enough to proclaim that he loves the fallible, humanly created Socialist economic system more than the fallible, humanly created Capitalist economic system or visa-versa? Or, might Jesus rather wish that no matter what economic system a society decides, that the people leading and inhabiting that system live such lives that the image of God is evident, regardless? Yet, this requires a way of ordering our lives, with Jesus at the center of our personal perception, that many people have a hard time accepting. (There is nothing new under the sun.)
If we have nothing more to say to society than what people hear on Fox News or MSMBC, then no wonder fewer and fewer people find anything compelling in the Church.
What we proclaim and assert may not be what people wish to hear – that which scratches their itching ears – but we do have a unique message, if only we are secure enough and confident enough to say so.
The unemployed, the poor, the wealthy are all in need to redemption and reconciliation. Evil and good are found in all groups of people and in all systems. This should be our beginning point, rather than jumping on bandwagons that promote social, political, or economic ideologies.