why we love welfare

i’ve tried for awhile to stay out of the political arena. the problem is that if i actually care about the issues about which i claim to be so passionate, that is not really a possibility. the fact is that real issues and real people are affected by the decisions that are made in the political sphere. if a person is passionate about social change, engagement is inevitable. 

those who know me well have no doubt about my political leanings, but i would like to post about a program in which my views have changed pretty drastically over the past three years. those with a set political camp share some common ground in their feelings towards welfare programs whether they know it or not. here is the common ground. 

we love it. 

we love welfare. 

here’s what i mean. 

my left leaning brethren love welfare because it gives them a way to say to others, “look, we’re looking out for the needy! see the money we give? see the programs we run?” it gives them a great example of being able to point to a specific way in which the party looks out for those in need. here’s the problem. 

most welfare programs don’t work. 

despite my appreciation for the aims of the various welfare programs in the united states, most of them run in a manner that is completely out of sync with good economics and/or common sense. we are incentivizing negative behaviors and often times encouraging folks to stay in less than ideal situations because the very nature of the program offers and extends benefits for such decisions. 

this is exactly why my right leaning brethren love welfare programs. overall, they don’t work. they give some great leverage to be able to point fingers and say “look at the other side over there wasting money on inefficient programming.” however, i’ve yet to hear much of a viable solution from the other side. 

simply tightening work requirements does not take into consideration a cycle of poverty in which many americans are trapped. telling someone to get a job doesn’t work for folks who haven’t been blessed with the educational capacity to even begin to know how to go about accomplishing a such task or where to start looking. despite the rhetoric from the other side, i have not seen solutions for ways in which those on the right plan on entering into relationship with those who can’t find work to help lift them out of poverty. the plan is to put up barriers to entry on a program in which folks have been immersed their entire lives and simply say “its time to find some work?” that seems less than helpful.

so what is the solution? as with most things in this sphere it’s pretty simple in theory and complex in practice. we need compassionate leaders and citizens who truly have a heart for the poor. the gap between the rich and the poor in this country is as wide as anywhere in the world (see our Gini coefficient).

at some point we have got to stop settling for ignoring the problem or setting up government programs that put band-aids on gaping wounds. 

at some point we need folks who are followers of Christ to take seriously his claim to “bring Good News to the poor.. to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free...” 

those who do not resonate with the teachings of Christ need to find the humanity in their fellow citizens and see that it’s just not ok to continue our constant quest for income and asset accumulation while folks are starving on the streets. 

if we must look at it from a selfish perspective, we must know that this type of inequality will not last. taking a quick survey of world history should make that pretty apparent. 

if we are to take this problem seriously, we will have to plunge into relationships and community with those who are financially struggling. we cannot be content to toss folks who don’t have a home some chump change out of our home mortgage interest deduction and keep walking. we must see that the whole Jericho road needs transforming, and it is not going to be an easy task. 

i see the first step as education. the inequality starts with children. if we want to get to the heart of the income gap in the united states, a huge step in the right direction is to tackle educational inequality. i won't currently wade fully into these waters, but education reform and passionate educational leaders in low-income areas can begin to chip away such a seemingly insurmountable problem.  

education is not the overall solution to the problem. it is a starting point. welfare is not the solution. it is a less than ideal attempt to help those in need that is often counterproductive. 

only a collective compassion will help us to find a true viable alternative. 

overlap

Over the past couple of months, I have been looking for overlaps between what I have been doing with my life for the past three years, and what I will be doing for the next three years (and beyond). I've looked for ways in which what I’ve seen, learned, and experienced teaching in Helena can inform the my forthcoming study of theology. I think I've found couple.

#1 - Character 

"Learning is hard. True, learning is fun, exhilarating and gratifying — but it is also often daunting, exhausting and sometimes discouraging. . . . To help chronically low-performing but intelligent students, educators and parents must first recognize that character is at least as important as intellect.”

This quote comes from a New York Times article that discusses KIPP co-founder Dave Levin's partnering with the headmaster of a top-tiered NYC private school in seeking to teach students character. To fully internalize the weight of what their research has shown, click the link and read it (heads up - its long) However - two key findings that this article speaks to that have given me insight into the overlap to which I previously alluded. 

The article discusses teaching students character, not because of the moral preference of those in administration, but for very practical reasons. “The true importance did not come from the relationship to any system of ethics or moral laws but from the practical benefit: cultivating these strengths represented a reliable path to 'the good life,' a life that was not just happy but also meaningful and fulfilling.”

“I have come that they may have life and have it to the more abundantly.” -John 10:10. For the past three years, I’ve attempted to at some point speak some semblance of meaningful, fulfilling, and life strengthening values into my student’s lives. KIPP calls it character, Jesus called it life abundantly.

Whether I’m seeking to communicate character/ life abundant with students in a classroom, parishioners in church, orphans, seekers, deadbeats, burned out sinners, halo wearing saints, or self righteous pietists, the hope of finding traces of such character and life remains constant regardless of the setting. 

Levin and his counterpart seek to teach a general set of acquired traits referred to as "character." Moving from the general to a specific trait led me to overlap two.

#2 - Failure. 

That which we seek to avoid at all costs. That which consumes so much of our time, worry, dread, anxiety, and stress. 

For the past three years, I have been taught that this word is as fowl as its alliterative counterpart. Through the best of intentions I have been indoctrinated in the belief that my students failure was my failure. Failure was not an option. When only 8% of students in low-income families are graduating from college, failure is not an option. 8% is not ok. 

Here's the problem.

“We thought, O.K., our first class was the fifth-highest-performing class in all of New York City,” (Dave) Levin said. “We got 90 percent into private and parochial schools. It’s all going to be solved. But it wasn’t.” Almost every member of the cohort did make it through high school, and more than 80 percent of them enrolled in college. But then the mountain grew steeper, and every few weeks, it seemed, Levin got word of another student who decided to drop out. According to a report that KIPP issued last spring, only 33 percent of students who graduated from a KIPP middle school 10 or more years ago have graduated from a four-year college.” 

As the article continues, it explores the notion that IQ and high test scores were not what was shown to be correlated with success in college. What was, however, was grit - perseverance through failure. In true KIPP fashion, the network has taken to quantifying grit through a “Grit Scale” self assessment that requires you to rate yourself on just 12 questions, from “I finish whatever I begin” to “I often set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one.” The “Grit Scale” has shown to be “remarkably predictive of success” according Penn Ph.D. graduate Angela Duckworth whose field test yielded the predictive data. 

Grit moves us from failure to victory.

"Many of us are haunted by our failure to have done with our lives what we longed to accomplish. The disparity between our ideal self and our real self, the grim specter of past infidelities, the awareness that I am not living what I believe, the relentless pressure of conformity, and the nostalgia for lost innocence reinforces a nagging sense of existential guilt: I have failed. This is the cross we never expected, and the one we find hardest to bear." -Brennan Manning

We’ve got to rethink our notion of failure and how we deal with it. In the world of education in which I was blessed to be a part, we’ve lost sight of how to teach kids that failure is inevitable and one of our greatest chances to learn and move forward. Instead, we fill students' heads with facts and expect them to regurgitate them on tests that have been deemed important by a source that is not intimately connected to our students in our classrooms. Students cannot develop grit without experiencing failure.

In the church, we’ve lost sight of a God who is intimately connected with our shortcomings. We’ve forgotten the story of the prodigal son, whose unspeakably deep failure and missteps didn’t stop the father from running to meet his wayward son before the son could even speak one word of penitence. “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and hands and kissed him tenderly.” -Luke 15:20 The son failed, came back broken, and was granted forgiveness before he even could ask. Failure has never been a deal breaker for the Father. 

“The person with depth is the one who has failed, learned to live with it, and continued to move forward.” - Brennan Manning

Failure will come. If we are to keep growing, we must keep risking failure throughout our lives and learning to mature out of what the failure has taught us. We can’t keep running away from failure in education or in our relationship with our Creator. 

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." -Winston Churchill 

May we seek the character that comes from pursuing an abundant life and learn to live in a way that embraces the idea that only through learning from failure may we be propelled into greatness.

cease striving

“cease striving and know that I am God.” 

if you haven’t read any of the works of brennan manning, you should. he writes of grace with raw honesty. in his book “the furious longing of God," manning is reflecting on his life and writes, “if I had it to do again, i wouldn’t devote one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. no not one.” 

when we constantly evaluate how we’re growing, where we stand, and if we’re moving forward, we miss out of the beauty of the present moment. our incessant search for more leaves us always wanting, never content to sit and be still. as one intimately familiar with the all encompassing strive to do, achieve, go, serve, and move, i’ve recently been captured by the notion of stillness. it is not a practice that comes easy. the perpetual push to achieve leads us to inner exhaustion. in the gospel of matthew we hear, “come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” from weary to rest. 

when we find a way to lay down our striving, we experience the intimacy of the present moment, and in that intimacy find union with the One who has been present with us all along. 

“Oneness with ultimate reality is not an abstract idea; it is a spiritual experience of knowing that the timeless God is at the door inviting us to full union. It is an attentiveness to the present, the readiness, at every moment, to receive reality to enjoy deeply even the simplest things. In the words of poet Paul Murray: ‘This moment, the grace of this one raptureless moment’” - Thomas Brodie 

compassionate leaders

Fiorello LaGuardia was the mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression. Mayor LaGuardia strove to be a man of the people, among the people. He rode the New York City fire trucks, raided city "speak easies" with the police department, took entire orphanages to baseball games, and when the New York newspapers went on strike, he got on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids.

One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It's a real bad neighborhood, your Honor," the man told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson."

LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, "I've got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail." But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous hat, saying, "Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr.Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant."

The following day, New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered woman who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. Fifty cents of that amount was contributed by the grocery store owner himself, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.

we get so caught up in the inevitability of divisive and manipulative politicians that we forget it has not always been this way. a lack of compassion does not have to be par for the course. over the past couple years i’ve retreated away from keeping up with much of what happens around politics because of the massive amount of distrust i’ve accumulated towards politicians due to the empty rhetoric without coupled action. recently, i’m coming into the belieft that withdrawal may not be the answer. sure our current political system is a far cry from an efficient government that keeps the people’s best interests at heart, but maybe this does not have to be the case. 

as elections loom, i’m looking for leaders who seek compassion. that may be hard to find, and maybe their benevolence will be coupled with a few faulty policies. sure, if the judge in this story made this a consistent reaction to every thief that came before him, it would be terrible public policy. however, if we don’t grab hold of seeking compassion in the political area, we will simply head further down a road of divisiveness and inequality. 

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” -MLK the “edifice” in our country needs restructuring. i pray for leaders that seek to do so with empathy and humanity. and just for JL - amen. 

misconceptions leading to freedom

rainy summer days without having to show up at a part-time job beget reflection. reading books written by folks seasoned in the way of words reminds me more and more how fundamentally we have misunderstood Your grace. in a culture saturated with “Christian” ideals, “Christian” principals, and “Christian” people, the harvest often appears bleak. vulnerability and acceptance of our own inadequacies has somehow been separated from identifying ourselves as followers of Christ. we seek to justify, rationalize, and explain away our failures rather than depositing them at the foot of the cross to which we claim to pledge allegiance. 

as one of the most competitive people on the face of this earth, i am forced to come to terms with an acknowledgement that achievement and winning aren’t always the end products. with time for reflection, i watch this play itself out time after time, from racquetball games with friends to achievement as a teacher. time and time again i feel slighted when i don’t receive the recognition i feel due. i await congratulations after playing a good game. i seek an appropriate number of “likes” on a quality post. i look at numbers like 95% or increased proficiency ratings and anticipate opening my gmail inbox, facebook homepage, and front door to a line of people proclaiming the good news that my efforts have won the day, that victory has come through me. the congratulations i am given feels inadequate because of the preposterous way i have elevated my own accomplishments as opposed to laying them down in acknowledgment that nothing i have done has been on my own accord. this is but one example of the ways in which i myself and we as a culture have seemed to miss it. we attend church services and hear the message of grace as if it is an overfamiliar story that we grasped awhile ago and are now in need of something fresh. we don’t seem to have ever “gotten it” in the first place. 

as classes are set to begin in a couple of weeks at the “Chandler Bing School of Jesus,” as it was dubbed by couple of my friends this past year, i can see the temptation on the horizon. we can find a way to turn anything, even the study of God, into something that is all about us. will the theology i develop be academically sound? will it be biblically sound? will i quote the correct authors? will i be able to interpret the scriptures and then articulate that interpretation in a way that is both true to the context of the time it was written and relevant to our culture today? despite the substantial importance of these questions, they are not an end in and of themselves. once they become such, we've missed the point. already in my experience at candler i’ve seen good people who are honestly and humbly seeking to understand the depth of the mystery and furious love of God. i’ve also seen people take this search and turn it into a scholarly assurance of theological correctness that rebukes all who stand in the way of an unadulterated, pure understanding of God. oh, how we miss the point. 

the past two posts i have written have been centered around my notion of how we, as followers of Christ, have seemingly warped and misunderstood the gospel of grace. anyone taking time to read could see these as desolate posts aimed at throwing stones at those who don’t appear to have my own proper understanding of grace. perhaps my writing centered around “misunderstanding” has arisen from an ability to reflect on the ways in which i have “missed it” throughout my life. perhaps it has played itself out in this manner because its easier to attack that which you feel is incorrect than to fully articulate your own version of truth. either way, to dispel the gloom, i’ll end with an attempt to illuminate the woe of our inadequacies that turns into celebration.... 

if we who proclaim Christ truly believe this gospel of grace, we have no choice but to celebrate. the truth of the gospel declares that it is not our own goodness that has redeemed us, but the goodness of our Creator. we do not exist in a quid pro quo relationship that is based on our own ability to achieve academically, physically, financially, emotionally, spiritually, morally, or in any other capacity. we are set free from a need to achieve and propelled into the loving arms of grace. “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” let us let go of the need to feel appreciated, needed, wanted, praised, loved, accomplished, and correct and realize that in grace, Christ has already made us all of those things, and so much more. with vulnerability let us accept our own failures and missteps in a constant realization that we will continue to fall and fail over and over, but in our brokenness He will pick us up. let us release our need to pretend we’ve accomplished on our own and accept that “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” amen.

wake up church (warning - chickfila content will ensue)

i originally began this blog as an attempt to record my experiences teaching in the delta. even though i am no longer, "up in the delta" my experience there has had an impact on me that will last forever. the delta's presence remains consistent even though my physical presence there is no more. this blog was was simultaneously meant to be an avenue of processing and expression to those with whom i wasn’t able to talk to on a consistent basis. my ability to frequently update the blog was substantially diminished by the overwhelming nature of teaching and the consistent pressures and demands for improvement. now that i am free from those requirements and before i start spending all my time writing papers on judah and tamar, i thought now would be a good time for some reflection.

in reflection over the past couple of months, i keep coming across some variation of the same question “where is the church in this fight?”

in three years of working for and around teach for america, an organization that seeks to tackle one of the most pressing injustices of our society, educational inequality, i often wondered some variation of the following question. “where is the church in this fight?” (when i say the church, i don’t refer to the church as an institution, but as people who identify themselves as followers of Christ) in seeing the injustice of a broken society play out every day in school systems where students were years behind by the time they got to 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th grade, i wondered “where is the church in this fight?” in watching how capable these same students were of mastering material and becoming innovative thinkers, i realized just how feasible it can be to take sizable chunks out of the problem of educational inequality and i wondered, “where is the church in this fight?” in reading books over the past couple of months covering topics from economics to the Kingdom of God, i’ve been reminded over and over again that half of the world’s population is living in desperate poverty, while we (myself very much included) live in inexplicable comparative luxury. upon reflection, i ask myself “where is the church in this fight?”

this week i got an answer to my question. the church is at chickfila. the church is standing firm for its “biblical principals” by spending its money on fried chicken, sweet tea, and ice cream cones. it deeply saddened me to read the intense, divisive rhetoric on both sides of this apparently all-encompassing issue. i spent about ten or fifteen minutes reading some of the facebook posts from both sides of the debate, and i had to stop for fear of either screaming, cursing, crying, or some combination of the three. to those who went to “chickfila appreciation day” and informed the rest of us of your desire to support a company that “stands firm on biblical principals,” i appreciate your need to stand up for the ideals and beliefs that are vital to your life. i do not appreciate those who do so in a manner that demeans others and robs them of their dignity as human beings created by the very God you seek to serve in your dedication. here are some of the things gay employees experienced on chickfila appreciation day. “A gay employee at the company’s headquarters in Atlanta heard a customer say, “I’m so glad you don’t support the queers, I can eat in peace.” Another in Colorado had customers telling him, “I support your company, because your company hates the gays.” i realize not all of those who participated did so in this manner, but these are not isolated incidents. i would implore those who are convicted on this manner to ensure that your conviction shows the grace that my God and yours has called us to show to the entirety of our society and all of creation.

my previous statement of, “where is the church?” haunted me as i read Chickfila posts. i stared with disbelief at pictures of chickfila locations packed inside and out, read about chickfila’s supposed “record profits,” and watched my facebook timeline blow up with post after post about “biblical princiapals.”

i wondered,
when will i see picture after picture of homeless shelters packed with volunteers there to act on Jesus call to serve the marginalized in society?
when will the headlines announce ‘record giving’ to Worldvision, an organization that seeks to give food, shelter, and education to the poorest in the world? (worldvision.org.)
when will my timeline blow up with post after post about the injustices of a society that prejudices children who are born into a cycle of poverty and then attend school systems that often exacerbate and heighten their problems?

to the other side of this debate, i would similarly remind us all of the words of MLK, “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.” nobody’s mind is going to be changed by hate speech and rhetoric. we’ve tried for too long. its time to try a new approach. meeting the forces of hate with the power of love sounds like a pretty good place to start.

its time to wake up church. we’ve got a lot more to deal with than an attack on a fast food restaurant. then again, its a hell of a lot easier to buy a number three with waffle fries and post a picture of your meal on facebook than it is to throw yourself in the trenches and tackle the injustices of society.