Shared thoughts from “Shared Acres”
Occasional Leadership thoughts from Brian Bauknight
Coordinator of Leadership Development
Western PA Conference, United Methodist Church
Shared Acres Farm, 4165A Cork-Bocktown Road, Clinton, PA 15026
Leadership for a Bruised Nation
How does Christian leadership address a national financial mess?
A conversation rages on at many levels about budgeting these days. Budgets for the nation, for the states, and for many forms of local municipalities. Most of the conversation revolves around the impossibility of living with huge deficits. At the national level, our U.S. debt is huge and we have many creditors.
Some of the conversation deals with the “morality” of debt itself. To continue to grow a debt (and pay interest on that debt) is unfair to future generations. We cannot pass on huge and ever growing deficits to our children and grandchildren. So debt is surely a moral issue.
But there is another moral issue involved. How do we manage a nation’s financial resources so as to slow the pace of debt increase or even begin to pay down the debt as well as meet important human services? Where do we cut? What programs do we curtail or stop altogether? What are our choices?
Are the answers those questions not also moral choices? What does it say about the morality of a nation when we cut such expenses as aid to the poor, welfare, school breakfast and lunches for low income children, environmental protection, water treatment, food safety inspections, public education, heat assistance for the elderly poor, and health research?
The late Senator Hubert Humphrey once quipped, “You can tell the moral fiber of a nation by the way it treats the very young and the very old.”
What does Christian leadership have to say to this issue? Or are we reluctantly mute?
Several possibilities come to mind. First, we have developed and supported a finely tuned and dangerous class system in the United States—creating an enormous and perilous societal gap between the very rich and the very poor. The very thing that Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah railed against in ancient Israel, and the very thing that Mary seems to address in her song in Luke 1:52-53! Our biblical tradition proclaims God’s passion for a just society over and over again.
Second, what does it say when cuts in defense spending are denied. One viable choice we have right now is in the area of military defense. The world is such a different place than it was at the end of World War II and the cold war. Do we still need expensive military bases across Europe and throughout other places in our world? In the face of other moral imperatives, can we still justify a large military presence on the 38th Parallel in Korea as the result of a war that ended there almost 60 years ago? Do we need a large standing army in light of computer guided unmanned predator drones (which have their own moral questions), battleships, submarines, and air and missile power? Is this similar kind of “empire” stance not what caused the Roman Empire to crumble centuries ago? (Some trust in chariots and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. Psalm 20:7)
Third, what about tax reform? Really significant tax reform? What does it mean today to “render unto Caesar” that which belongs to (or is needed by) responsible government? What does it mean to do this with fairness?
Finally (or maybe not finally!), what about civility? Common decency? Is it not dangerous to a nation when elected and appointed leadership speaks so offensively and even ugly to other colleagues? (“Put away from you all wrath and anger and wrangling…and be kind to one another, tenderhearted…” Ephesians 4:31-32)
Where and how does Christian leadership speak to these issues? What is word from the Lord for today in this dilemma? Where do we find the Spirit-empowered courage to address these matters and speak, not for ourselves, but for God. The 21st century equivalent of “Thus saith the Lord…”
Kingdom centered living demands nothing less.
Brian Bauknight
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
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