I found this on my computer today in a walk down memory lane. I wrote this back in 2009…
The city of San Francisco is a unique place. A place unlike anything I’ve ever before experienced: a place filled with limitless hopes and dreams, ideas bursting with creativity and a people with just enough reckless gumption to make it happen. Never before have I been surrounded by such an educated, spirited, “go for broke” community as what I’ve experienced here. I love this city.
As I sit in coffee shops and benches in the park I see a city full of people united under a common ethos: an ethos driven in large part by success and a hope that their success will lead to making this world a better place for all people. You don’t have to be in the city long to overhear a conversation about someone’s newest idea for making people’s lives easier, or to experience your first protest of the system of injustice that continues to clamp down on “the least of these.” It doesn’t take long to recognize that both of California’s Senators and the Speaker of the House come from San Francisco with aspirations of transforming this country into a nation that takes care of all people at all times. This fight against injustice is fought on the doorsteps of City Hall, in the 9th Circuit of Appeals, the State Supreme Court and the United Nations Consulate, all located within a block of each other in the heart of the city. Politics is the religion of San Francisco.
As we, in San Francisco, stand up to the political leaders of our day to fight against injustice, so too did Jesus. As wealth and greed work to oppress the minority, the widow, the orphan, (the “least of these”), so too was the environment surrounding Jesus in his day. Good News from the lips of Jesus was simply this:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4.18-19)
The city of San Francisco has lost its faith in the justice of God. For too long the Church has sat idly by and allowed injustice after injustice to pile on the shoulders of the people, and the church is to be held responsible for cheating this city of its faith (a faith in the tradition of St. Francis). It is time for the church to awaken from its slumber, to once again fight for the objectified and oppressed, to come together and allow God to prove his justice here once again in and through the name of Jesus and his Holy Spirit. It is time for the Church to once again prove that there is real hope in the name of Jesus, and the hope found in Him is far greater than that found in the religion of politics.
The Good News is simply this: Jesus has come and all are welcome to join in His Kingdom movement to turn the tide of injustice and reveal the new reality that awaits. It is through this endeavor that together the Church can make Jesus famous once again.
Just a little food for thought and a bit of perspective with this quote of the week by Elizabeth Warren
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you.
But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory…
Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God bless! Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
Just something to think about (regarding Osama Bin Laden and the fervor regarding his death) from another perspective…
“If you ignore every single thing Jesus commanded you to do you’re not a Christian, you’re just auditing. You’re not Christ’s followers, you’re just fans.”
Bill Maher
“…if this is gonna be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition… and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.” Stephen Colbert
In 2009 the Pentagon’s base military budget was $518 billion + an extra $130 billion for Iraq & Afghanistan = $648 billion for 2009 alone.
Earlier this month President Obama signed the Military Defense Authorization bill for 2010 raising the Pentagon’s base military budget to $550 billion + another $130 billion for Iraq & Afghanistan = $680 billion for 2010.
(If you’re keeping tally, that’s $1.3 trillion in defense spending for a two year time span.)
The United States has consistently ranked #1 in military expenditures and 2009 is no different… we will outspend the next 15 countries combined. Meaning, if you take the military expenditures of China, Russia, Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, India, Brazil, Italy, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, and The Netherlands and put them all together, we spent more. (An interesting note: 12 of the 15 countries in that list are our allies.) In fact, the United States accounts for 47% of the entire world’s military spending… and if you’re worried about North Korea or Iran, well, we outspent them at a pace of 72 to 1. And just for some perspective: China (ranked number 2 on the list) spent only $89.4 billion on their military… or 5.8% of the world military spending.
Sound like overkill?
In 2008, 21% of every dollar paid in taxes went to the defense budget. (That number is sure to rise as the 2009 budget gets reconciled and all the numbers come in.) Meaning if your family makes $60,000/year this is what your portion looks like…
I’ve long found the excessive amount of money we spend as a nation on military expenditures ridiculous, especially considering how poorly we take care of our soldiers (the majority of the money goes to outdated weapons technology that has been earmarked by members of congress for their home state.) But it became a lot more real for me as this past week the Senate unveiled their own version of the Health Care Bill. There has already been a great deal of debate surrounding the bill, and it certainly won’t come to a conclusion in the near future. (Note: The point of this post is not to talk about the merits or lack of merit with the current Health Care Bill because it’s got a long way to go and in the end will look nothing like what it does in its present state… if it passes at all. Rather it’s to look at the discrepancy of our values as a country in how we spend our money.) The greatest amount of argumentation about the Health Care Bill came as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) unveiled the cost of the bill in its current form: $848 billion over the course of ten years, or roughly $84.8 billion per year (or 12.5% of what we currently spend on our national defense–not our overall budget.)
The screams from fiscal conservatives could be heard all across the country subsequently leading to a quick “no” on health care because of the cost alone in an attempt to quickly stifle debate. However, I’m sure we could squeeze $84.8 billion dollars per year out of the Pentagon’s budget to provide health care for those who cannot afford to pay for health care on their own because of rising premiums (or roughly the equivalent of China’s defense budget…and we’d still be okay on national defense still ranking far and away as #1 in the world with.) That’s $84.8 billion to protect American’s from sickness and disease… $84.8 billion to save lives instead of $84.8 billion to take lives.
When the $680 billion dollar Military Defense Authorization Bill came across the President’s desk, there was hardly a peep on the astronomical cost… it’s nearly 10x greater than the cost of health care… where were the fiscal conservatives on that one? As a country that purportedly stands proud in our value for life, we’ve certainly got a funny way of showing it.
