Everything is coming apart. Nothing works anymore. We move from one crisis to another so fast that the word has become a description of our whole way of life.
We are in a period of major social disintegration. The economy is rapidly being destroyed by the twin devils of unemployment and inflation. Despite the proliferation of government regulations, our water becomes dirtier, our air is harder to breathe, and our land poisoned--all from the massive wastes of a consumer society. Even our bodies show the consequences of a polluted environment as one out of every four of us now is afflicted with cancer, the plague of our technological age. Meanwhile, the number and sufferings of the poor mount daily throughout the nation and the world, as a privileged few grow ever richer.
The resources of our finite world are reaching their limits as we who were charged to be stewards have instead been exploiters. Yet despite our dwindling resources, we now spend more than half of our public monies to increase our military arsenals. Constructing the most sophisticated and lethal weapons of war the world has ever known has required precious human and material resources, undermined the economy, and escalated the prospects of war. And now, war will be total.
It is a period of political withdrawal and instability. Politicians are suspect. The country hasn't had a president serve two terms in 30 years. Only half of those eligible in the last presidential election even bothered to vote. The standard reason: "It doesn't make any difference." The major institutions of government, business, and labor generate no confidence. Corruption is assumed on every level by a cynical public. Self-interest and apathy are the two poles of public life.
Fewer and fewer people are enthusiastic about the system, the way things are, or the world around them. All this is creating a deep insecurity that is evident everywhere. People feel like sheep without a shepherd. Unfortunately, there are many wolves who would devour the flock, or turn it to their own purposes.
It is a time of spiritual decay. Material wealth and military superiority have become idols. Our low value for human life is evident both in escalating military expenditures and rising abortion rates. Only our hardness of heart allows us to accept a global economic system that starves children and consigns one billion people to grinding poverty. Crime runs out of control in the streets and in corporate boardrooms and corridors of power. Sexual values reflect the selfishness of a consumer society whose watchwords are always "more" and "better." Personal gratification replaces commitment and undermines the integrity of marriage, family, and the whole notion of relationships based on covenants.
It's an open question whether we will have hindsight for our time. But if there is hindsight, it will show this period to be a time of transition, a time of change from one era to another. We are either at the end of all the epochs or we're in a time between epochs, which means that old assumptions, values, and the structures they gave rise to are no longer adequate; they are unraveling. However, new assumptions, values, and structures have yet to take concrete shape. During times of transition, people are nervous about their lives, their world, and their future. Young couples agonize over whether to bring children into the world. Tomorrow looks to be only a time when today's problems get worse. People become defensive and begin to react more than to act.
In such a time the great need is for a new social vision. When confusion and uncertainty abound, the future belongs to those who can see it and begin to live it. By a new social vision I mean a new understanding of how people can relate to one another and live together. It must encompass our social, economic, political, sexual, and family relations. It must have the capacity to both change personal lives and generate new social and institutional patterns.
That new social vision will most likely arise from religious roots. The changes now necessary have to do with our most basic value and assumptions, with questions of ultimate reality and authority in people's lives. They have to do with our spiritual or religious foundations.
Visions rooted merely in secular ideology will not be enough. In American history, major social transformation has most often grown out of religious revival and spiritual awakening. The renewal of faith more than the spread of ideology has been the catalyst for change.
In an era of transition many solutions will be offered. Some people will seek desperately to hang on to the status quo. Those who profit most from the existing order will fight with all their might against any change that would deprive them of their wealth and power. Always there are those whose social vision is simply an affirmation of what already is, or a hearkening back to an earlier version of it. The language of returning to a mythical time of blessing, tranquility, and righteousness offers a sense of security.
Some religious leaders seek to justify the present system in spiritual terms. They call us to an earlier day when the nation was supposedly more pure and righteous. They refer to America as a nation like Israel, specially chosen by God, set aside for divine purpose. They argue that God has a special stake in America, as if we as a nation are indispensable to his purposes in the world. The nation has been compromised, they say, and we must return to the principles upon which it was founded. But that claim is illusive as those "principles" are defined according to the ideology of those who would preserve the old order.
Many seek to return to an era like the '50s, when the United States had clear nuclear superiority, the poor were quiet, and women stayed at home. It was the golden era of the American empire to which they long to return--a time when the United States could do what it wanted in the world without fear of challenge.
Such a vision is in fact reactionary. Masquerading as Christian, it runs contrary to basic biblical demands for justice and peace. Ultimately it is a vision designed not to defend the faith but to preserve narrow economic and national interests. What is needed is not a return to the past, but something that leads us to a new future.
There are now two primary questions on which the world hangs. They are also two issues on which the gospel is at stake. The first is economics. The second is military violence. It is interesting that among Right and Left, most now agree that these are the crucial questions.
Some argue a gospel of wealth. They proclaim material prosperity as a sign of God's blessing and, by implication, poverty as a consequence of sin.
Similarly, some define our nation as better and more blessed than others, and proclaim our military purposes to be righteous and just. Our national self-interest becomes elevated to the level of God's own purpose. Our enemies are the perpetrators of evil while we are the defenders of freedom. Our pursuit of military supremacy becomes, by this twisted logic, the key to peace in the world. The prospect of war, and now even nuclear war, generates no horror but takes on the character of a moral crusade.
A look at what the Bible says about these questions would serve us well here. Biblical economics begins with the affirmation that the earth is the Lord's. Its care is given to humankind in sacred trust. Its sustenance is to be shared by all God's children. The biblical doctrine of stewardship renders a clear judgment against any economic system based on ever-expanding growth, profit, and exploitation of the earth.
The early Hebrew law codes built in provisions for periodic redistribution of wealth to counter the sinful human tendency toward accumulation and to insure equity and justice. The Jubilee tradition required, at regular intervals, the remission of all debts, redistribution of land, and freeing of slaves.
The Old Testament sees poverty as neither accidental nor natural but rooted in injustice--in the way the society is organized. The prophets railed against the rich for their oppression of the poor. Yahweh demanded justice and righteousness and declared that nations would be judged by how they treated their poor. Right relationship to the Lord required the setting straight of all economic and social relationships.
Jesus is God made poor. His coming was prophesied to bring social revolution. His kingdom would turn things upside down: The mighty would be brought low, the rich sent empty away, the poor exalted, and the hungry satisfied. Jesus identified himself with the weak, the outcast, the downtrodden. He told us to look for him among the "least of these," and said our love for him would be tested by whether we fed the hungry, clothed the naked, sheltered the homeless, visited the sick and the prisoners. His kingdom undermines all economic systems which reward the rich and punish the poor.
The early Christians shared their goods with one another and with the poor. The Jubilee redistribution was fulfilled among them, no longer just at periodic intervals, but as a way of life. The apostles taught that one could not profess love for God while ignoring the needs of hungry neighbors.
Likewise, the biblical imperatives put a limit on the human propensity for violence. The biblical writers repeatedly attacked the roots of violence in greed, envy, hate, and self-righteousness.
Even the Old Testament outlaws the kind of militarism that governs the nations today: The Israelites were not to trust in their horses and chariots but were to rely on Yahweh for their protection. But it is the New Testament which reveals how God's purposes for reconciliation are made clear in Jesus Christ. No longer merely restrained in our violence, we are now taught to love our enemies and are "entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation." It is the peacemakers, says Jesus, who will be called the children of God.
There are Christians pursuing this biblical vision. They are heeding the Scriptures' call for simplicity of life, sharing of resources, stewardship of the earth, and fundamental redistribution of wealth and power which recognizes God's special concern for the poor. They have learned the biblical wisdom of finding security not in economic accumulation and armament stockpiling but in the pursuit of justice and reconciliation.
Something very significant is happening. In our own community and in other places around the country something has occurred that is so simple it could easily be missed.
Three things are now true of a growing number of Christians. First, we no longer believe that our worth and identity as human beings depends on our. consumption and possession of things. We are ordinary people--single, married, adults, and children--who no longer believe the central lie of the economic system. We neither ignore nor shun material needs but meet them simply as we care for one another. There is no longer a financial incentive in our lives; economic success is no longer a goal. Material goods now have only instrumental value.
Second, we do not feel the need for a nuclear arsenal to protect us. I'm not speaking simply about our position on peace. I'm talking about what we feel. We are not secretly glad that nuclear weapons are there to protect us. We just don't accept the need for the arms race.
Third, a change has come about in the way we tend to look at the world. Social questions, political decisions, and newspaper headlines are now viewed from the vantage point of how they affect poor people. For most of us, that's an entirely new starting point, a whole new perspective for how we think politically. It is to view the world from the experience of those at the bottom, not the top. Now, our first impulse is to ask the question, "How does this affect those who are poor?"
These are most significant and hopeful things, because they demonstrate a disbelief in the two most basic assumptions of the present system. Today the fundamental problem economically is that people believe the myth that economic gain is the key to happiness. The fundamental problem militarily is the myth that security comes from more and more weapons. Those myths are dying among us. And to the extent they are no longer believed, the system has lost its legitimacy for us.
The success of the American economic system depends on people identifying themselves principally as consumers. If even a minority begins to define itself differently, the system is threatened. When the assumption that our value and worth is tied up in material things dies, it foretells the death of the whole system.
Similarly, when people no longer believe in the ruling assumptions of national security, that system is in jeopardy. When people fear the military arsenals more than they fear the things the arsenals claim to protect us from, the military system will lose its credibility. People begin to believe in peace more than war.
The power of a system is not finally in its wealth, military hardware, or technology. Its power is in the spiritual authority it has in people's lives. In other words, a system has power only to the extent that people believe in it. When people no longer believe the system is ultimate and permanent, the hope of change emerges. Undermining the belief in the system is therefore the first step toward defeating it.
Most of us were born and bred to be the managers and beneficiaries of this system, and now we no longer believe in its most basic assumptions. That is social change. It is a new social vision in the making based in religious faith.
Our society needs more than a new perspective. It needs a new social vision. We can see the possibility of the church providing such a vision through its life.
We can see the beginnings of a church living by biblical economics. It would be a community in which competition was replaced by sharing. Even in hard times, the community would see to it that the needs of every person were met. The needs of the poor would take priority in the economic decisions and ministry of the congregation. Living at a fraction of present lifestyle levels would become a natural way of life as compassion takes root in the community.
The presence of such a people would be significant. They would be ordinary people who broke with the "givens" of their society. They would be concrete proof that it is possible to live a different way. Theirs would be a clear and credible voice defending the poor and attacking the arrangements of wealth and power which oppress them. This community's very existence would indeed hold the promise of new social and economic possibilities.
We can also envision congregations of Christians all over the world who sense the urgency of peace in the face of nuclear war. Only those who have found their security elsewhere can effectively challenge their nations' misplaced security in weapons of ultimate destruction. Those who are reconciled together in Christ and drawn from all the world's warring factions are particularly well situated to show the way to peace, and can help fearful nations learn less destructive ways of resolving conflict. In communities of faith, where the war system has been renounced as spiritually idolatrous and politically suicidal, concrete initiatives could emerge to beat swords into plowshares.
Social disintegration should not simply be viewed with despair. It can be, in fact, a sign of hope as people lose their belief in the system. It is when disintegration leads only to despair that we are in danger. Despair breeds passivity and becomes yet another victory for the system.
The biblical understanding of hope is relevant here. Biblical hope comes from having a vision of the future that enables us to live even now in its promise. It means bringing the future into the present with power and authority. Hope in something new and better is always the greatest spark for change. Without that hope we are controlled by present realities, wandering between passivity and despair.
The crucial movement is from optimism through despair into hope. Hope cannot be limited to a better life in the next world but is born of the possibility of living differently in this one. Christians should know too much about the world to be optimistic; they also should know too much about the future to remain in despair.
We are witnessing a battle for the minds and hearts of people in the churches. Some would try to channel people's insecurity into a rigidly ideological agenda that reinforces the worst values and structures of the present system. Some are even seeking a power base for their own political aspirations.
It is the practice of a new social vision that will offer hope in the midst of a hopeless time. The situation need not improve to give rise to hope. All that is needed is a belief in the possibility of an alternative.
The key is to live the hope among us now. In so doing we can create new social, economic, and political possibilities. We must be firm in our belief that the biblical vision is socially relevant, first in defining a new shape for the church's life and then in reshaping our social structures. Such biblical living on the part of the church could also lead to persecution, but at least we would be living a life worth persecuting in an oppressive and disintegrating social order.
It is the responsibility of those who hold a vision for the future to provide hope, whether or not it is received. We must recognize the future in what we are believing now, and live it. Otherwise, we allow the system to close off the future.
Unless we're able to see the connection between what we do, even daily, and what we believe, we will become discouraged. Our understanding tends to be parochial and narrow. We become bogged down in our own work, feelings, and selves, and we become unable to see the relationship between what we're doing and the vision that motivates us. Without that biblical vision renewing our minds and hearts, we will perish.
Even a small group of people trying to live a new way can be a significant sign of hope. But we can take our life for granted and lose sight of its broader meaning. Preoccupied with how hard it is to live on the margins, outside the mainstream, we lose our vision. We feel all the deficits of minority status without the self-consciousness of a creative minority. At that point we lose hope in our own life, and cannot possibly be a sign of hope to the churches or to anyone else.
Only when belief in the system has died and has been replaced by faith in God will real change come. It is ultimately only our faith that can break the stranglehold of the system, create the possibility of living a different way, and offer the vision of new social possibilities.
Jim Wallis was the editor-in-chief of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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