Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The Christian’s primary responsibility, politically speaking, is to live as a witness to the Truth. That Truth, revealed in Christ, is that God’s love is unconditional and total; it refused to give in or compromise itself for anything; it refused, therefore, to adopt any means which is a contradiction of the end--of love. Acting in response to such love, then, does not mean guiding our actions according to their pragmatic effectiveness, but rather, acting with a simple willingness to witness to the Truth. Thus, one’s life may even be given in suffering, if necessary, in order for this witness to be possible. When such suffering comes, God’s way can make such love, though seemingly defeated, totally victorious. This we see in the Cross and the Resurrection.

So the follower of Christ refuses to calculate his actions and measure his life on the basis of worldly effectiveness and success, but rather lives only according to his conformity to God’s love, God’s will and God’s Truth.

Gandhi’s life serves as a modern example that can shed light on what we mean. His actions and his life were meant as an internal witness to truth, rather than as an effective political means. If that truth had its way in the hearts and lives of people, it would produce profound political consequences. That was apparent. But his philosophy, his non-violence was not a political tactic; it was part of truth as he understood it. It had to be set forth simply for its own sake, regardless of the consequences.

In this sense Gandhi’s movement was a spiritual one. It was aimed at the inner liberation of man as an essential facet of his social and political liberation. In these ways Gandhi was not “political” in the Western sense at all. He was quite the opposite. He was deeply involved in a “political movement”--but it was far more than that. It was, in reality, a spiritual movement. And any true spiritual movement has inevitable and radical political consequences. This is certain.

There is, really, no separation between the two when they are properly understood. The East--Gandhi--was able to do that. For us in the Western world it is much more difficult. How adept we all are at imagining that by passing a few laws, or changing the power structure from the top, that we will usher in some new kind of social order! That justice and peace and brotherhood and all these ideals--that they can be achieved simply through the ballot box. Only the Western mind could be so naive as to believe that. How can it be denied that these problems are essentially spiritual?

But of course, the other danger and the other part of our problem is that by “spiritualizing” everything we seem to think there is no need for political action--that if a problem is “spiritual” then it cannot be “political”. So you try to “convert” people and forget about politics. That, obviously, is just as foolhardy. The problems we are speaking of are not just individual spiritual issues--they are collective spiritual issues as well. And that makes them political issues. There is really no difference.

The first task of the Christian concerned about politics, who should, of course, include every Christian in one sense, and no Christian in another sense, must be to witness to the nature of our problems, to give witness to the Truth.

Now what does this mean in Western society?

The choice that the West faces is essentially the choice that has consistently confronted modern man: namely, shall we serve God or Mammon?

Christ says that we cannot serve both God and the power of money. We have a way, of course, of spiritualizing that command into an admonition about not making an idol out of money, which can then degenerate into something like: “God may bless me and give me a lot of money and make me rich, as long as I remain faithful in saying my prayers to Him, rather than worshiping money.”

Like with most of the Sermon on the Mount, Christ’s foremost message to his followers, we have succeeded in rationalizing away the direct, sharp relevance of Christ’s words.

So we are told that we cannot serve God and the power of money.

Now, how else can you describe Western society except to say that we serve the power of money? The “Almighty Dollar.” That is a phrase rich in accurate religious meaning. Our society believes the dollar to be almighty.

Society is structured around the power of money. Money gives power and privilege and it is foolish to pretend, somehow, that this is not so.

Look at our economy, the richest in the world. The enormous, incredible wealth that we have. A gross national product approaching one trillion dollars. We can make almost anything and then market it.

But in the midst of 27 different kinds of toothpaste and mouthwashes that create love and cars that are designed to fall apart and clothes that make the man and pills--pills to allow us to sleep and to let us sleep with whomever we want, and to take away that nervous tension, to compose us, to make us happy with extra added ingredients and to act only in seconds--in the midst of all this which is thought up and perpetrated on the American consumer, why are there people living in utter poverty? Why are people hungry in America? Why are people malnourished? Why are so many of the poor so sick in body? While so many of the rich are sick in mind? Why is the gap between the rich and the poor about the same as it has always been? Why do people live with rats? Why are there schools with classes of 65 and bitter teachers and no hope? Why are there prisons that make their inmates more bitter, more hardened?.

The harsh answer to most of those questions is that our society serves, primarily, the power of money rather than the needs of people.

We would like to think that it is not so. But the reason for these conditions of suffering is not that we lack sufficient financial and technical resources to change these realities. Rather it is not “economically feasible” to solve them in any direct way. We simply haven’t figured out a way to solve these problems that “pays” or that can be “afforded.”

It is very ironic for people who live in an economy with a gross national product of one trillion dollars to say in all seriousness that we cannot “afford” to give decent medical care to all citizens, as a right, regardless of how poor they may be. Or to do any of the other things necessary just to make life human for each person who lives in America.

Of course, in one sense those who make such objections are right. We cannot afford to do such things operating on the kinds of assumptions and with the kinds of structures that we have.

All the comfortable rationalizations about our system seem not to be working out, in reality. By increasing our GNP we have not created the wealth which then “trickles down” and meets the needs of all. The gaps do not narrow: The housing crisis, the health crisis, the penal crisis, the education crisis--just look at any of the problem sectors of our society: look at the plight of the dispossessed. Is there any real improvement? Are things really any better?

Now it just may be that we cannot create the conditions of economic and social justice in our’ society without calling into question some of these most basic assumptions and structures. No one really wants to believe that. But it just may be true, and point out the truth of Christ’s own words.

As long as we gear ourselves for instance, to the expansion of our GNP--the cardinal rule of our economic system--it may prove to be impossible to solve the basic problems of economic injustice and the maldistribution of wealth in society. As long as the talents and skills of our society are monopolized by servitude to consumerism, it may prove impossible to solve the basic social inequities we face. As long as we assume that the rich have a God-given right to stay rich and become richer, the poor may well always stay poor.

When you really stop and look at things simply, it becomes very hard to understand how such great abundance, and such obvious misery, existing side by side in our society, can be possible tolerated or justified in the name of anything, and particularly for the Christian.

I am convinced that our society serves the power of money, and that as long as we do, we will be afflicted with the types of fundamental economic and social injustices we face. Band-aids can and should be applied wherever possible--needs must be ministered to. But without deep changes, the whole thing probably won’t be getting much better.

The Christian should witness to this: he should say that a society which serves the power of money will not be a society that serves the needs of people. We may wish that this all worked together for good. But it seems to me that it does not. From what I see, insuring the successful growth and health of our economy as it presently operates is not the guaranteed, automatic way for the human needs of all our citizens to be met and fulfilled.

The Christian must bear witness to these truths. He must bear witness by what he says and, of course, by his own life. That life must be free from the various forms of service and bondage to the power of money.

The materialism of Western society reveals our spiritual depravity. It is senseless to suppose that the Gospel, which witnesses so directly to where man places his allegiance for the orientation of life, can be regarded as somehow less than concretely relevant in its judgment upon the materialism of our culture, both individually and collectively.

A society which has pretenses of service to God, but in effect is enslaved to money and its power, will self-destruct.

These are the truths, learned from the words and life of our Lord, that we must testify to.

Let us consider another sphere of society’s life where the Gospel’s sharp and vibrant relevance must be witnessed to by the Christian. That is the nation’s search for security, pursued through the means of assuring militarily, our “defense.”

We need not dwell on the excesses and absurdities of the more than $80 billion dollars we spend in the name of “security.” They have frequently been articulated.

Rather, let us think about the meaning of all this. We hear again and again about what is necessary to protect our “national security.” Now what is meant by that? What is our “security”?

Doesn’t this mean, in historical terms, the guarantee for us, to live under a political system that grants us as rights endowed by our Creator--“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?

But it is utter nonsense to believe that this what is being protected and insured by our massive military power and the billions that we spend under the name of “security.”

Does our military power protect our life?

The fact is that a major threat to the life of every American comes from the existence of our military power, and the balance of terror; through accident or through some man’s madness somewhere in the world we could be plunged into oblivion, along with most all mankind. Certainly it can be conceded that our military might and the consequences that flow from it pose at least as much a threat to our very lives as it does in actually protecting those lives from death at the hands of some foreign enemy.

Think for a moment. Without our nuclear arsenal, poised and ready at a moment’s notice to rain down death on our adversaries ten times over, would you really feel less secure about the existence of your life? Or might you feel more secure?

That’s a secular way of looking at this question and not the Christian way, where one is ready to relinquish his life. But this is still illustrative.

Further, for more than 50,000 Americans, our military might and its presence throughout the world demanded and resulted in death in Indochina.

Who will honestly maintain that those deaths were the sacrifice necessary to protect the lives of 200 million Americans?

And even more tragic and criminal are the Asian dead, who have been the victims of our military power. The slaughter of innocents--hundreds of thousands. We lost count: perhaps even a million. And then the maimed, the homeless, the orphaned.

Now, were those the costs of preserving life for Americans? Or liberty? Or the the pursuit of happiness?

To even state such a proposition makes one shudder in disbelief: It is so clear, so plain, and so simple that our sophisticated rationalizations about our policies and the protection of “security” are lies.

So we cannot claim that our military power, which we are told is to preserve our security is that which actually protects our life from destruction.

Now what about liberty? Does our military power protect those cherished ideals?

From whence do the threats to our liberty come? From foreign invading armies landing on our beaches?

Liberty--to the extent that it is alive in our nation, today--is threatened from within. It is threatened by our government. The witness of the past few years shows clearly that the government’s threat to liberty is far more evident, far stronger and far more real than the protection of liberty our government is supposed to give.

And the most telling instances of threats by the government to our liberty always come in the name of national security. The draft has been one example.

More recent and relevant now are the revelations from the Watergate scandal.

All those schemes which clearly violated the rights and liberties of Americans--the plumbers, the secret police mentality and apparatus operating even beyond the FBI, the wire-tapping, all the “White House horrors”--these were launched and have been justified in the name of national security which, remember, is supposed to mean preserving our liberty.

Military power and the rationale for its use always brings with it a whole psychology of “security.” The truth is that reliance on military means and military power inevitably pushes a society toward that end--toward elements of totalitarianism as a way of life.

Can we really claim that liberty is protected by military power? Or rather, does not the psychology of “national security” that is essential to sustain the military establishment, rationalizing its existence and purpose, pose a major threat to our liberty?

What, then, about the third part of our definition of security--the “pursuit of happiness”? Does our military power guarantee this?

In any direct way the obvious answer is, “No.”

But there may be one ironic sense in which the military does insure our happiness. If happiness is defined as materialism, as wealth, as access to luxury--and for most Americans this is often the case--then the military does play a role in protecting this privilege. How? By guaranteeing our economy access to those markets deemed as essential to preserving our standard of living.

I am not suggesting that our economic interests are the sole or exclusive explanation for our military policy and presence throughout the world: there are obviously many other motives, including a sincerely held ideology about preventing what we termed communist aggression that played a part. But we know that our economic interests have had a definite role in the shaping of our foreign policy.

To a certain extent, it is our own economic self-interest which has been a factor in shaping our military posture. And this means, of course, that our materialism and our consumerism have a direct relationship in sustaining and motivating the billions we spend on “defense”.

The needs that our society produces for everything from coffee to chrome help generate the demands for a military,force capable of protecting countries, and the markets and products they offer, throughout the globe.

Now this problem becomes all the more acute in light of world’s limits to its essential resources. Limits to protein, whether in the form of grain (taken directly like rice or indirectly in the form of meat, eggs and poultry) and fish and soybeans. Limits to things such as fresh water; limits to the supplies of energy; limits to minerals; limits to land.

We know that for all the world to achieve the standard of living presently enjoyed by America would entail absolute disaster; not only would this be impossible actually to attain, because of all the limits mentioned and the growth in population, but even trying to achieve it would result in great dislocation, misfortune, tragedy, destruction and death. The irony, of course, is that we believe, and would have all others believe, that America is the model for the world’s progress. We urge other nations to develop like us and to achieve the kind of economy and standard of living that we have. But in so doing we are, in truth, only urging the world ultimately to its own destruction.

America’s preemption of the world’s resources is becoming the primary issue in our relationship to the rest of humanity, especially as mankind becomes more aware of this reality. In the future, points of international tension will center in large part around the question of resource use--resource preemption by the wealthy of the world. More and more, our military policy will take on the role of protecting and guaranteeing our preemption of these resources. In other words, the protection of what we call “security” will actually become the protection of our standard of living, our life-style, our senseless consumerism, our waste of resources, our privileged position, our wealth, our luxury, our narcotic self- indulgence.

So in this sense, our-military power does have something to do with protecting “the pursuit of happiness” if this is what we mean by happiness. But to admit that means that a justification of our military posture and establishment is that we are a selfish, heartless people, fully prepared to protect our monopoly on privilege and wealth, even if it means that the rest of the world will have to be damned.

Now what is the Christian response, our witness to the Truth, concerning these matters?

First, we are brought back again to the materialism of our culture. Wealth corrupts a society because of the demand for security that it entails.

Christ warned us against the dangers of wealth as clearly and consistently as possible. One reason was that wealth is not just an evidence of selfishness: rather, it can lead us into greater selfishness. In order to protect what one has, he can be inhibited from loving his brothers.

The primary concern for the Christian about money, it seems to me, is that it can become the thing which keeps us from perfecting our love.

The whole matter of “personal security” is most always tied with financial security, or the right to possessing wealth. In the name of such “personal security” we find all sorts of reasons for not loving others--particularly anyone who may seem to threaten this security. Thus, to love the poor, the black, the dispossessed can become very complicated by the fact of our wealth.

I am not maintaining that all Christians are called to an ascetic existence--to a life of poverty. That is something for each of us to work out in light of our gifts, our mission and God’s call on our lives.

The point here is that in the teaching of Christ and the New Testament, wealth and possessions are deeply suspect because they do not only display selfishness, but can nurture it and create demands for security and allegiance which inhibit our ability to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbor--our poor neighbor--as ourselves.

If you say you love another, and you are rich and he is poor, it is hard to imagine with the presence of Christ’s love in your heart, how you can stay as rich as you are and how he can stay so poor.

What is true individually may also be applied corporately and collectively. A society that pursues wealth and the power of money, as ours does, will develop the need for security in order to protect what it has.

Part of the cost of our society’s worship of materialism is the military arsenal we have and all its consequences.

The Christian should see and say that the values of materialism--in an individual or a nation--will always find a convenient and almost inevitable alliance with the values of militarism.

Further, when considering the growing scarcity of earth’s resources and our monopoly of them, we must refresh ourselves with the vivid consciousness of God’s identification with the plight of the poor and the dispossessed.

We are living in a society of the world’s rich. That society is supporting structures of oppression that besiege the poor, the wretched of the earth. If we protect ourselves, and especially when our might is used to protect such privilege, we can only expect God’s wrath to come upon us. We have no excuse.

The truth is that we are rich and powerful and the world is poor and hungry.

God’s love for the poor is linked to his Justice. For us to sustain, justify and protect this status quo, for whatever reason, is to be a co-conspirator in the iniquity of the world.

The Christian sees himself in a unity with all mankind. And he knows that nothing which divides man can be justifiable. He realizes that this unity is the essential reality. Anything which violates this reality is violating God’s truth. Therefore all the reasons--the nationalism, the ideologies, the economic self-interest, our wealth--all those things, which keep us from loving and would prompt us toward hatred, are judged by God’s love. All of those have been overcome by the cross of Christ. That is part of what is meant by Christ shattering all the powers and becoming supreme over them all.

Christ is over all power and authority because He made all mankind one--he has reconciled all men to Himself.

When this article appeared, Wes Michaelson was a member of Church of the Saviour in Washington D.C., served as executive assistant to Senator Hatfield and was a contributing editor to the Post American.