Category: Uncategorized

In America today, racist nationalists, including but not limited to Nazis, emboldened by the election of Donald Trump, the poster child for white mediocrity, threaten the security of our union.  Uniformed bigots cannot face the truth of being unable to succeed, despite every imaginable advantage.  America’s failure to live up to its promise of equality for all manifests itself in these oppressors who pathetically paint themselves as victims.  In the past, when festering, systemic violence gave rise to racist power structures such as chattel slavery and fascism, America lost unthinkable quantities of blood and treasure to put them down.

The people of Judah similarly turned from justice. They chose idolatry over the one true God. God’s advice to Jeremiah, “Do not pray for this people or offer any plea or petition for them, because I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their distress. . . . Do not pray for the well-being of this people.”  Jeremiah 11:14, 14:11. How bad does it have to get for God to tell God’s prophet not to pray for God’s people? Well, “They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal — something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.”  Jeremiah 19:5.

God poses an uncomfortable question to Jeremiah, a question I ask myself as I read Donald Trump’s response to Nazi attacks on American soil, “Can a leopard change its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.”  Jeremiah 13:23.

Speaking metaphorically of the solution, God offers Jeremiah this parable:

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.

Jeremiah 18:1-6.  Less metaphorically, God promises to keep a remnant, but as for most of them:

“‘In this place I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who want to kill them, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds and the wild animals. I will devastate this city and make it an object of horror and scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and will scoff because of all its wounds. I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them.’

Jeremiah 19:7-9.   Is there a way to right the evils of unjust distribution of power, without violence?  Is history actually full of societies redeeming themselves without cataclysm, but the only stories we remember are the dramatic ones?

Mid 1995, I walked off USS Billfish after my first time a sea, a short ten week run to the Mediterranean and back.  Among the families greeting their loved ones, I took my ten-month-old son into my arms; he struggled reaching for Mom.  He did not recognize me.  We drove home pretty much in silence, holding back the confounding mix of emotions that we would come to recognize as typical for returning to port.  Once home, I took out the Dr. Sues book that I had read on the video tape before I left.  After the first rhyme his eyes lit up.  Soon enough he was smiling and happy for me to hold him.

I made sacrifices for my country during those five years in the Navy.  And, had I not worked hard and mad those sacrifices, I would have suffered consequences.  I earned the right to stand up during Diamondbacks games when they honor veterans.  I deserve to walk with my daughter in the Veterans’ Day parade.

Of course, some of the advantages I enjoy are not the result of something I earned.  I did not have much to do with my dad being a scout leader who encouraged me to be an Eagle Scout.  I did not have much to do with my mom knowing how to fill out financial aid forms and assuming out of the gate that I would go to college.  Nor did I earn having my opinions taken more seriously when I spoke up in class, or people assuming that I’m one of the people in charge, both of which have much to do with my gender and race.

That’s the thing about being the privileged, or the chosen–it doesn’t mean you don’t work for what you have nor does it mean that you can’t do stupid things to lose what you have–it merely means that in addition to all of that, there is an element of luck prior to anything you ever did.

The nature of Israel’s chosen status is examined at the end of what is called Second Isaiah sometimes.  Chapters 40-55 were likely written after the Northern Kingdom had been taken into exile by the Assyrians, but before the Southern Kingdom had been taken into exile by the Babylonians.

Israel longed for a return of its special status, perhaps.  Isaiah 54:6 says, “‘The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—a wife who married young, only to be rejected,’ says your God.”  Note, in this metaphor, the wife doesn’t really deserve to be called back.  It is an act of love rather than a transactional response. In Isaiah 54:17, “‘This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me,’ declares the Lord.”  Inheritance is not earned.

Despite Israel’s longing, as the Southern Kingdom stood on the precipice of what would seem like eternal defeat.  Not just exile, but a destruction of the temple, the faith of Moses and of Abraham would survive by transforming from a local religion to a global one.  As Isaiah would write, in 55:8, “Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will come running to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor.”

How does Israel’s demise relate to White Male Privilege?  The faith of Abraham survived because the chosen gave up their chosen status.  The chosen recognized, transformed, revised–whatever–the faith to be a faith of the world.  Imagine if those who benefit from our societal structures could both recognize the advantages they have received and work to reorder systems so that such unfair advantages would be removed.  How cosmically powerful is such a notion that the privileged in our society could let go of that chosen status for the betterment of the entire culture.  It would be as grand a change as the followers of YHWH seeing their God as the God of the world.

Israel wouldn’t give up its chosen status until absolute, apocalyptic, cataclysmic destruction was imminent.  What would it take for the privileged in our society (like me) to be willing to surrender their privilege?