The Neighborhood Marxist: Try and Deport Me!

It has been over a month since I last posted, so I will give quick update of what has happened over the past month. We had a baby named Paul, I graduated from Fuller, I am still designing a Conflict Resolution Program at the Western Justice Center, and I am continuously attempting to understand what makes me tick. (Obviously a long process) The other day as some friends were over, we started to discuss the implementation of this program at the Western Justice Center and someone happened to refer to me as "The neighborhood Marxist", a title which I happily embrace, since I would err on the side of being a revolutionary. To better explain this idea, I would say that we as Christians follow an "Upside down kingdom", to borrow from Donald Kraybill, who wrote that Jesus flipped the reality of life in the earth upside down, so that heaven, which has always been understood as "that which comes from above", is now overlapping the earth, which is more of a Hebraic understanding of Scripture, i.e. non-Greek. Please, any literalistic people, it is meant as a metaphor. This idea seems very Marxist, since Marx would want a complete dismantling of the hierarchical structures which cause and foster oppression to be 'torn asunder', since this is the only possibility for humans to even realize that they were being manipulated all along.

We must remember that the bourgeois are who Marx, as well as Bonhoeffer, Moltmann, and Cone would agree are the ones doing the manipulating, making the working classes and poor believe that they deserve what they have, or don't have, and whatever the poor receive, damnit they should be grateful! In Germany, Bonhoeffer had stated that the bourgeois, i.e. the elite classes had taken over the church and pushed the poor and working classes out. The apostle Paul had something to say about certain "elite" members of society taking over the fellowship in I Corinthians 11:17-34. Many members of the congregation were hoarding the food and drink from the communion of the saints and therefore the poor or working classes who showed up later, had nothing to eat. Wow, nothing ever seems to change. I do believe that the bourgeois is a large group of people in our society, but specifically who fits the category of bourgeois today?

The ruling class, i.e. the elite would definitely fit into that category. Who though in our churches would be bourgeois? I have been to a lot of churches, including for the first time, Lake Avenue Church for graduation from Fuller. I know some people who attend Lake Avenue and I do know that they are socially aware, care about the community of Pasadena, and invite some of the most "cutting edge" Christian speakers to bring a message of hope, but seriously, even at graduation, the "important people" sat up front, in front of all to see. I think it would benefit some people who are in front of the congregation every Sunday to sit with everyone else when they visit another church. Churches are not "Country Clubs", so they should start reflecting the reconciliatory ministry of Christ, not the "Who's Who of Pastordom". I am currently reading Brian McLaren's, Everything Must Change, but I still don't think our society will change at all until blacks and Hispanics have the opportunities to do what "whites" do.

David Roediger, professor of history at the University of Illinois-Urbana, wrote a book which I am reading entitled, Working Towards Whiteness, How America's Immigrants Became White, The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs, and it details the process by which the immigrant classes from approximately 1880-present, gained access to opportunities through an assimilation into whiteness, over against people of color. Books such as this deeply affect how we in Christianity view God and society, because if we live in the "upside down kingdom", that means that even if we DO NOT know this "kingdom" exists, the systems in the earth are the way towards our understanding of God, not vice-versa. That is why we can not "love God, but not our neighbor". Anyways, I am out of time, see ya'.