Heal the Divide: Turn Away from an Honor System that Wounds

Of the many things that create division in the United States today, Chris Arnade argues that the divide between front row and back row America we should pay more attention to is. He borrows the image from the classroom. Front row students are eager to learn and make sure the teacher knows they are learning. They want to achieve and get ahead. They leave home to accumulate educational credentials. They expect to continue moving from city to city to seek financial success—a shared goal and measuring stick whether one is from the right or left. In contrast whether because it was not their thing or because of barriers thrown up by realities beyond their control, the back row students do not flourish in school. They dream of graduating from high school, getting a stable job and raising a family in the community they grew up in. Today, however, many of their hometowns have hit hard times and good jobs are disappearing. 

After getting a Ph.D. and working on Wall Street for 20 years, Arnade stepped out of front row America. He quit his job and hung out with back row people. He first focused on a neglected corner of New York City and the drug addicts who lived there, then he traveled across the U. S., visiting towns and cities in decline. Taking a seat in the back row he found people, all across the country, who felt rejected and stigmatized.

I read his book, Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America while also reading David deSilva’s book on honor and shame in the New Testament world. DeSilva’s book led me to write my previous blog on the importance of honoring other Christians’ efforts to stand against the current of societal ways. Arnade’s book led me to think about the church’s call to lessen the dignity deficit of those in back row America. Rather, however, than simply writing a blog that calls us to look for ways to shower them with respect, I want to first follow Arnade and David Brooks in asking how front row people, like myself, may inadvertently contribute to the dignity deficit.

In a recent column David Brooks asked, “What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?” Brooks, a conservative and never-Trumper, states that people in his circles view Trump supporters as the problem. He does not fully reject that, but proposes that he and his peers are a greater part of the problem than they acknowledge. I recommend the full essay, but will quote just a few lines that relates to what Arnade describes in his book:

“The ideal that we’re all in this together was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves. The most important of those systems is the modern meritocracy. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement.”

Similarly, Arnade writes, “The educational meritocracy is a well-intentioned system designed to correct massive injustices that enslaved, demeaned, constricted, and ranked people based on the color of their skin, sexuality, and gender. Yet in attempting to correct a nasty and explicit exclusion, we have replaced it with an exclusion that narrowly defines success as all about how much you learn and then earn” (234). He observes that the back row is left with little to take pride in that doesn’t need credentials—credentials they do not have (212).

I have lived the reality that Arnade describes. Some years ago on a visit to my hometown, front row Mark, with all my degrees and my professor job, walked down the block to visit my high school bus-stop friend Carlos. He fit Arnade’s back row description—still living on the same street and working at the same grocery store he had in high school. Yet, I was not sensitive to Carlos’s dignity deficit; it was not on my radar. However, in the even harsher status divisions in Honduras I did recognize people’s dignity deficit. I sought to pour honor into those with lower status. For instance, I knew that mechanics, doing manual labor and covered with grease, had low status compared to office workers. I intentionally regularly commended Edgardo, my mechanic, on his knowledge about cars that far surpassed mine. Aguinaldo was a partner in ministry and expert in regenerative agriculture methods—both in practicing them and teaching them to others. Yet, society saw him as just a peasant farmer with little formal education. Whenever he visited us or we visited him I would ask for tips on my compost pile and garden. I sought to counter shaming societal voices and called him my teacher, my agronomist. 

I did well to affirm Edgardo and Aguinaldo as I did. Let us, with intentionality, do what I did and look for ways to affirm and show respect to back row people. Yet, through the lens of Brooks’s and Arnade’s words I now see my efforts in a different light. Note what I did in each case. I sought to give them front row credentials. It was like I was giving them an honorary degree. I do not regret those actions. I urge you to look for ways to do the same. But let’s do more than that.

As Arnade spent more time with and listened to back row Americans his perspectives shifted. At first, he saw those languishing economically in dying towns as lacking in imagination and initiative. (“Why don’t they leave and go somewhere they could get a better job!?”) But with time he came to recognize that many had intentionally decided to stay. Other values, such as caring for family members or connections in the community, drove their decision to stay. Living successfully according to those particular values does not, however, provide credentials or a sense of pride in the front row meritocracy that Brooks and Arnade describe.

My giving “honorary degrees” to Edgardo and Aguinaldo was a good thing. Rather, however, than just working to give them morsels of dignity according to the norms of the front row meritocracy, let us work to dismantle the meritocracy machine that is wounding them.

I do not mean by that to trash all the components of the system. I am an educator. I am grateful for all I have learned as a student and the opportunities I have had to teach. I think we do well to enable people to have educational opportunities and gain credentials. What I feel called to dismantle is the monopoly that the meritocracy machine has on so many people’s conceptions of success and thriving. Breaking up that monopoly does not mean abandoning the all the values, but relativizing them.

My sense is that for those of us in the front row, the values of the meritocracy machine are so much the water we swim in that we often do not recognize how they shape theway we evaluate others. Therefore, it will require intentionality to affirm values not honored by the meritocracy machine. As followers of Jesus, we have an advantage. We have a ready supply of alternative values we can honor in others and they are values as likely to be found in the back row as in the front. 

How do we end the deep sense of division and the rejection and stigmatization felt by those in the back row? We can’t get credentials for them all, not even honorary degrees. We can, however, look at them through the lens of the beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount and affirm them for ways their lives line up with the values of the Kingdom of God. We can invite them into a church community where in Jesus there is neither front row people nor back row people (Gal. 3:28).

Arnade began his journey through back row America as an atheist. After years of talking with back row people, who often took him to their churches, he shifted—not yet a believer, but pondering. He had seen the value of faith and especially of churches—often small storefront churches. He observed that churches were the only places on the streets that regularly treated back row people like humans and where they did not need credentials to be accepted. So, if an atheist author sees the church as an antidote to the shame and rejection of the meritocracy machine, how about us? Yet, a key observation: the churches he visited were generally filled with and led by back row people. A church with many front row people has the same potential, perhaps even greater potential, to heal the shaming wounds of the meritocracy machine, but also greater challenges to becoming the sort of environment Arnade describes.

Let us intentionally shift from the values of front row society as we look for things to affirm in others. And, let us bar the values of the meritocracy machine from entering our churches and instead recognize the great potential churches have to heal division through being spaces where people are honored for living out the values of Jesus rather than possessing meritocracy credentials.

Addendum: An example of a front row person changing and viewing someone through the lenses of Jesus values rather than meritocracy values.

In the midst of her career as an economics professor Mary Hirschfeld converted and became a Jesus follower. She then completed an additional Ph. D. in theology. I shared a parable from her book, Aquinas and the Market in an earlier blog. In that book she describes coming to know Hector, a prominent member of her Catholic parish. She writes, “As it turns out, he was also a gardener at the college where I worked. Until then, I had thoughtlessly paid no mind to the gardeners and janitors who worked hard to maintain a beautiful campus. I simply failed to value work that had little status in society. . . But as I came to know Hector, I came to realize that economic and social status is a very poor measure of a person's worth. Hector was a wise leader of our parish community. Surely the Christian call to deal with poverty extends to the demand that we recognize the value of what people do apart from the incomes they happen to earn by doing it. Yes, we can pay gardeners more. But a big part of what matters is the respect we accord them and the cultivation of our ability to see the wealth—which is the true sort of wealth—that the poor have to offer us” (187).

Restoring Personhood – In the Early Church and Today

Gaius, mentioned in Paul’s letter to the Romans (16:23), was head of a household—meaning he likely had a large house that included his family and other workers and slaves. Andy Crouch observes that Gaius would have been a client to patrons above him as well as a patron to others with less status and power. Then Crouch makes this statement: "There is one other significant thing about Gaius that we need to grasp . . . He was a person" (15). Well, isn't that obvious? Do we need someone as brilliant as Andy Crouch to tell us that? What makes the statement significant is what Crouch explains next. In the Roman world at that time personhood was a legal category—someone with standing before the law. “Many people in Gaius’s world were, in fact not persons in this sense. Slaves, above all, though they were undeniably human, were treated under the law not as person but as property” (15). That helps us understand why Crouch told us he was a person, but why is Crouch writing about Gaius in a book on technology? (The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World.)

 Just as in Gaius’s day world forces hindered many humans from living as persons, Crouch argues that today technology and Mammon hinder humans from living as persons. Our machines and devices make us machine-like.

 Erastus, the next one mentioned in Romans, was a city official and also a person. The man mentioned before Gaius, Tertius, and the one after Erastus, Quartus, were not persons in Roman society. As Crouch observes, we know Tertius was a nobody partly because of his job—to take down dictation from important people like Gaius and Erastus. He may have been a slave, but even if a hired hand, he was still not considered a person. His name, "third," also points to his lack of status. Sons of slaves did not matter much, so they were often named by the month they were born or their birth order. Even non-slave families sometimes did this—only the first-born son really mattered. Out on the street, Gaius and Erastus are men of rank—persons, and Tertius and Quartus (Fourth) are nobodies—non-persons. But when they all gathered together as Jesus followers, the categories and stratification were left at the door. Slaves and free, scribes and city officials, men and women, all ate together at the same table. They all became persons.

 Crouch leads us to see this in the letter itself. He imagines Paul stopping dictation of his greetings and saying, “’Tertius, you should greet them.’ . . Suddenly the scribe is not just writing; he is speaking—and he has a name. . . Paul sees Tertius. He is Paul's brother, not just a hired hand" (115-16). Borrowing from Madeline L'Engle, we would say, Paul named him. “[T]he circle of brothers and sisters [expands] to include those who do the anonymous work, those who normally take orders, those who arrive without being greeted and depart without being noticed. Those who were named something like ‘number three’. . . But as they arrive and join the feast, every one of them is welcomed in the Lord. . . Because every one of them is a person” (116, 120).

The need for humans to be treated as persons, not things, is just as great or even greater today. There are still categories of people who, in the eyes of some, are less-than-human. Others perform machine-like labor and are often treated like machines. Yet now, even the personhood of those with status, today’s Gaius and Erastus, is lessened by technology and Mammon.

 Let us, the body of Christ, as individuals and communities, be instruments of naming—of restoring personhood to those who have lost or are losing it. Here are some ideas on how to do that.

          Table Fellowship – As in Gaius's time, inviting someone to share a meal communicates acceptance, restores dignity, and fosters human connection.

         Technology Fasts – In an earlier book, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place, Andy Crouch shares some of his family’s practices, including fasting from their devices, one hour a day, one day a week, one week a year. Share the ideas, read the book with others—practice it together.

        Alternative Activities  – Don’t just take breaks from technology, but with intentionality do things that foster personhood—with friends, family, church community.

          Be Present  – Another area that calls for intentionality. In an age of absence be present to others.

          Give Dignity – Look for ways to increase the dignity of those with a dignity deficit.

         Evangelism – How might technology and Mammon's attack on personhood reframe how you think about and practice inviting others into a relationship with Jesus?

For Further reading –  In addition to the two books by Andy Crouch mentioned above, I recommend the following historical fiction books:

A Week in the Life of Rome  by James L. Papandrea

Lost Letters of Pergamum by Bruce Longenecker

 These narratives will help you feel and understand in greater depth the personhood-denying practices of Roman society and the radicalness of Christians' response.

Jesus: Carpenter or Construction Worker?

Imagine a carpentry shop. What are the images that come to mind? Imagine a crew of builders working on at a construction site. What comes to mind? What comes to mind when you hear the phrase, Jesus was a carpenter? What changes if you think of Jesus working for years on a building crew? A recent article I read by Jordan Monson persuaded me that “builder” or “construction worker” is a better translation than carpenter for the word in Matt. 13:55 and Mark 6:3. Now, instead of just thinking, "oh, those Bible scholars, always digging for details to argue about," I urge you to take a few minutes and join me in reflecting on what difference it might make whether we think of Jesus working at a carpenter’s bench or on a construction crew.

 I will briefly mention some of the main points in Monson's argument and then share some of his thoughts and my own on why it matters.

 “Carpenter” is not technically a wrong translation of tektōn, but the word is broader than that—more the sense of a builder who uses various materials—wood, stone, metal, thatch, plaster, etc. “Carpenter” may have seemed like the most fitting word for Bible translators in 17th-Century England, surrounded by woods and buildings made of wood, but does it make sense in Galilee? There were not many trees around Nazareth; hence little work was done with wood.

Monson, does not, however, just base his argument on building materials available for Jesus the tektōn. He asks the astute question, from where does Jesus draw his examples and metaphors? He often spoke of farming, occasionally of fishing, but not of carpentry—only one mention of wood and sawdust (Matt 7:3). But, Jesus often mentioned stones, foundations, and rocks. That points to him being a mason, working with stones.

Like other builders of the time, Jesus likely did not just work on small projects in his village. He and his father probably traveled to the nearby Sepphoris and worked with others on large building projects that Herod and others built. Jesus, at times, would have worked under the authority of head builders and perhaps had less-skilled laborers under his authority. This work experience shows up in his teaching. Jesus talks about wages, managers, hiring and firing, and building projects.

What difference does it make that instead of spending time cutting boards and hammering nails in a carpentry shop, Jesus, God incarnate, was chiseling, carrying, and laying stones?

It is easier to romanticize Jesus the carpenter meditatively working on a wood project with the sun streaming through the window. Few people plaster walls or build cement-block walls as a hobby, but many love spending time creating something out of wood at a home workbench. Thus it is easier to turn Jesus the carpenter into a more dignified respectable job.

The reality is that tektōn at that time, whatever building materials used, was a lowly position. Monson writes, "Jesus was not elite. His trade was not respected. Early church leaders of an aristocratic bent found Jesus' trade to be embarrassing. They wanted to distance him from it. The first substantive polemic against Christianity attaches the respectability of Jesus precisely on this account. In the second century, the pagan philosopher Celsus disparaged Jesus as 'only a tektōn'" (42-43).

God, through Jesus, did not just practice solidarity with and bring dignity to the marginalized through a few meals during his ministry. He spent years of living, working, and eating with the lowly. Thus, thinking of this word correctly enhances the significance of the incarnation for many who work in low-status jobs. God was quite literally one of them. What is the import for these people that Jesus was a construction worker? How might it challenge higher status people and their practice of viewing people differently based on their jobs?

There are multiple other reasons why the incarnation matters for us. One is that through Jesus’ being a human, God has experienced the joys and sufferings of humans. To move Jesus out of the quiet carpentry shop into the rough and tumble world of a construction crew broadens the sense of what he experienced. Think of conflicts you have had with co-workers, frustrations with a supervisor, drudgery on the job, unfair pay, or being totally drained after a long day. God incarnate likely experienced all this and more. Jesus experienced, as we do, many ways that human sin complicates the work-day world and causes suffering and pain. We pray to a God who does not just know about but has experienced what we go through. I invite you to take some time consciously praying to the God who worked as a stonemason on a building crew.

What are other ways that your thoughts or feelings about Jesus are enriched by thinking of him on a construction crew?

Based on: “The Stonemason the Builders Rejected” by Jordan K. Monson, Christianity Today, Dec, 2021: 40-43.

To further explore the significance of Jesus' humanity and divinity watch two 15 minute videos at the bottom of this page on my website.

Automating Humans: The Costs of Amazon’s Extreme Efficiency

In my class on technique I always say: “How many of you have worked in a fast food restaurant? If you have, then, like me, you experienced the controlling influence of technique. The quantitative evaluation of actions in terms of time and money was evident in most all we did from how we put ketchup on hamburgers, how much ice to put in drinks to how we mopped the floors.” True, my 1970’s fast-food place emphasized efficiency, but how does it compare to today? Did you know that every task at McDonald’s has a target time in seconds? But, it is not just the list of times that makes the current McDonald’s more efficiency driven, it is that today they have monitoring equipment that can track those tasks—in real time. If a 2019 McDonald’s employee stepped into my 70’s chicken restaurant they would probably find it, in comparison, a relaxing work environment. And it would not just be the lack of timers, clocks, and alarms, but also the scheduling. Today’s algorithmic scheduling enables restaurants and stores to predict how much business to expect at different times in the week ahead. Thus individuals’ schedules vary from week to week, and efficiency demands, and algorithms now enable, that there are never extra workers. The computer schedules the minimum needed, or better yet, just less than minimum, for the amount of business expected.

If you have not recently worked at an efficiency driven job, I recommend talking to someone who has, or read Emily Guendelsberger’s On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane. Guendelsberger did investigative journalism through getting jobs, for two months each, at an Amazon warehouse, a call center, and a McDonald’s. It is one thing for me to say in class, “Machines are pure technique, but much of life is becoming machine-like.” It was another thing to see and feel the implications of that page after page in On the Clock. “All Amazon’s metrics and ticking clocks and automatic penalties are meant to constrain the inefficiencies of human workers so they act more like robots” (87).

In an essay in TIME Guendelsberger writes, 

Technology has enabled employers to enforce a work pace with no room for inefficiency, squeezing every ounce of downtime out of workers’ days. The scan gun I used to do my job was also my own personal digital manager. Every single thing I did was monitored and timed. After I completed a task, the scan gun not only immediately gave me a new one but also started counting down the seconds I had left to do it.

It also alerted a manager if I had too many minutes of “Time Off Task.” At my warehouse, you were expected to be off task for only 18 minutes per shift–mine was 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.–which included using the bathroom, getting a drink of water or just walking slower than the algorithm dictated, though we did have a 30-minute unpaid lunch. It created a constant buzz of low-grade panic, and the isolation and monotony of the work left me feeling as if I were losing my mind. Imagine experiencing that month after month.

Workplace chatter undermines efficiency. Guendelsberger suspects that the system that told her what item to pick up next purposefully sent her where she would not run into someone else between the shelves. Certainly it makes for less congestion, but also less talking. The packing stations are “catty-corner from one another, making it impossible to talk” (52). She felt deeply lonely working at Amazon. What is gained and lost through making the workers more machine-like? Ponder these quotes from workers at Amazon warehouses:

“The first time I worked there was so soul-sucking I found myself nearly crying in my car right before I was supposed to walk in.”

“The pay and the benefits are usually good, but it’s just not worth it if you don’t like being a complete robot.”

“There is no room for getting tired.”

“The temp agencies that Amazon uses are atrocious. They absolutely treat you like human waste.”

“People say, ‘Well, I’ve worked for such-and-such warehouse, surely it’s not that different—’ No, it is different. It’s downright dehumanizing” (22).

On one hand I write this blog about Amazon as an instructive case study. It displays what happens when we seek efficiency above all else. Its fruit is alienation. Therefore, as I say in class (and in this sermon) let us recognize that “efficiency” and “best” are not synonymous.  Efficiency is just one of the characteristics we should use to evaluate what is the best thing to do.

But this is not a case study of just one business among many. As Guendelsberger observes in her TIME essay, “Amazon is the apex predator of the modern economy; as with Walmart in the ‘90’s, anyone who wants to compete with it will have to adopt its labor practices.” How do we as followers of Jesus respond?

Perhaps the obvious is to say, “don’t buy from Amazon.” At some level I agree with that. I now generally buy used books from Better World Books, and at times willingly pay more for a new book to support a publisher or local bookstore. But I do not protest when Amazon sells my books, and even now part of me feels like sending a bunch of e-mails telling people, “for some reason that neither I nor IVP understands Amazon has been selling my honor-shame book at, or below cost, for about month. Take advantage of it!” So, I can hardly lead the way in a boycott-Amazon-movement.

Perhaps rather than thinking about how we might influence Amazon, we need to pay more attention to how Amazon, and other efficiency-driven enterprises, are influencing us. Former student Rob Maxey made that observation and said, “we now expect to get things the next day.” So rather than pointing a self-righteous finger at Amazon (I am ok they are not), this case study calls me to reflect on how I have drunk too much from the “efficiency-is-best” well and have become Amazon-like myself. 

Yes, this is a case study to stimulate reflection on that question, but, again, I must say this is more than a case study to stimulate reflection. As I write this, not too far down the road, workers are experiencing the dehumanizing efficiency of an Amazon warehouse. How about them? What is our response? What can we do to lessen the profound alienation they experience?

I ask this out of concern for those workers, but also concern for all of us. Inequality in the United States is increasing and as I explain in this blog, it negatively affects all of us. Although we measure inequality in financial terms, as I explain in that earlier blog, social scientists point to damaged dignity being at the root of the negatives that flow from inequality. We suffer from not just economic inequality but also a huge gap between people treated with dignity and those stripped of dignity. Amazon is not, of course the sole cause of that gap. Many forces in society dehumanize, but pursuit of extreme efficiency is one of those forces.

Let us as Christian communities call business people amongst us to resist bowing down to efficiency and turning their workers into machine-like beings. Or, to say it positively, let us call Christian employers and managers to intentionally seek to add to their workers’ dignity and sense of humanness even when involved in processes that easily detract from both. If businesses do so will they be able to compete with efficiency-driven enterprises? I don’t know. I am seeking to learn more by asking business people.

I had a long conversation with former student Matt Ford about these issues. He is operations director at JD Foods—a family-owned food distribution company in Fresno. Our conversation merits a whole blog. I will share just one line. Matt told me he overheard a worker say to another, “I could go work at _______; I would make more money, but there I would just be a number.” Clearly, thanks to the efforts of Matt, Rob Maxey and others at JD that person is experiencing the opposite of soul-sucking dehumanization.

 Let’s be clear, many of us, myself included, are in no position to exhort Christians in managerial positions on how to counter the alienating ways of extreme efficiency. We can, however, do what I have done this fall. I talked with Rob and then Matt not to tell them how to run their business, but to have conversations with them about these issues, to ask questions, learn—and, especially, encourage them in every Jesus-like action I observe in them.

Still, however, there are the people down the road in the Amazon warehouse and, for instance, at the place Matt’s employee did not want to work. How are we being the body of Christ to them? What can we be doing to heal their alienation, to offset the soul-sucking extreme efficiency of their workplace? I invite your comments on these questions and thoughts on how we might change the situation, not just bandage the wounded.

Inequality, Shame, and Violence

On Friday afternoon I led a Bible study with a circle of men in the Fresno County Jail. It included entering the biblical story ourselves and experiencing Jesus countering voices of shame we hear. I passionately invited them to imagine Jesus’ loving gaze when they hear shaming voices. One way or another, I address shame about once a month in the jail Bible study. Why so often?

Inequality feeds violence. James Gilligan, a psychiatrist who served as director of mental health for the Massachusetts prison system, explains that dividing people into categories of superior and inferior feeds violence. He states that as societal inequality increases so does violence. In a previous blog and in a section of this website, I have summarized research that shows that many problems, not just violence, increase with inequality—and everyone is affected, not just the poor. Why? Why does greater inequality feed these problems? Gilligan’s writing on violence powerfully displays the answer. At the root of violence, he found shame; and increased inequality is a catalyst for shame. My friend, and sociologist, Bob Brenneman found the same thing in his research on why people join gangs in Central America. There are a number of contributing factors, but the one that stood out was shame. Therefore, as we work for shalom, two key things to pursue are lessening inequality and healing shame.

The men in the Bible study come from a high security pod. Most are gang members. Violence is a part of their past, if not their present. What would Gilligan’s and Brenneman’s books tell me? If I dig beneath the tattoos and the criminal records what will I find? Shame. Therefore, I frequently proclaim liberation from shame through Jesus. That Friday, after doing the shame-healing exercise we had a time of prayer. I invited them to speak the names of people they love who have needs that the inmates themselves cannot address or solve. By naming them we would be asking God to bless them and do what we are unable to do.

We spoke names, one at time. The names kept coming, often tumbling one over the other—rarely a gap of more than a few seconds. I felt loving concern echo off the cement block walls. After five minutes I spoke a brief closing prayer—not because of awkward silence, but because our time was up. We shook hands, embraced. They thanked me for coming. Robert said, “thank you I needed this today. I look forward to Friday’s. This is reorienting.”

After the correctional officer took the men back to their pod he came to unlock the closet where I turn in my report on how many attended. He asked me, “How were they?” From time to time a C.O. asks me a “how did it go?” question that feels supportive, interested. This felt different. I replied, “Fine, it was a good study. They engaged well. They treat me well. Thanked me for coming.” All he said in reply was, “they are the worst of the worst.” I assume he was making a general comment about them coming from one of two high-security pods in the building. I guess on paper, if you look at the number of past infractions, and assume that tells you who they are—then yes, “worst of the worst.” But the words shocked me. I did an internal double-take. “What did he just say?” Is he talking about the same men who just lovingly prayed for others? Who thanked me for coming? Yes, they acknowledge they have done bad things in the past, but they long for a chance to live differently and not be defined by their past. As I rode home on my bike I pondered those words, “worst of the worst.” How does that categorization seep out through the words, the looks, the actions of that C. O. and shower the men with shame? What does it do to the men to wear that label? If Gilligan is correct, that correctional officer and the shaming system he is a part of will increase, not decrease the level of violence in society. I do Bible studies to counter shaming voices frequently . . . perhaps not frequently enough.

Thankfully, however, not everyone in the system thinks and acts as that officer does. Earlier this year I was walking with a different correctional officer to same closet. I said, “How have you been? I have not seen you for a while.” He replied, “I was on yard duty.” I asked, “Is that good or is it better to be on one of the floors?” He said, “You could say it was punishment.” I did not press for more information, but he went on. “I refused to do something I was told to do, because it was not right. These men are people too.” He named the number of a legal code, and said, “I refuse to go against that code.” I then asked him if he had heard of Bryan Stevenson and told him about the line from his book Just Mercy, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.”  He said, “yes, I have done bad things. These men have done bad things too, and yes, the quote is right.” Then he said, “I call them men, I do not call them inmates.”

He has worked in the jail and before that prisons, for years. This week I heard him say to another. C.O. that he had not had a break all day. I asked him why. He said, “A couple of the other guys working are new. I can’t leave them alone. The men would eat them alive.” (I assume he meant take advantage of them.) He is not naïve, but unlike the other C. O. he works with intentionality to lessen shame. He refuses to divide them into an inferior category.

Which of these two men represents more accurately the system as a whole, society as a whole?  Sarah Koenig, of the Serial podcast, has spent months interacting with people in Cleveland’s criminal justice system. How would she answer the question? I listened to the first episode of season three while working in our garden. Her words near the end of the episode led me to put down my spade and, through the lens Gilligan’s work, sadly ponder the implications of what she said.

A felony judge I was talking to for a different story in this series told me he was thinking of giving a defendant serious time. “What's serious time?” I asked. He explained, well, to someone with common sense, even one day in jail is devastating, life changing. To someone who's got no common sense, maybe they do three years, five years. Means nothing. They go right back out and commit more crimes.

I knew what he meant. Punishment is relative. What it takes to teach you a lesson depends on what you're used to. But there was a more disturbing implication as well. One that prowls this courthouse and throughout our criminal justice system. That we are not like them. The ones we arrest and punish, the ones with the stink, they're slightly different species, with senses dulled and toughened. They don't feel pain or sorrow or joy or freedom or the loss of freedom the same way you or I would.

“We are not like them.” What a potent shaming mechanism prowling through our justice system and society.

To be an agent of peace is not just to defuse and de-escalate a situation of active violence. It is also to work at the root causes of violence. James Gilligan would tell us that includes lessening the inequality gap, alleviating shame and building dignity. Clearly Jesus knew this before Gilligan. Whereas the first Correctional Officer’s words sound like things we hear from the Pharisees, Jesus’ words and actions match and go beyond those of the second officer.

What are ways we as individuals contribute to making distinctions between superior and inferior? What are ways our church communities do that? How do we participate in and go along with ways society builds the inequality gap?

What actions can we take toward dismantling or transforming systems that contribute to the inequality gap? How can we follow Jesus in alleviating shame and restoring dignity? What are ways we can lead the shamed to experience Jesus’s loving embrace?

Inequality: Businesses Lessening the Gap, Healing the Wounds

My previous blog dug below the surface of the oft-asked question of how to help the poor. I explored ways to lessen the shalom-sapping effects of inequality. I advocated for healing the wounds of shame and buffering people from social evaluative anxieties through radical inclusiveness and kinship in Christ. Of course the more obvious response to address the problems flowing from inequality is to deal with the economics of the gap between the rich and the poor. To have dug deeper and focused on shame was not meant to invalidate the significance of this more obvious action. As I wrote last month, one economic strategy focuses on the macro level. Richard Wilkinson calls for this sort of action in his Ted Talk—careful to give suggestions that those on the right could embrace and others that those on the left could embrace. Certainly these strategies are worthy of our attention and effort. In this blog, however, I want to focus at the micro level of individual businesses. Christian business leaders have tremendous potential impact. They can directly affect the earnings of people involved in their business; and because of the amount of time employees spend at work, employers have great opportunity to also address shame and status anxiety—the focus of the previous blog.

The possibilities excite me, but I am not an expert in business or the sociology of inequality. So after I had the above thoughts a few years ago I wrote to friend with more expertise. I asked what he thought of the idea of churches exhorting business owners to lessen inequality in their businesses. I suggested that might include more profit sharing and changing of salaries within a company, but just as importantly taking actions to increase the dignity of everyone who works there. He responded:

Mark,

This is very good. I had a conversation just today with my oldest brother "David," who is Human Resources director for a large RV company. He was asking me what he might do to increase "buy in" among employees since they have been experiencing a higher turnover rate recently. They are working on improving pay and the company owner is committed to doing that although in small increments, but David would like to do some other things. I told him that an underlying issue is communicating to workers that they, their views, and their work, are valued and respected. So we had a conversation very similar to the closing lines in your e-mail. Incidentally, my second oldest brother is the owner of a different RV-related company. He has worked at what you describe through profit-sharing for all workers, but also through weekly updates on company productivity, profits, and "lean-ness"—a topic in which he is deeply invested and wants everyone to share in. He believes transparency makes a big difference. “Mike,” (my second oldest brother) also told me that they recently lost a very good worker simply because the worker, a welder, was frustrated because the company had sold a number of the units he'd worked on at a discount. It made him angry to know that his work was being "under-valued." This story came up as we discussed the importance of communicating to workers that they and their work has real value and dignity.

Hearing about his brothers reminded me of my friend Jacobo in Honduras. I made this short video to tell how his passion to follow God’s call for justice in Isaiah 58 led to surprising changes in his factory—surprising to Jacobo in the way honor and dignity played a key role, and surprising to the skeptical factory owner that profit sharing actually lead to increased profits.

Seeking to lessen inequality in business is not a call to turn businesses into charities. People who, unlike me, have expertise in these fields share examples of how raising the wages of a company’s lowest paid workers helps not just society, but the business’s bottom line; and how the cooperative model makes good business sense. Others would likely debate these points, but in the end we are not trying to give business advice. Rather the Church is calling business people, as it calls people in other roles and professions, to seek to have their ultimate loyalty to the Kingdom of God and ask how they might follow the ways of Jesus throughout the week.

As I wrote last month, in relation to the inequality gap, it is crucial that the church itself is seeking to live in a centered way and not setting up in-groups and out-groups and status hierarchies. Churches can also challenge their members to apply this in their lives outside of the church—especially those who as supervisors have authority over others. How are they treating people with less income and less social or employee status than they have? How are they thinking about wages and profit-sharing? Have they considered shifting to an employee owned model? Think of the impact if all Christian business people across the nation, around the globe, made an increased effort in the weeks ahead to take actions like Jacobo, David and Mike!  The result at the macro level of all these micro-level efforts would be immense. How can we encourage others to follow the example of Jacobo, David and Mike?

Helping the Poor: Getting Beyond the Superficial

Generally there is some truth in obvious answers. But often digging deeper leads to greater insight. For instance, in recent years countries in Central America have led the world in murders per capita. Gangs are one of several contributing factors. With greater urgency people have asked: why do youth join gangs? Perhaps the most common answer is poverty and a lack of jobs. My friend, sociologist Bob Brenneman, agreed that poverty is a crucial factor. But he made the important observation: not all, not even a majority, of impoverished youth in the same neighborhood join gangs. So, he dug deeper asking: why these youth? What is different?

In his book, Homies and Hermanos: God and Gangs in Central America, Bob describes joining a gang as a desperate grasp for respect. Repeatedly, the sixty-three ex-gang members he interviewed carried profound shame from painful years in especially dysfunctional families and other experiences of social exclusion. The honor and a sense of belonging offered by gangs had a special power of attraction for these youth. Bob’s digging led to this and other insights. It is a great book filled with captivating narratives and excellent analysis. I commend it to you. I also commend following his example—digging deeper rather than simply accepting conventional wisdom. For instance…..

Many use levels of wealth as the obvious and simplest indicator of quality of life—a rich county is a better place to live than a poorer one. In response to the question:  How do we help the poor suffer less? The obvious answer is increase a poor individual’s income, or a poor country’s GDP. We might think of this as poverty line thinking—what matters is helping boost people above that line into a better life. I certainly had that mindset when I lived in Honduras. Granted, a certain amount of resources are necessary for thriving, but if we dig deeper this answer is not necessarily the best one.

Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson go deeper than the obvious answer in their book The Spirit Level. They combined various measures of well-being, such as life expectancy, literacy, infant mortality, incarceration, mental illness, addiction, social mobility, obesity and homicides, and found that, amongst developed nations the ones with the highest level of well-being were not the richest ones, but those with the lowest levels of economic inequality between the richest 20% and the poorest 20%. And those with the worst levels of well-being were not the poorest but those with the highest levels of economic inequality.

Levels of economic inequality

Note in this graph that Portugal and the USA stand right next to each other in level of inequality, yet if the graph displayed per capita income they would be at opposite ends of the graph and it would be Norway, not Portugal right next to the USA. If we went with conventional wisdom equating wealth with quality of life the USA and Norway would be best, and Portugal the worst. But in fact Portugal and the USA are next to each other, the worst, in the following graph of well-being.

Inequality is the key determining factor. Another way of making this point is to look at a graph that charts income rather than inequality. Unlike the above graph, there is no correlation between the two factors—the dots are scattered all over the graph.

What we observe in these summary charts matches chart after chart on the individual factors, and charts that compare states as well.

Thus, after digging deeper we observe that, in a general sense, the most important thing to do to help the poor thrive is not increase income levels but to lower the level of inequality. (Even as I write that sentence I resist. Something in me shouts out: “but raising incomes levels matter!” and protests: “This study is only of ‘developed’ nations.” True. There are countries, contexts, and individuals where increased resources are crucial. But, even in those situations inequality matters—poor people in a poor country with low inequality are better off than poor people in a poor country with high inequality.) Returning to the earlier poverty line image, we might conclude, certainly it is a good thing to help people get above that line, but we are missing something crucial if we only look at that one line and not also the line at the top that identifies the very wealthy. We must pay attention to the two lines and the gap between those lines—and seek to lessen that gap between the rich and the poor.

When one digs deeper you find not only better answers to the question asked, but discover important things you were not even asking. Here is a big one. As Wilkinson explains in a Ted Talk it is not just that the poor are worse off in countries with high inequality—those in the middle and the rich are affected to. All across the income spectrum people are affected negatively by high inequality. So, lowering inequality helps not just the poor; it helps all.

This calls for action. We can increase shalom for all by lessening the inequality gap. One response is at the macro level. Wilkinson calls for this sort of action in his Ted Talk—careful to give suggestions that those on the right could embrace and others that those on the left could embrace. Certainly these are worthy of our attention and effort. Again, however, digging deeper has value. What is behind this? Why does greater inequality lessen shalom? The Ted Talk does not answer address that question, but in their book Wilkinson and Picket do. After comparing data from various countries, their conclusion is: “Greater inequality seems to heighten people’s social evaluation anxieties by increasing the importance of social status” (43). Status competition increases, and with it shame for not measuring up. They make clear that this is not just an emotional or psychological issue. This shame and the stress related to status competition negatively impacts health and interpersonal relationships.

Shame. Our digging has brought us to the same place that Bob Brenneman’s digging brought him. What does this mean for us as Christian communities as we seek to help the poor (and everyone else) by addressing the problem of the large inequality gap?

We can and should take concrete actions to increase income levels of the poor around us. But we simply cannot push people up high enough and fast enough. Even as we push people above the poverty line they still will face a larger gap of inequality than they would have thirty of forty years ago because in the United States in recent decades the gap has grown larger and larger; it is much larger than most think it is.

Clearly the United States, working from both the right and left, needs to address structural issues and lessen this gap. Christians should be involved. It will be a long challenging task. Yet, right now, today, Christians can take action that will have immediate impact—provide liberation from shame and buffer people from social evaluative anxieties.

- Let us proclaim liberation from the burden of shame through Jesus, using texts like Luke 7 and Luke 15. (Luke 7 magazine article, Luke 15 Bible study video.)

- Shame is a relational wound and the healing must be relational. Let our churches be places of healing and protection from shame. Through this recent election season and now in the first weeks of the Trump presidency walls of division and status anxiety have increased. The need and opportunity for the church to center on Jesus, invite all to the table, and live out Galatians 3:28 are great.

- Of course, if the church is truly to be a haven and place of healing, then, in the words of former student Kathy Streeter, let us “refuse to let inequality enter the doors of the church.” We can be, as Jim Tune, another former student, writes, “an alternate community where things aren't measured by ‘performance’ or economic and social status…. In Scripture James warns against favoritism. I think the church may need to become more vigilant in guarding against this.”

- Let us, in the words of Father Greg Boyle, “stand at the margins so that standing there the margins will be erased.” Father Boyle talks as powerfully, and engagingly, as anyone I have heard on the power of kinship to dismantle shame and disgrace. Listen to this Ted Talk or this On Being interview and allow him to feed your imagination of how we can undo damage caused by the inequality gap through kinship.

- Refusing to let inequality enter the church means resisting consumerism and other forces that do so much to feed status anxiety.

Taking these actions to lessen the shaming power of the inequality gap will have multiplying impact. If the deep digging of Brenneman, Pickett, and Wilkinson is correct, these actions will have ripple effects touching many aspects of people’s lives—contributing to broader and deeper shalom.

To focus on shame does not mean to ignore economics. Many Christians who own businesses will sit in church this Sunday. They have great opportunities to address the inequality gap both through how they structure pay and how they treat workers. I look forward to writing more about this in the near future.

Let us not settle for superficial answers, and as followers of Jesus may we be in the forefront of addressing issues discovered through digging deeper.