Our
Political, Business and Religious Leaders Are
Ignoring Their
Taxpayers, Workers and Membership
by
Pastor Paul J. Bern
Sooner
or later, it happens to each of us. There always will be at least one
situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change
or even understand. Maybe you’ve been laid off from a job you've
held for years. Perhaps you’ve experienced a nasty divorce (been
there, done that). Or maybe the crisis is more subtle: One suddenly
realizes they’ll never have the life they dreamed of living. Any
life-changing moment can knock a person down. But it can also open
doors if one learns how to “fall upward.”
Older
Americans like myself face a two-sided problem: many religious
leaders are paying more attention to the collection plate than to us,
and the government has been trampling its constituency underfoot for
decades while pandering to Wall Street and corporate America.
President Trump has already started renegotiating trade agreements,
but in many states like Georgia where I live, the minimum wage is
still stuck at $7.25 hourly. Much of contemporary religion is geared
toward teaching people how to navigate the first half of their lives,
when they’re building careers and families, a kind of
“goal-oriented” spirituality. Yet there’s less help for people
dealing with the challenges of aging: age discrimination in the
workplace (which is rampant), the loss of health, the death of
friends, and coming to terms with mistakes that cannot be undone.
God
can function as a spiritual survival guide for hard times as millions
of Americans young and old struggle to cope with “falling”:
losing their homes, careers and status. The phrase “falling upward”
describes a paradox. Nearly everybody will fall in life because
they'll be confronted with some type of catastrophic loss or abject
failure. Yet failure can lead to growth if a person makes the right
decisions. I’ve met people who, because of the loss of things and
security, have been able to find grace, freedom and new horizons.
They have learned to make the best of what can often be a bad
situation.
If
you’re falling in any area of your life, one of the first skills to
learn is accepting surprises. It’s easy for people to turn bitter
when things don’t go as planned. God sees such people all the time,
whether throwing tantrums at the airport because of long lines or
flocking to angry rallies in opposition to some form of social
change. If one doesn’t know how to deal with exceptions, surprise
and spontaneity by the time they’re my age, one become a
predictable series of responses of paranoia, blame and defensiveness.
These circumstances often teach similar lessons about hard times:
[1]
Suffering is necessary,
[2]
the “false self” must be abandoned, and –
[3]
everything belongs, even the sad, absurd and futile parts.
People
have learned these hard lessons for centuries, sometimes through
myth, but most of the time by trial and error. They must first
experience humiliation, loss and suffering before finding
enlightenment. They are often forced on their journey by a crisis.
Events
like the evaporation of a retirement fund or the death of a spouse
can force us to summon strength we didn’t know we had. Forced
liquidations of businesses that were once thriving enterprises is
another example that comes to mind. The key is not resisting the
crisis. We must learn to allow the circumstances of God and life to
break us out of our egocentric responses to everything. If we allow
‘the others’ – other people, other events, other religions or
cultures – to influence us, we just keep growing. That growth,
though, is accompanied by death – the death of the “false self”.
The false self is the part of our selves tied to our achievements and
possessions. When our false self dies, we start learning how to base
our happiness on more eternal sources. We start drawing from our walk
with Christ. We learn to distinguish from the essential self and the
self that’s only window dressing.
Those
who break through the crisis and lose their false selves become
different people: Less judgmental, more generous and better able to
ignore the evil, selfish or stupid deeds of others. It may sound
esoteric, but many of us have met older people like this. They
possess what I call “a muted enlightenment” – they’ve
suffered but they still smile and give. I’ve seen that in the
wonderful older people in my life. There’s a kind of gravitas they
have. There’s an easy smile on their faces. These are the people
who laugh, who heal, who build bridges, who don’t turn bitter. This
“muted enlightenment” shouldn’t be confined to older people.
I've met 11-year-old children in cancer wards who are in the second
half of life, and I have met 61-year-old men like me who are still in
the first half of life.
I
challenge the popular notion that success is a natural result of
being religious. Our culture is prone to imagine that growth takes
place in a sort of constant, upward movement. Even our religious
culture tends to focus on success and stability as ideals for
religious growth, while overlooking the grace of failure, from which
far more growth originates. With Progressive Christianity tradition,
loss, collapse and failure have always been seen as not only
unavoidable, but even necessary on the path to wisdom, freedom and
personal maturity. I know older people like myself, all of whom have
vast work experience, who struggled to rebuild their identities after
they poured much of their earlier lives’ energies into professional
and personal success. That is what happened to me after 2008, when I
found myself forced out of the technology profession after an
18-month absence due to several health issues.
Our
culture tends to be youth-oriented, and a lot of spirituality is
youth oriented. But our elders are the embodiment of the wisdom that
life matters at a much deeper level than what we can achieve and
produce. Imperfect people are sometimes more equipped than perfect
people to help those who are struggling. The person who never makes a
mistake and always manages to obey the rules is often a person devoid
of compassion. He or she sees people for whom the wheels have fallen
off and they wonder 'what’s wrong with them'. But the person who
feels that he or she has ruined their life often has more capacity
for humility and compassion. I’m embarrassed as I’m getting older
about how much of my energy and vitality as a younger man was driven
by my ego and a win-lose mentality.
As
I've gotten older I find myself driven by something altogether
different: The need for rest, and a need for more time for
contemplation. As a teacher once told me, “The first half of life,
you write the text. The second half of your life is when you write
the commentary. You have to process what it all meant.” I will be
challenged to follow his and my own advice, and I encourage all of
you to do the same. I will spend less energy on my “false self”
as my old self dissolves. It will be a relief to me when the process
is over. I am ready, though, to fall upward. If I lose my position as
a web minister, author and respected church member, I would still
feel secure. Most of us don’t learn this until it is taken away,
like losing the security of your 401K as your entire career
evaporates before your eyes. Then the learning either starts or you
circle the wagons.
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