While addressing the importance of persisting in faith, Jesus tells the story of a widow. She has strong faith in her position against an “adversary” in a corrupt system harming her. The judge deciding her case is corrupt, reflecting the corrupt system. Even so, she is unrelenting in petitioning the judge for fairness, “Render a just decision for me.” Jesus extols her fidelity and wonders if the woman’s faithfulness is prolific, spreading to others, “will he find faith on earth?”
How is our faith holding up? It is understandable that when beset by corrupt officials and the corrupt system they craft and control, our faith would weary. In the midst of wholesale corruption, some individuals are like the widow in the Gospel story, they emerge to express an unrelenting fidelity, an inspirational energy. Usually, they are adults with the wisdom of years to faithfully guide us through corrupt times. Of late, a question has arisen as to the fidelity of adults. To what are adults being faithful? Are we adults faithful like the widow was faithful, persisting against corrupt officials and a corrupt system? Or, are we the system? Are we conserving maintenance of the system rather than faithfully promoting a mission to transform it? If so, we are being unfaithful to humanity and the earth that sustains us. Scientists are titling the next generation Generation Extinction. We can, therefore, hardly be surprised youth activists are rising up. Of note lately, they are rising up from schools across the U.S. and the world for environmental health amidst climate chaos. Today’s youth are one with the youth of Little Rock, Selma, and Vietnam war protests. What became of those youth? Did they stay faithful transformers of the system? Were they instead only reformers who became, as adults, additional conservers of the system? It would be understandable if they did. Conservers of the system exert tremendous public and subversive pressure on its behalf. Conservers of the system target for suffering and death transformers of the system, while they criticize and co-opt reformers of the system. Conservers are currently criticizing some youth activists as liberal pawns. They claim these youth front for a liberal reform agenda, which some may, and thus disturb the conserver agenda, which some do – but only by degrees. Liberal reformers are marketed by liberal capitalist investors who are afraid their corrupt system of capitalism is dying. The liberal capitalist investors need and are thus crafting and controlling a Fourth Industrial Revolution. It has been delivering, for some decades now, a new era of capitalist control, in green technology and infrastructure. Evidence indicates liberal capitalist conservers / reformers like Climate Finance Partnership, 350.org, Jeremy Grantham Environmental Trust, and Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project are maintaining capitalism and thus its benefit to them. They are not a radical people’s movement. Granting the capitalist system is corrupt and reforms to it are designed to maintain it and not change it, it is not the youth activists who are pawns. They are energy and inspiration faithfully seeking another Way. They are finding it here and there but lack persistently faithful adults to help show them that other Way. The real pawns are the self-titled christians who cannot show them Jesus’ other Way because they are faithful to the capitalist system instead.
The corrupt capitalist system needs its own climate change. It needs a radical people’s movement. Common people, average human beings across history, have been faithful radicals. We can be so today as climate change activists. We can gather with other equal human beings to transform corrupt officials and their corrupt system. Do we believe this truth? If not, we might try showing faith for a change.
Prayer: Spirit, keep us young activists for climate change.
Question: What are we doing that shows faith not in maintaining the system but in transforming it?
October 20, 2019 Gospel Luke 18:1-8 Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time