Jesus tells a parable of a debtor who receives a loan he cannot repay, “the lender… let him go and forgave him the loan.” “When that debtor had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me.” But he refused. Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison.”
Borrowing might incline a person toward gratitude, gratefully receiving from another something that is not ours but we can use for our benefit, temporarily so. Gratitude is not apparent in the first debtor. Instead, ingratitude unto cruelty are apparent. An analogy can made to U.S. politics. The debtor is MAGA fascists; Donald Trump and co-horts. MAGA could be grateful, receiving from the average person, the John and Jane Does, all the benefits the average people provide for the common good. But MAGA fascists are not indicating they are gratefully receiving anything from anyone. They are indicating everything is theirs, for example, the presidency, the nation, the culture. Nor do MAGA members consider things as temporarily theirs. Rather, the presidency, the state, the culture are theirs in perpetuity – as a right. They will, in turn, like the ungrateful debtor in the Gospel, “seize,” “choke,” and “put in prison” any average John and Jane Doe they want. Evidence of their claiming such a right can be found in their Project 2025. Project 2025 is an update of the ongoing Reagan era Heritage Foundation Mandate for Leadership Policy. The Project promotes dictatorship meant to destroy the common good which common people, the average John and Jane Does, spend their lives building within the U.S. culture. For example, Project 2025 includes leaving the Paris Climate Accord, repealing Net Neutrality and Marriage Equality, selling National Monument land, eliminating whole government departments serving the common good such as Education, Environmental Protection, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Social Security Administration, plus replacing all civil service workers with patronage appointments, and increasing military spending while stalling military promotions so as to hand pick loyalists. This overarching Project has long been ongoing GOP policy, but is now sped up by the MAGA/Trump cohort. It involves dozens of other organizations, hundreds upon thousands of evangelical churches, and millions of MAGA members who foolishly support its ongoing harm. It is the ongoing harm of a ruling class that presumes the right to take from the people what they can never repay; communion, resources, peace. The ruling class use what they take to operate the government for the plunder to be gained by them. Government is something the ruling class presumes to own. It does not matter too much who is the front man or the front political party. The ruling class operates both parties. Members of the ruling parties do not gratefully receive the government in four year increments as if it is something on loan to them and which they, in turn, loan to others. They certainly do not loan the government to the people. The ruling parties own the government. The people have had to work tirelessly to make the government work for them, for the average John and Jane Doe, for the common good of all. As the people work to have anything work for their benefit, including the government, the ruling class destroys it. The Heritage Foundation, Donald Trump, and their MAGA cohorts do not apologize for their ownership of the government. Nor do they apologize for any cruelty they inflict upon the people, even upon their MAGA underlings who are foolish enough to absorb values like supremacy or nationalism or religion from the rulers who bankrupt the common good. Preventing dictatorial rulers from seizing, choking, and putting in prison any person who works for the common good is the work of every John and Jane Doe.
John Doe: “You mean to tell me you’d try to kill the John Doe movement if you can’t use it to get what you want?… You think of deliberately killing what’s made millions of people a little bit happier… that’s brought thousands of ’em here… by bus, and by freight and jalopies and on foot – so they could pass on to each other their own simple little experiences… Why, your type’s as old as history – if you can’t lay your dirty fingers on a decent thing and twist it and squeeze it and stuff it into your own pockets, you slap it down. Like dogs, if you can’t eat something, you bury it!… you sit back there on your fat hulks and tell me you’ll kill it if you can’t use it. Well, you go ahead and try. You couldn’t do it in a million years.” (Meet John Doe (1941) Director Frank Capra)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, keep us wise with dictators and their fools.
Question: How am I working for the common good?
Sep 17, 2023 Gospel Matthew 18: 21-35 Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time