Why Are You Apologizing?
None of that is strange. Public speakers like pastors reference current events all the time. Listeners often express opinions about what they've heard. However, what's odd about the woman's email is that there was nothing in the messages that would have called her out specifically, requiring an apology. So, why did she refuse to apologize?
She obviously felt challenged. When one says things like, "Racism is wrong. Systemic racism is a thing. It's not enough to say that you're not a racist. You need to be anti-racist." None of those statements are explicitly aimed at white people. They can only be taken as implicitly critical of whites. So, if upon hearing them, one refuses to "apologize", that is evidence of a negative personalization, what some call white fragility.
It reveals two things: a very myopic view of racism that limits it to interpersonal animus. It also indicates insecurity about one's ethnicity. If I say, "I won't apologize for being white and middle class." I'm answering a critique that assumes it's bad to be white and middle class. It's not.
However, it is bad to want to remain in one's station in life at the expense of others. And that's the rub, isn't it? Often when someone, especially someone white and middle class, says that they refuse to "apologize", what they're really saying is, "I refuse to put my comfort and socio-economic status at risk." Regardless of the words they use, they understand that the fundamental changes demanded by those opposed to racism will imperil their lifestyle.
Why?
Friedrich Engles, sharpening the work of Karl Marx, argued for Historical Materialism. It's the idea that material things move history forward rather than ideals. Our stuff moves us. We don't move our stuff. It dismisses any illusion of idealism. That's why the more radical elements in society dismiss America's Founding Fathers as white, racist, slave owners. Material wealth, ensure by slavery, not ideals, drove them forward, regardless of their rhetoric.
Plus, it's just really wrong to own and exploit other humans.
The point is this: economics = history. We're driven "forward" by our desire for things, and since we simply do not have the capacity within our person, the means of production, to make all the things we desire, we create exchanges. Perceived value for money. Money for stuff. That requires a concentration of value in the hands of a few so that the many can serve their desires.
It is scarcity that creates the value and wealth needed to buy all that stuff. Think about it. On average, a brain surgeon makes about $400k a year. The average sanitation worker makes about $28,000. Who does more for public health? Who makes the average lives of people better? If you live through a garbage strike in Manhattan in mid-summer, you'll know the answer.
So, why do brain surgeons make so much more than sanitation workers? The "value" of their labor is greater because fewer people can do that job. Scarcity = value. The ability to manipulate the stuff our brains are made of is of more value than the ability to manipulate our garbage. Hence, wealth and the power it confers is concentrated at the point of scarcity.
Material that is abundant is cheap. Material that is rare is expensive. However, it's possible to manipulate almost any material to create scarcity and value. Diamonds are relatively plentiful but the DeBeer family manipulates the world's supply to create scarcity. They are fabulously rich and powerful as a result. So, select, rare materials—not idealism—confer on a few the wealth and power to shape reality for the many.
Jesus was not a materialist. he believed and taught that it was the ideals of God, his love for his creation, and his determination to restore the union of Eden, which drove history. Furthermore, he taught that it is God's will (as Athanasius would say, God's great love) that moves history forward. These two things, material reality versus the loving will of God, are cast in opposition to one another by Marx and Engels. They argue for a post-enlightenment utopia of communism/socialism based on materialism and dismiss a loving God as a quaint idea well past its prime.
Marx and Engel's cures are worse than the disease but they are good diagnosticians. Free-market proponents will argue that Capitalism has lifted more people "out of poverty" than any other economic system, in essence agreeing with the fundamental propositions of Marx-Englel thought. They have a point. 100s of millions of people have clean water and adequate food because they are necessary labor. What happens when machines can do that labor cheaper and faster? Ask a Detriot auto worker from the 80s who was replaced on the assembly line by a robot. They will tell you that they had become expendable humanity.
Jesus, on the other hand, creates a divinized humanity, uniting God and humanity in his own body for all time. Whatever you think of how the Christian ideal of incarnation might be operable, the fundamental notion is a union of a loving God with his creation. Therein lay a hope beyond the tension of idealism versus materialism because therein lay the seeds of both. Both idealism and materialism declared their independence from God but he asserts their dependence upon himself in the teaching, work, body, and person of Christ.
The glue? It's love. God's love for us and our responsive love for him. When God was dismissed from intellectual consideration following the religious wars of the 17th Century, we began a quest to replace him. Ironically, those initial attempts were made by many who were at least nominally Christian. However, as we eventually found ever more sophisticated means of dismissal, we could not carve from ourselves the ache of our separation. The replacements for God were an implicit admission of our need for him. Jesus is still scandalously attractive, even in post-enlightenment, post-modern cultures.
In some weirdly distorted way, we still long for God, even as we reject him.
My friend, who I wrote about at the beginning of the post, said something else recently which brings this idea home. He said, "We cannot find solutions to our circumstances in our circumstances. They're just our circumstances." He was referring to the pandemic and the frustration it breeds. What he said has implications far beyond even a global pandemic. It points to our need for external intervention. He went on to say, "Jesus is the solution." He's right. It's precisely because Jesus is both other and us, both God and human, that he can be that solution. It is because Jesus loves us that he is willing to be that solution.
The Incarnation is not an arcane appendage of primitive Christianity. It is as relevant and necessary as ever. May God have mercy. Maranatha.
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