ATONEMENT: as a governmental responsiblity

I just finished reading a book by St Anselm on atonement after finding out he was my theological counterpart (100%), even more the John Calvin (97%), so I figured I ought to know something more about him and read the book. (I found this out on an internet test that may or may not be very accurate.) For your information he. St. Anselm was the Bishop of Canterbury in 11^th Century.

For those of you who are not familiar with the doctrine of atonement, it is the belief that we ought to pay our debts to God, of which we are incapable of in and of ourselves; but that Jesus the Christ did it for us. A bit oversimplified, but you get the idea.

This began my thinking on atonements’ political counterparts. I have always hated self-aggrandizing statements such as: “a self made man,” “drawn up by your own bootstraps,” or as in the poem Invictus, “I am the captain of my ship the master of my soul…” Self made man my arse! Each of us is dependent upon parents (or at least a fertilized egg) for our existence. Human babies are the most dependent of all critters. That dependence carries through all of humanity. We are dependent upon each other whether we acknowledge it or not. Few of us grow our own food, we are dependent upon food growers; the same is true for shelter, clothing, and ipods. We are indebted to the world we live in for everything we have. We may bluster on about our hard work to pridefully talk about our various accomplishments, but that is sheer vanity. We work, all of us, some harder than others, but it is mainly luck and circumstance that enable us to succeed or not to succeed in life’s endeavors. For example, the folk in working poverty levels having three jobs to just make their family survive work just as hard and a major corporation CEO, and often much harder. Remember the TV show where bosses went to work in their own companies anonymously? They became less prideful and more thankful to their workers.

I believe that is the real cry of the WSO’s (Wall Street Occupiers) demonstrating around the country. They are not the slackers that their detractors say they are. They are demonstrating against the real slackers in our country, those ultra rich who mainly derive dividends from the work of others. That banker who manipulates the market for homeowners to lose their houses rather than working hard enough for them to succeed is just an opportunistic slacker. The big corporations who hire lobbyists to write and get bills passed in congress to benefit themselves at the expense of others are slackers. Politicians who depend on these lobbyists to do their work and fail to remember they are the servants of the public are slackers.

It is nice when the Rockefellers and Carnegies of times past gave the country libraries and other benevolence activities, but they could do that because the stood on the backs of those who did the real work to build their fortunes. Entrepreneurs, risk takers, should be rewarded for their risk taking, but so should those who helped them. Henry Ford showed great wisdom when he paid his workers well so they could afford the product they were building.

I am pleased that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet undertake wonderful philanthropies, but they also acknowledge, that their wealth comes from others and they have benefits others do not. Their debts to the country and the people in it and abroad are immense. So, I am glad they acknowledge that and seek to give back a bit. Atone; pay back debts. Unfortunately they are a minority of the ultra rich who have accumulated half the wealth of the country but obviously did not do half the work. They are debtors and need to atone; pay back their debts.

And that is one of the proper roles of government; to see that atonement takes place. Government is to ensure that there is justice and equity taking place in society. They are responsible to see that those who have been given much are required to give back much.

I frequently here the spurious claim, “it’s our money, and the damned government has no claim to it.” They reflect a prideful ignorance that must be taken to task. Everything they have they are indebted to others for the having of it. They are in debt to the parents who raised them, the schools that educated them, the employers who hired them, or the patrons who buy from them, the government infrastructure that enables them to share their work and product. They are debtors.

Partial atonement happens when a government sees that debts are paid with justice and equity. And our government has failed miserably as of late to do that. Our government has allowed a concentration of wealth in the hands of a few; that is completely immoral and unjust. We are acting more as an oligarchy than a democracy.

Though they may not articulate it in the way I have in this piece, it seems to me this is the cry of the WSO. May atonement be made, and justice be done.