This morning I found an interesting a fascinating commentary through calculatedriskblog.com -- a site that Scott Borger pointed out to me as we have and continue to pass through the economics of "the great recession." I have vowed to myself not to waste time following the American faux drama of presidential politics the next year. But as it brings out cultural commentary, I will stay connected.

The piece comes from the New York Times Economix blog and is written by Nancy Forbes (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/overclass-vs-underclass/). I think her observations of how the networks that fight to control the resources of the United States material resources through the "winner-take-all" is very accurate. What I want to point out, however, is the binary bifurcation of the discourse into the "vampire wealthy" and the "slothful poor" in order to try to support their particular network of loyalists and then try to increase the reality of their networks by using the language to ensnare them into their "side." The interesting thing, however, is that the threats constructed by the binary, oppositional dialectic (ueber-rich versus degenerate poor) masks that the categories participate in the same system -- it is only dialectical because deeper commonalities and differences are masked by the reduction of political economics to "rich or poor" as a threat to my existence. In both cases the "rich" and the "poor" become idealistic categories that are allowed to exist as oppositional because of social, material, and personal isolation has occurred from each other. Moreover, Christians are called in the name of a perversion of the faith given to the saints to pick a demon to oppose -- the oppressive, blood sucking rich or the morally degenerate, sexually profligate poor. Christian life is then determined by one's posturing -- picking the right position within the neo-liberal dialect already established in order to exercise one's moral self-righteousness ultimately shown in the privacy of a polling booth.

A pox on absolutizing such a dialectic! Of course there are the oppressive, blood-sucking rich and the morally compromised, slothful poor -- all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But the issue is a binary network that acts competes only because it eliminates more determinative institutions and allegiances from even consideration. God's judgment will reign down on the church in the United States that allows such a dialectic to be more determinative than the life of particular congregations whose discourse is determined by such a dialectic rather than through centering it on Jesus Christ and the life of the church as witnessed to in the Scriptures and the life of the saints across time.

The refusal of Christians to be personally involved in congregational lives rather than "religious service organizations to meet their own personal needs" allows the construction of such a binary system. Congregations that embed their lives in the worship of the Triune God as revealed in Jesus, where "The Feast of the Holy Name" becomes more important than watching Dick Clark's skin streched to its plastic limits on "New Year's Rockin' Eve" have a chance to show control of the dialectic of rich and poor, master and slave, is not the proper form of human social existence. The binary opposition itself will be undercut if we will exhibit the obedience of faith in the works of devotion and the works of mercy. We can't permit such a system that reduces life to such a dialectic that produces the "right" versus "left" dialectic whereby the elite walk past each other in LaJolla with stern stares because they compete over the control of the networks with each other while never trying to hold a line in order for free food in City Heights.

The Christian life is not about posturing. It is about repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. The problem is never merely "them" but always recognizing that "them" is really "us," that is to say "me." Until we can find ways to complicate this reductive binary through a more determinative social network called the church, not to recruit into the sides of binary, but to live showing that there are deeper forms of social life than this binary construction, we will live in such times that thinks that the world will change with Presidential elections -- all evidence to the contrary absolutely ignored. God has already changed the world -- God became incarnate in Jesus. The issue is whether we will participate in this reality or not.