Flying the Wrong Flag

I don’t often take a strong stand on political issues. Sometimes that’s because I can see the validity of arguments on both sides of a debate, and neither one is demonstrably better than the other.  Other times, it’s because I don’t really try to keep up on all the current events and interpretations of news, and I don’t want to choose a side without  being properly informed.  Sometimes they just seem like silly things to debate about altogether, and I just don’t care. :)

I can’t ignore the current debate about what’s being called the Ground Zero Mosque, though.  (I’ll use the term because that’s become the common language, even though it’s farther away from Ground Zero than, for example, two strip clubs and a porn shop.)  While I understand the sensitive nature of the geographic area, and while I’m certainly in favor of honoring those who were killed on September 11 and respecting the feelings of their families, I cannot support any effort to deny an entire religious group the right to peacefully and honorably practice and teach their beliefs, simply because of the actions of a different religious group.

A friend of mine recently posted a picture of the American flag on her Facebook, with the note, “We are 1 nation under GOD!! Let us not forget this important fact our founding fathers put into place so many years ago.”  This was followed by the exclamation, “I’m flying this flag to oppose the Muslim worship center at Ground Zero.”  These two statements to me seem to be exactly contradictory to each other.

Our nation was founded by people seeking religious freedom, not prohibiting it.  Sure, I recognize the economic and political agendas that played a role, but ignoring the importance of religious persecution and flight from it throughout our nation’s history is myopic at best and malicious at worst.  Appealing to our founding fathers only calls to mind the wild diversity of religious expressions that have found a place in America throughout its colonization and nationalization.

How did our flag become a symbol of oppression and prejudice, rather than a symbol of opportunity and support?  If you’re flying an American flag — even one drawn badly and uploaded to Facebook — to deny the rights of any group of people to practice one of the central freedoms on which our nation was built, then you’re flying the wrong flag.

Gain to Give

In several of my recent posts, I’ve mentioned that the balance of power between large-scale organizations (such as corporations and government) and small-scale groups (like local offices or small businesses) has been appearing as a theme in my life recently.  As I’ve been wrestling through my thoughts on things like universal health care, factory farms and food preparation, and even the hierarchy of the institutional church, I keep finding myself wondering how the big groups and small groups can get along.

I had something of a realization the other night along these lines.  It runs counter to all of the things that our culture seems to intuitively accept.  But the more I think about it, the more I think that the solution to an appropriate balance of power is actually quite simple: generosity.

I think that God has set the world up to work in a certain way, and that things will always work out better when they match God’s design.  (Although even if you don’t believe in God, I can think of several non-religious arguments for the same premise — just sayin’.)  And God’s design seems to be that power and authority are only possessed in order to be given away.

Consider, for example, the Biblical creation story.  God spends six days making everything that exists.  He is in absolute control over everything.  And when he creates humankind, the very first thing he does is share his authority.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”  Genesis 1.27-28

God, with all of His power over the world He has just created, gives that power into someone else’s hands.  There are responsibilities and expectations to go along with it, and the sharing of His authority doesn’t diminish His own ability to intervene in the workings of the world (as we see not long afterward), but it is nonetheless true that God entrusts humanity with the ability and responsibility for taking care of things.

Similarly, when Paul is describing God’s long-term plan in the book of Ephesians, he points out that all along God has intended for authority and power to be given away:

“And he made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment — to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ….  [God’s] power is like the working of his mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.  And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.”  Ephesians 1.9-10, 19b-23

God the Father shared His authority with Christ.  And in turn, Christ has shared His authority with the church that is His body.  Jesus has entrusted the church with a tremendous amount of responsibility, but He has also empowered it, through the Holy Spirit, to accomplish the daunting task of representing Him on the earth and fulfilling His wishes (which seemed to be generally summed up in the command, “Love.”).

Moreover, Paul says that sharing, not selfishness, should be the root motivation of our own acquisition of resources:

“He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.”  Ephesians 5.28

Even in our dealings with each other, then, we shouldn’t be looking to advance our own interests.  If we work, it is not merely to fill our own stomachs, but so that we can have something to share with others.  Generosity is such a pivotal part of God’s design for the world that giving ranks equal to eating.

When I think through pretty much every story that the Bible records about God’s dealings with humanity, it seems like He is always saying, “I’m the one in control, but I’m willing to share it with you.”  He is continually allowing people to make their own decisions, even when they choose poorly.  Even though He has absolute authority over all of existence, God sees fit to share that power with all of humanity.

God’s generosity with His power and resources, sharing them with others so that they can choose their own actions and values, sets a pattern that it seems like the world would benefit from emulating.  As things work in our current culture, though, large-scale power centers strive to accumulate power for themselves so that they can wield it over others.

For example, the American government seems intent on keeping as much authority as possible in the highest bureaucratic levels.  And even though I think they have the best of intentions in doing so, and I believe that the government is sincerely (if often ineffectively) seeking the best interests of the nation, it seems like sharing out that power to local groups looks a lot more like God’s design than the self-serving and self-promoting accumulation of power that we’re used to.

Similarly, corporations are always jockeying to position themselves to have the greatest amount of influence over their particular sphere.  The cell phone industry right now is a great example — Verizon wants to best AT&T, Google wants to best Apple, and so on.  But rather than setting up their rules and fees and policies in such a way that is only self-serving, it seems like a more generous approach would, in the long run, be of maximum benefit to all the involved parties.  If the resources that these companies acquired were not simply kept at the corporate levels but shared out to local entities, I think we would see a wildly different (and, in my opinion, wildly more Just and Good) cultural environment than the self-absorbed egocentrism and greed that the current capitalistic model tends to engender.

God set the world up so that generosity is a critical component.  I wonder how different the world would look if we began to gather power and resources so that we could give them away, not hoard them and exploit them for our own agendas.

A Neutral Internet?

So, there’s a lot of stuff floating around the internet about Net Neutrality today, mostly due to the announcement that Verizon and Google have been having discussions about some form of Net Neutrality legislation.  No one knows the details of their talks, much less their conclusions, but everyone is very up-in-arms about the possible “end of the internet as we know it.”

The fear is that Google will pay off Verizon to make its websites and services load faster and run better than its competitors for Verizon customers — so, for example, YouTube would get priveleged access over other streaming video sites.  Or Google’s Blogger platform would work faster than, say, WordPress.  In essence, large companies would be able to purchase the right for their sites and applications to work better than their competition.  That means that small businesses and internet start-ups would be severely disadvantaged, essentially ending the innovation and independence that has made the internet what it is.  Net Neutrality is the idea that all content should be delivered without interference or special privelege, so that the “little guy” has the same opportunity for success as the large corporations.  It’s a reasonable fear, and a reasonable thing to protect the opportunities of the individual and start-up group.

I have two problems, though, with the people who are responding militantly against Verizon and Google.  (And sure, I recognize that I’m heavily invested in both companies — but honestly, that’s not the point for me right now. :D )    First, no one knows what Verizon and Google have decided, and what kind of legislation they are recommending to the FCC.  There are strongly conflicting reports; the NY Times accuses them of back-door dealing with one another, but Verizon and Google both say that the documents they’re drafting are intended to protect Net Neutrality, not end it.

Secondly… the internet is not neutral.  It never has been, and never will be.  No form of media is.  People who have more money have better access, by virtue of being able to afford better equipment, higher bandwidth, fewer advertisements, and so on.  The internet is following exactly the same path as, say, the telegraph or radio — it began in the hands of individuals, but as its utility and accessibility increase, the content and control became focused in the hands of those companies and groups who could afford it.  That doesn’t mean it was necessarily the end of innovation or independent content creation.  In fact, the resources expended by those larger groups was in large part responsible for the success and expansion that those technologies enjoyed.

I’m not saying that I want the corporations to have control over internet content.  I think that’s a horrible idea, and something that we should try to prevent — both legally and technologically.  I am saying, though, that Net Neutrality as it’s been presented by its more militant advocates is a naive, and even potentially harmful, understanding of the way media works.  There are a lot of good things that could come from Verizon and Google’s talks, especially when the FCC is pansying out of their responsibilities.  Until we know more about it, I just wish people would chill out.

And, lest you think that this is totally random and irrelevant to the rest of my blog posts… to me, this is another manifestation of the small-scale versus large-scale concentration of power.  That theme has been all over my life, it seems.  And I think the resolution I want to see is not the elimination of large-scale power (as some Net Neutrality advocates argue) but the responsible use of their resources to empower and protect small-scale endeavours.  That has always been the goal of pro-neutrality corporations like Google, and I want to give them the chance to uphold their past promises before I accuse them of being evil.