Antiestablishmentarianist (Apr 16-22)

This week in snapshots:

Another Saturday has rolled around again. What are some highlights from your week?

My brother and I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago that I keep thinking about. On the whole I’m fairly anti-establishments, even though I will acknowledge that establishments are established to allow individuals to access more power/knowledge/assets than they could reasonably access alone. A bank gives you access to buying power, a library gives you access to reading power, a school gives you access to a better future, a church… well.

So we postulated this thesis: businesses who want to take care of people as their primary objective, can’t. They don’t make a high enough profit because they’re unwilling to commit business practices that violate people. Businesses, on the other hand, who want profit as their primary objective make the profit to be able to take care of people, but won’t. Unions and governments have to twist their arms in order to make them not abuse people, let alone take care of them.

In our experience, this is the difference between a mom’n’pop shop and Amazon. Mom’n’pops can’t take care of their people. Amazon could take care of every single one of their employees from top to bottom but won’t.

All of the mom’n’pop businesses I know who are exceptions to this rule do one thing different: they consecrate their business to the Lord. He’s a primary member of their board. They seek his heart for their labor and translate it into their daily interactions. These businesses are not on track to become Amazon or McDonald’s, but they do participate in capitalism AND a heaven-inspired economy where in prioritizing the last, the lost, the least, “all of this and more” are added so when it comes time to take care of families, somehow, the capital is there.

I want an economy and a government and a church that prioritizes people. Instead, I live under an economy that prioritizes profit, a government that prioritizes power, and a church that prioritizes politics. And it feels gross.

Unlike Martin Luther, William Wilberforce, Susan B Anthony, Solidarność or Frederick Douglass, I have no idea what change looks like - I just want to lessen politics, to put power in clean hands, and to make profit work for human dignity.

I know a lot of you have lived longer and/or participate in government/church in ways that I do not - what does change look like in your eyes? What kinds of things make capitalism work for people instead of profit? How do you wield the power of the church for the last/lost/least instead of policy? And what policies should government wield for the good of people instead of grasping for more power?

All I know is that the longer I live, the less I want revolution (like we preach to our teens - a topic for another time) and the more I want a “quiet life” where I “mind my own business and work with my hands” so that the peace of God is reflected in “my daily life and I win the respect of outsiders” by so living.

Tell me what you want from your establishments and from your own living,

-Beth