Emily Timbol

Fiction Author. Good at making stuff up.

The Fight for a Living Wage is a Christian Issue

Sep
04

Across the nation today minimum wage workers took to the streets to demand a living wage. In over 32 cities fast food and service industry workers protested for the right to earn enough money to take care of themselves and their families. Most were asking for an increase of $15 an hour. Workers engaged in sit-ins and walks-outs, sometimes closing down restaurants and entire streets. Over 400 people were arrested. And while pundits on both the right and left have weighed in with their opinions, the responses have been overwhelmingly economic based.

For most people, the fight for a living wage is seen as purely a political issue.

What bothers me is how few people seem to think that this fight for a higher minimum wage has anything to do with their faith. It’s not as if politics and faith don’t often intertwine – ask most Christians their opinion on abortion, same-sex marriage, legalized marijuana, or free speech, and you’ll hear a wide range of Bible verses and directives to, “follow God’s truth.” Christians are well known for their opinions on sex and “moral” issues.

But a lot of Christians that I’ve talked to don’t seem to think that a minimum wage increase is a moral issue. They believe that it’s a bad economic move, one that hurts the economy, and that the solution isn’t higher wages but people who want to earn more money getting better jobs (how is not usually discussed.) These people don’t see the fight for a living wage as one that has any Biblical relevance, or especially one that they should support as Christians.

While there is certainly an argument to be made for a separation of church and state, and for a government that is free from Christian favoritism, I have a hard time believing that the Bible doesn’t say anything about the current status of low-income workers. While I loathe the phrase, “The Bible is clear that…”, if there’s anything the Bible is “clear” to point out, it’s the folly of money and impossibility of serving both God and wealth.

Luke 16:13 “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

Mat 6:19-21  “Do not save riches for yourselves here on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and robbers break in and steal. Instead, save riches for yourselves in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and robbers cannot break in and steal. For your heart will always be where your riches are.”

Mat 19: 23-25 “And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” 25 When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?”

Luke 16:9-11 “Now my advice to you is to use ‘money’, tainted as it is, to make yourselves friends, so that when it comes to an end, they may welcome you into the houses of eternity. The man who is faithful in the little things will be faithful in the big things. So that if you are not fit to be trusted to deal with the wicked wealth of this world, who will trust you with true riches?”

That’s just a handful of verses, but there are so many more that depict money as something dangerous that should not motivate Christians or be their main concern. Instead, the Bible says that a believer’s chief concerns while on Earth should be loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves:

Psalm 140:12 “I know that the LORD secure justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.”

Deuteronomy 15:7-8 “If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard hearted or tight fisted toward them.  8 Rather, be open handed and freely lend them whatever they need.”

1 John 3:17 “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be that person?”

James 2:15-16″Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?”

You can’t sum up the whole of the Bible or Jesus mission on Earth in eight verses. But you can make a pretty good case that caring about the poor is something we’re commanded to do. The poor are our neighbors, and we are commanded to love them over and over in scripture.

I think some people don’t think the fight for minimum wage is relevant to the above verses, because their image of “the poor” is a little too Biblical -a huddle in an alley or corner somewhere, homeless, covered in blankets. This is indeed poor, and these people exist and need our help. But this is not the only accurate description of what the poor in America look like. They also look like people struggling with food insecurity, or near homelessness, or an inability to afford needed medical treatment due to lack of insurance or funds. What is a travesty is that many of these people work.

Despite what many think, the average minimum wage worker is not a teenager, living at home, working part time for extra cash.

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It’s a woman, possibly with children, working full-time to support or help support her family. If you’ve never tried to support a family on $10 or less an hour, I’d suggest watching the wonderful documentary Inequality for All, which paints a pretty clear picture on just how impossible this is.

The problem that we have now, the problem that is causing massive strikes and sit-ins and protests, is not one of people wanting more money just because they’re too “lazy” to get a better job. It’s a problem of people working themselves to death but still not making enough money to survive.

The problem we have is one of inequality.

Today, the average CEO makes at least 380 times what their workers earn. In the 1980’s, CEO’s made 42 times what workers earned.

That means today, a CEO of a Fortune 500 company makes on average $12 million a year.

I’ve tried, but I haven’t yet found a Biblical reason to support this kind of income inequality. I can’t find a reason why it’s fair, or just, or right for a handful of people to make most of the income in this country, if that income is not “trickling’ down in economically sustainable ways. I can’t find a reason not to demand higher wages for workers, even if those wages come from the massive, expensive silk pockets of their CEOs. Even if what I’m wanting is *gasp* a re-distribution of wealth. I’m not saying I want to live in a socialist country, I’m just saying that I’d like to live in a country where more Christians had a problem with 1% of the people inside of it earning 25% or more of the income, leading the other 99% to suffer and sometimes starve. But that’s just me.

I’m also not saying that if you’re a Christian you have to support a minimum wage increase, or join in a protest with fast food and service industry workers in your area. But I am saying that as Christians this should be something we care about as much as same-sex marriage, or abortion, or freedom of speech. We shouldn’t just get riled up when we think that “our rights” are being threatened. We should do what the Bible commands us to do, and care more about others lives than our own. As Christians, we should be using our voices not just to speak for ourselves, but for the marginalized among us who need our help. Maybe for some people that’s creating more church programs and food banks that assist needy families, instead of relying on the government for help. Or maybe for others it is grabbing a sign and marching in front of the McDonalds on your block next to the person who takes your morning coffee order.

Whatever it is, something needs to be done, and that something is not telling low-income workers to, “get a better job.” Unless you have a better job that you’re willing to give up so they can take it. Which actually, would be a very Christian thing to do.

 

Where is The White Evangelical Response to Ferguson?

Aug
14

This morning I went through the Twitter feeds of a few of the most popular white evangelical leaders, looking for any mention of the atrocities going on in the Ferguson neighborhood of Missouri. Denny Burk’s* feed had funny viral videos, comments on the death of Robin Williams, and pleas for prayers and support of Christians in Iraq. John Piper tweeted advice and Bible verses. Rick Warren, Joel Osteen and Tim Keller sent out spiritual platitudes about faith and God. 

It wasn’t until I checked out Rachel Held Evans that I saw any mention of what’s going on in the small suburb of Saint, Louis Missouri; a town of 21,000 people that has looked more like a war zone in Iraq than an American suburb, thanks to the militarized police response to the protesters angry over the death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown.

Thankfully, people on Twitter pointed me to some other white evangelical bloggers who are writing about Ferguson. Including authors Sarah Bessey and Jen Hatmaker, and prominent Southern Baptist leader Russell D. Moore. There’s a good list of these bloggers and writers here. I’m so heartened to see these responses, but I’m also sad that I haven’t seen any of these pieces floating around the internet with the fervor that writings on gay marriage, abortion, or birth control carry. I’m so glad that there are some white evangelicals talking about racial injustice, but I can’t help but wish there were more.

Image via Time

Image via Time

I can’t help but wish there were more white evangelicals who seemed to care about this issue – at least enough to talk about it on social media, in prayer chain emails, or in church hallways. I wish I was seeing more messages from white Christians asking for prayer and support of the citizens of Ferguson, who are being shot with rubber bullets and tear gas on their front lawns.

I also wish I saw consistent responses from those who believe strongly in the 1st amendment, as much as they believe in God. Journalists in Ferguson are being arrested in McDonald’s for refusing to stop filming – but where are the cries about 1st amendment violations?

I don’t want to believe these lack of responses are because America isn’t for black people. That would be too hard for a privileged white woman like myself to accept. Even though all evidence points to this as the truth.

Maybe so many are silent because the racial division in America hasn’t just affected governments, schools, and neighborhoods, but churches as well. Maybe we’re not hearing from white evangelical leaders because there’s still a belief that “Christian” and “black” are two separate things.

Blogger Dave M Schell illustrated this perfectly, in his good-natured piece, “While You Were Talking About Gungor.” In it he excoriated Christians for caring more about Mark Driscoll’s indiscretions and Christian band Gungor’s theology, than the murder of black men. Schell’s point was right – but he made a crucial mistake in his piece. He said this,

While the Christian world debates who’s going to hell, the African-American community is already there, and nobody seems to give a damn.”

Without even intending to, Schell made a clear dichotomy between “Christian” and “African-American.” He apologetically updated the piece after black Christians pointed out his mistake, and told him that Christians were talking about Ferguson – just not the white ones he followed on Twitter.

This just illustrates a huge problem that affects so many white evangelicals. The belief that “Christian” means something, and “black” means something else entirely.

We can see this in crises that span the globe as well. It wasn’t until a white American missionary came down with the Ebola virus in Liberia that many white Christians showed concern for the devastation ravaging the nation. My mother, who spends at least a few weeks every year in Liberia teaching and counseling women affected by the war, has been struggling to raise support for her friends overseas. Despite the fact that Liberia is a heavily Christian nation. A black Christian nation.

There is a hesitation in calling any of this racism. That’s because many people get far angrier over accusations of being racist, than any of the horrors mentioned above. There’s a shutting down that happens whenever the word “racist” is thrown around. What does it mean though, if we care more about being called racist, than the things being done to black people that have inspired this accusation?

What other reason, other than systematic or internalized racism, can there be for the lack of concern among white evangelicals for the now regular murder of unarmed black men? How else can we explain the fact that white churches have remained mostly silent on these atrocities for so long?

While the answers to these questions matter, what matters most is how white Christians respond right now. I pray it’s not with defensiveness or excuses, but with a desire to do something positive. I pray that white Christians start seeing and caring about the terrible things happening to their black brothers and sisters in our country, and in others. Mostly, I pray that I, as a white Christian, can do my part to say,

“I’m so sorry. What can I do to help?”

Here’s where I’m starting:

Bucket Brigade Against Ebola

Bail and Legal Fund for Those Arrested in Ferguson Protests

OK White Folks, Here’s How You Can Really Help

Black Youth Project

Petition to Enact Federal Laws to Protect Citizens From Police Violence and Misconduct

*At time of posting, a statement on Ferguson had been made.

I Don’t Hate Housewives – A Response to Matt Walsh’s Post

Jun
06
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Image courtesy of The Naked Pastor

Yesterday morning my Twitter blew up with reactions to a tweet I had sent to blogger Matt Walsh. Matt is someone who I have major issues with, to put it mildly. He is political, Christian, and condemnatory, three things together that can make a dangerous, volatile mix. Some of the things Matt likes to passionately attack are feminism, LGBT people, and liberals (or progressives.) He does this in a way that infantilizes people, reducing them to their “illogical feelings.”

Like I said, I don’t like the guy (because of what he says.)

It was only after someone alerted me to the fact that Matt had mentioned my tweet in his recent post, that all of the people angry at me on Twitter made sense. Here is the tweet I sent him that he embedded in his post:

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And this is the follow-up one I sent, that he didn’t include:

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The second tweet makes it clear that the Ann Coulter swipe was a joke, not an attack on her gender (I think calling her a “man” as an insult is stupid and offensive.)

So why did I tweet that? Or, to answer the question a lot of people on Twitter asked me, why do I care how many women Matt follows? Because it matters – women are who Matt frequently writes about. Specially, women who he thinks are “wrong” for thinking differently than him.

I’m well aware that who one follows on Twitter does not exactly indicate who one holds most dear – I follow Homer Simpson after all. But my point was that, at least on the platform he uses frequently, Matt shows that the voices he values most are 1) men, and in a much smaller number 2) women, many who hold the kind of “anti-feminist” traditional roles that Matt things serve women best. Of course, the fact that he doesn’t follow Rachel Held Evans or Sarah Bessey doesn’t prove that he never listens to his sisters-in-Christ who have different views than him. It doesn’t prove this, but it sure raises some questions.

If this seems petty for me to do this, let me clarify why I think pointing something like this out matters. Matt Walsh is not some fringe blogger with no followers, spouting off his condescension into the void. He’s a popular voice from the Christian right with a very large following, who take his words very seriously.

A lot of his following (from what I gathered on Twitter) are women. The ones who tweeted me were very conservative, and took offense to my complaint that most of the few women Matt follows on Twitter are (self-proclaimed) “housewives.”

Let me be very clear – I have no problem with women who stay home to take care of their children, whether by choice, or by necessity. Childcare isn’t cheap, and for millions of women, staying home makes the most financial sense. I tweeted this yesterday afternoon, to try and quell some of the outrage:

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My tweet was not sent to attack the women who follow Matt. It was sent to critique the man who thinks nothing of claiming that he knows the truth, the absolute truth, about people who he doesn’t even listen to. How many feminists has Matt actually talked to, civilly? Getting “hate mail” doesn’t count. For that matter, how many trans people? The death threats he says he received (as well as my tweet) were all in response to his incredibly hateful post which completely dismissed a trans child, and in turn, all trans people. Has he ever actually listened to a trans person? Maybe one of the 41% of trans people who attempted suicide because people like him didn’t believe them and dismissed their existence? I highly doubt it. If he had, he would know how hateful (yes, hateful) it is to purposely and repeatedly misgender someone. Like he did.

Matt likes to complain that liberals don’t operate with facts and logic, but with feelings. Well statistics like the one above are facts, ones that should cause decent humans beings to feel. If knowing that almost half of trans people try to kill themselves doesn’t inspire you to feel something, then something is seriously wrong with you.

Here’s something that’s different between Matt and I: I try and reserve my anger for the people who attack others for living lives that they deem “wrong”, not people who I simply disagree with. I don’t get angry at people who are simply trying to live their lives in a way I don’t understand. I’m not a parent, like Matt is. I don’t understand what it’s like to devote your life to a child, or, like many of my friends, multiple children. The strong desire to be a parent is something I haven’t felt (yet.) Many of my friends have gotten great joy from having multiple children in short succession, and I don’t get how they do it, let alone how they love it. But just because I don’t get it, doesn’t mean I think I have any right to tell them that they are WRONG. Is it what I want for my life? Probably not. But who am I to say that just because someone chooses something foreign to me, they are the one who are wrong?

Telling people they are WRONG is what Matt does every day. He tells LGBT people they are WRONG for wanting the right to marry. He tells Christian feminists they are WRONG for claiming they have a right to their own bodies, and he tells the people who criticize him that they are WRONG for not seeing the “truths” that he spouts.

I think Matt is wrong on almost everything. But the reason I sent that tweet wasn’t because I wanted him to simply agree with me, it’s because I want him to stop angrily attacking people who just want to live their lives. LGBT people are not a fascist mob trying to take away straight people’s rights. Granting gay marriage does nothing to harm traditional marriage. Allowing trans people the dignity of their identity doesn’t cost people like Matt anything, except maybe their ire. But allowing people like Mr. Walsh to spew unbridled contempt and hate at marginalized people DOES hurt, and does take away rights, and is WRONG.

Matt likes to use threatening hate mail from “liberals” as a reason to prove that all progressives are violent, crazy, rabid lunatics wanting him dead. I don’t want him dead. David Hayward, who Matt also responded to in his recent post, doesn’t want him dead either. In fact, there are lots of sane, calm, progressive people who have criticized Matt without wishing him death, who he somehow always forgets to post mail from.

Maybe that’s because, like I suspected in my tweet, Matt Walsh only listens to the voices who tell him that he’s right, and anyone who disagrees with him is crazy. But that’s just one feminist woman’s opinion. He’s free to prove me wrong.

Fat and Happy and Loved

Jun
05

Last week I came across an essay that was so well-written and powerful, I was thinking about it for days after. The writer, Alana Massey, spoke frankly about the lengths she went to to stay thin, and how this affected her relationships with the men who sought her out specifically for this feature. Here’s an excerpt:

And though I never had trouble getting a respectable amount of romantic attention, at a size 0 it rushed in at such a volume and with such enthusiasm that it was difficult not to be taken aback. I always thought it was a melodramatic cliché when thin women said that the more they disappeared, the more visible they became, but it was now undeniable. Male acquaintances suddenly wanted to spend more alone time together. Compliments during sexual encounters that were once full of the word “beautiful” became dominated by mesmerized declarations about me being so “little” and “tiny.” Men suddenly felt comfortable telling mean-spirited jokes about overweight women and lamenting how poorly other women took care of themselves. I’d only dropped a couple of sizes but I was in an entirely new country.

After reading the piece I tweeted the author and the site, The New Inquiry, to tell them how much I enjoyed the essay. Autumn, who runs the section the essay was published on, The Beheld, asked me if I’d be interested in writing a piece from the perspective of someone who is (in my words) “real fat.” As you can imagine, I was very interested, and my thoughts on how being fat have affected both my image and relationships with men were published today.

You can find my essay, “Fat and Happy and Loved” here, on The New Inquiry’s section, The Beheld.

Hope you enjoy.

God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships

Apr
21

God-and-Gay-ChristianEver since I became a Christian LGBT ally, people have asked me how I can claim to respect the authority of scripture, while also affirming same-sex relationships. There’s no short answer to that question, one I can sum up in a sentence or two, but the closest attempt I can give is, “There is only one Bible, and one God, but there is not only one correct way to interpret scripture.”

All it takes is a visit to three separate churches to see how differently the scriptures are interpreted. Baptism, pre-destination, women’s roles, elders, deacons, saints – the list of variations in how we view God’s word are endless. Yet rarely, at least not blatantly, do people go so far as to say that if someone doesn’t share their churches view on say, the role of elders, that that person isn’t really a Christian. You don’t see leaders of huge church denominations writing 10 page diatribes on why people who sprinkle instead of dunk during baptisms are clearly trying to deceive people away from Christ, and are going to hell.

Well, at least not anymore.

What you see today, instead, are church leaders and Pastors warning their flock that there are people who seek to bring down Christianity by encouraging the acceptance of homosexuality. You have leaders of denominations warning that a “revolution” is coming, one that might split and irrevocably break evangelism, if we allow it. And who are the purveyors of this impending religious holocaust?

My friends. And myself, I guess.

Which is news to me. Seeing as how, in all the conversations, meetings, and moments with these friends that share my beliefs, the one thing we’ve all consistently agreed on is our goal – not to destroy Christianity, but redeem it.

Why would I say that Christianity needs redeeming?

Because numbers don’t lie. Because if anything is going to irrevocably break Christianity, it’s not going to be the Christians trying to welcome more people into it. It’s going to be the Christians driving the hurting and rejected away.

It is daunting to read the statistics that show that the number one reason young people are leaving the church today is because of its attitude towards homosexuality. Not because sex is something young people are unhealthy focused on, but because sex is the thing young people have seen the church care more about than anything else. When the only time the American church rallies and comes together is in order to stand up against a group of people defined by their sexuality, it’s easy for those curious about Christianity to turn and walk away.

Which is why I am so happy, excited, hopeful, and yes, a little jealous, about the release of my friend Matthew Vines book, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. I’m happy because I believe this book can be something that can help bring people back to the church. I think it’s something that can help heal the wounds caused by years of Christians saying that, “you can’t be one of us unless you look, act, and think the way we want you too.” Matthews book says, “You don’t have to choose the Bible, or your identity. Jesus loves you for who He created you to be.”

I’m also happy because, unlike the people writing emotionally charged, panicky reviews about the book, I’ve met the author. I’ve talked to him. I’ve heard him speak about his heart for the church – not just for the LGBT people in the church, but the church as a whole. Hell, I’ve even seen him cry. I know then, in a way that you can only know when you’ve looked someone in the eye – that Matthew Vines book was not written in an attempt to deceive or hurt anything. It was written out of a love for, above all else, scripture.

That’s why I want to encourage everyone I know to purchase and read Matthew’s book, which is desperately needed today. It’s a clear, definitive answer to that question I get all the time – “how can you be a Christian, and support same-sex relationships?”

If you’ve ever wanted an answer to that question, I suggest you read Matthews book.