Minimum Wage: Death

One of the refrains I heard a lot after leaving the church was, “You’re perfect just the way you are.” And from the perspective of identity and value, I get it and agree. It’s a rebuttal of original sin. You, reading this, are amazing and wonderful and perfectly you, and there’s not a single thing you need to do or believe or put your faith in or say, nothing that needs to be done on your behalf or added to your resume to add or restore value to who you are as a human being.

But we do all mess up. We make mistakes. We hurt people. Sometimes we mean well. Sometimes we’re just plain mean. Maybe I say it’s important to be genuine in everything we do, and then I turn around and copy the latest trend on Instagram and spout some phony crap I don’t really believe. That’s not perfect. Forget God’s standards; every day I figure out new ways to fall short of mine.

So, when a person who’s harboring a lifetime supply of regret and insecurity hears the words You’re perfect just the way you are, it registers somewhere between eyeroll and gag-reflex on the believability scale.

But let’s think about why that is. Where does that regret and insecurity come from in the first place? I think we have to deconstruct both Christianity and its bastard child Capitalism to see what’s going on here.

Deconstructing Christian Guilt

Here’s a verse that represents a critical stop on the Romans Road to salvation:

Editor’s Note: If you can post that verse without cutting and pasting from Bible Gateway, you went to AWANA, and it shows.

Even if we move on from original sin, the day-to-day stuff we aren’t proud of carries a pretty steep penalty according to Paul, chief of sinners. (Editor’s note: in the time I’ve spent trying to think of how to phrase my next point, I’ve reached for my phone three times, and even though I’ve stopped myself every time, I still beat myself up over it instantaneously because I’m trying to quit that crap . . . but what sense does it make to judge ourselves all the ding-dang time?) And when you believe that any single mistake is enough a) to damn you to hell forever because it pisses God off so much; and b) to trigger a sequence of events including the public torture and execution of the Son of God to pay for your horrid shortcomings, it’s going to mess with your head.

Think about it. You have two choices every time you commit a sin or mistake or unholy act or human error: 1) Consider the full weight of the penalty you deserve for that transgression and the sacrifice God and God incarnate paid on the cross because of what you did, or 2) Get used to it and just blithely thank God for making it so your sins don’t have consequences. Sure, that can be a sliding scale, but there’s no sweet spot on that spectrum.

Keep in mind, in a worldview where 1 sin = 1 eternal damnation = 1 crucified deity, we’re confronted with that equation not only every time we do something short of God-sanctioned perfection, but also every time we remember doing it. Think about how often you remember embarrassments from decades ago and how they haunt you. That irrepressible, unerasable regret and shame is bad enough without the weight of almighty wrath attached to it. And if, on the other hand, you can just shrug that off, you’re going to develop a pretty calloused view of your own mistakes, and I can’t imagine a world in which anyone really thinks that’s a good idea.

It’s hard to have an appropriate sense of evaluating and moving on from my own mistakes. I don’t know how best to do it. But I do know, everyone deserves to be able to progress from where they are. We tie so much connection between what we do (and have done) and who we are (and what we’re worth). It’s way too much. We should be able to know we can do better without thinking we have to be a higher order of human to do it.

Deconstructing Capitalistic Value

Editor’s Note: Sorry, that’s such a boring heading . . . goodness.

I don’t want to take a terribly deep dive into capitalism, but from a purely straightforward approach we can see what’s going on here. We tie very specific number values to what we do in this society and how much it’s worth (and, in sum, how much we’re worth). It’s impossibly easy to evaluate people through a capitalistic lens. What’s in your bank account? Where do you live? What do you drive? What do you wear? How many commas show up in your annual income? Wait, there’s a comma in your daily income?

In Christianity and in Capitalism (Editor’s Note: I capitalize capitalism when I pair it with Christianity to emphasize how religion begets religion, turning economic systems into wholesale systems for living) there’s an entrenched belief that we get what we deserve. We get what we’re worth. And we tend to think of American Capitalism as post-biblical or kingdom-level economy—what I mean is, Christians seem no longer to say the financial ledgers will flip in God’s Kingdom, in favor of thinking God’s Kingdom is here for His people, and the ledgers tell you where you stand with the Almighty. If you’re rich in money and rich in faith, that’s God telling you what’s what.

I plan to get more into money issues tomorrow, so I’ll leave it at that. But I think it’s worth pondering how the world we’ve grown up in leads us to consider our spiritual and financial shortcomings as a single continuum.

But I do think the mindset of a market does have usefulness in helping us think about our mistakes and misdeeds in a more healthy fashion. We tend to treat our sins (however you want to define this) like their lifetime subscriptions. We pay for them in our mental accounting over and over for as long as live. Every time we remember calling our third grade teachers stupid that one time (what were we thinking?) we pay the subscription fee of 200 pounds of shame.

But that makes no market sense. I did it once. I shouldn’t have to pay to belong to the “Someone who calls sweet people stupid for no reason” club. I called that sweet person stupid one time and immediately regretted it and felt awful for it. Transaction over. I left that booth. I’m never going back.

The bad things we do have a price, and they should. But it makes more sense to pay the penalty one time and move on. Cancel the lifetime subscriptions to your own mistakes. Look at your own ledger, see what you paid, and close the account.

I may have gotten lost in the metaphor. But I hope you get the idea.

You’re perfect, and you can do better. Onward.