Spiritual Hiccups - Moral Documents

Today's lectionary readings don't really speak to this, but for some reason I could not stop thinking about budgets and deficits as a read them.  One of the psalms does ask to be taught God's ways, and when the prophets spoke against the rulers and powerful of Jerusalem, their neglect of the poor and of justice was often at the fore.  Still, it would seem a stretch to write a devotion or sermon from any of today's passages that addressed budgets and deficits.  And yet those topics pull at me.

One of the real oddities of American civil religion is a strange combination of saying we are "a Christian nation" while at the same time saying religion is a private thing that should stay out of politics.  But politics is very often about moral issues.  Under what circumstances, if any, should a country go to war?  For those who follow a Savior who spoke of turning the other cheek and praying for enemies, how can this be a question devoid of religious implications?  This week marks the 150th anniversary of the firing on Ft. Sumter to open the Civil War.  Some of my fellow Southerners like to pretend it isn't the case, but this war was rooted in the moral/religious issue of slavery.  And of course a great many laws are are on the books to maintain a certain notion of morality. 

In the last few days the quote "Budgets are moral documents" has popped up with some regularity.  I do not know who said it originally, but it is certainly true.  My personal budget, my city and state's budget, and my country's budget all make statements about what we value most, about what sort of values we will insist on and require the general population to fund.  At one time in history, education was something available only to people with means, but at some point the moral judgment was made that all children need access to education, and means of taxation were devised to pay for it.  It did not matter that you agreed or disagreed with this moral judgment.  You were required to help pay for it. 

Our nation has entered a time when difficult choices will have to be made if we are to begin reducing the national deficit.  And who bears the brunt of those choices will be a moral judgment.  Those we elect will make decisions about who will be the winners and losers, and those decisions will be moral judgments.  Which is the greater moral imperative, for people who make millions to keep every possible cent of it, or for people who have almost nothing to have adequate health care?  What things should a moral and just society insure that everyone has access to, and how should they pay for it?  These are moral questions, and for people who embrace the way of Christ, they are questions that demand faithful and prayerful discernment.

The issues involved in the budget of our country are complex.  Corporate tax rates do impact companies' ability to expand and hire workers.  But of course so do those same companies' decisions to pay CEOs hundreds of millions of dollars.  Yet another moral judgment.  But despite all this complexity, Christians still follow a Lord who stood firmly in Israel's prophetic tradition, a tradition that over and over condemned the powers that be for helping the rich and ignoring the poor.  We follow a Lord who spent much of his time with the poor and the outcast of his day, who found most of his opponents among the powerful and well off.  And he spoke about our relationship to money and possessions much more frequently that he did about the personal morality issues we religious folks often tend to emphasize. 

Over the next months and years, difficult questions and debates will be engaged.  Decisions will be made and budgets will be crafted.  And they will be moral documents that define what we value most, that state where our deepest loyalties lie.  And I wonder what the judgments of psalmists, prophets, and Jesus will be on those moral documents.

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