America: Rich & Greedy

Gregory Boyd has written a series of short essays on faith and politics in the United States. The essays offer many issues to discuss and I plan to take up a few. Here is something found in one of those essays:

"I love America. I can think of no other country I would want to make my home. I enjoy the freedom to write this comment in this blog. There are, however, things about America that I detest. There are things about America that are quite contrary to the Kingdom of God. America is rich. America is greedy. America is materialistic. America exploits the poor. If Revelation had been written in our day, the city of Babylon would not be Rome; it would be America (among many other nations that oppose Kingdom-values). Washington is the Babylon of Rev. 18 in the same way that Rome was. Many of the values of America are a direct contradiction to the Kingdom of God. Despite George W's claims that America is 'the light of the world,' it is not. The light of the world is Jesus; I serve a King. There is no 'president' on the throne of God's Kingdom."

I think the assertions here about America are simply false. For example, I do not see that "America exploits the poor." There are many reasons to see my conclusion, not the least of which is in the news these days. The policy issues surrounding illegal immigrants involve many who are poor illegally entering this country. It simply would seem odd to me to conclude that "America exploits the poor" while seeing so many poor every day come to America to be "exploited." The poor aren't risking so much to illegally come here just to come be exploited.

I suspect the very idea of "America exploits the poor" is based upon a flawed analysis of how economies, and especially personal economies, work.

I also have difficulty accepting an indictment of our system of political economy in some aggregate sense. It is not the system that is materialistic. Rather, it seems to me that being materialistic is an attribute of an individual. Our system of political economy does not require materialistic attitudes to be successful. Furthermore, there surely are many people in our economy who are not relatively materialistic, and I suspect not just a few of these are Christians. I am always suspicious of claims about groups or aggregates, especially when the claims seem to attribute human attributes of preference and choice to such aggregates.

Note that I am not suggesting in this specific post that the United States is a "Christian nation," whatever that might mean. Rather I am suggesting that the implicit and explicit critique of the United States I've quoted above is at least of little use for understanding, if not simply wrong. Materialistic attitudes come from personal choices, it seems to me, and each individual is ultimately responsible for their personal choices.