One More Day Alive

A couple of years ago, when all the economic madness thrust so many into the long haul of tough times that is still continuing today, I wrote a column about the value of faith and hope, and how faith was ultimately more important in the long run.

With so many of us still facing so much of the same adversity, I thought it might be a good time to remind ourselves of those two ideas and just how they might help us through these tough times.

But now rather than simply reflecting on why faith is so much more important, I thought the time was right to do a little bragging for all of you out there about how much faith you have all had through the last few years, and how powerful that faith was when it came to helping you and the rest of America survive — long after hope went into short supply.

Because while hope for better times might make it easier to keep going, it is only through faith that we can find happiness. It is only through faith that we can realize the inherent value of our lives regardless of our fortune or our misfortune.

While foreclosures are still out of control, oil and gas prices are through the roof, and of course the papers are still filled with stories of people struggling to make ends meet, faith in our families and our nation has stayed strong. And that has kept us all going, millions from coast to coast who have continued to do the right thing: to work hard at their jobs, or continue to work hard finding a job, despite how difficult it has made our lives.

While we have watched some banks and greedy corporations break the law and mismanage funds, millions of everyday Americans have continued to respect each other and the rule of law in America; there has not been a rise in crime and misbehavior; in fact there has been a decrease.

Even as our media continues to irresponsibly depress us on a daily basis with portrayals of a wayward world of war and madness void of any purpose, millions have continued to pray and worship the Lord in America; there has not been a drop in churchgoing; in fact there has been a rise!

All of that and more should not only give all of us something to cling to in the storm, it should also make us proud. It should make us realize our strength and the value of our connection to something stronger and greater than ourselves is unbreakable in America.

It should make us all realize that there is something tangibly great about this nation that goes well beyond money, prosperity, looking good, feeling good or being number one.

Though one might argue that some have given up hope that things will get better soon in this nation, we have kept our faith that it is a nation worth trying to make better.

Through faith, we realize our ultimate purpose to live for God’s love regardless of what we encounter in this world. As I said way back when all this started, we will keep going because we know that every day, every hour, every second that we spend helping spread God’s love through our own compassion, our understanding and our endurance gets all of us one step closer to making the Lord’s Prayer a reality — “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.”

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Profit and public responsibility, or at least accountability, are not unrelated. In fact, maybe they are inexorably connected to each other.  But don’t just take my word for it.

The recent backlash over proposed new debit card fees by banks in America is the perfect example. The fact that those banks finally listened to the protestations of their customers is the best news yet for the future of America – and the future of capitalism.

Because the last two years have been a real test for business in America making many wonder if capitalism would survive the backlash of public protests.

But the reality is that outside of a few wacky extremists crying for outright socialism most Americans don’t oppose capitalism or profits. What they are fed up, and rightfully so, is the proliferation of unfettered GREED and the rise of an embarrassingly irresponsible corporate culture of selfishness!

Case in point: the debit card fee fiasco. This all began in September after Bank of America foolishly decided to try to nickel and dime the American public (the same American public who bailed them out with a huge stimulus just a few years ago) by adding a $5-a-month fee to use debit cards. Other banks soon announced they would do the same.

Within a few months there was a huge public outcry from customers with many threatening to leave en masse. All this finally made all the banks including Bank of America reverse their decision.

Now obviously these banks changed their minds because they realized that in this particular situation they stood to lose customers. And that would cost them more profit in the long run than they would make in the short run by adding the fees.

But maybe this is more than just an isolated case. Maybe it means that corporate America is remembering the bottom line of capitalism is not just dollars, but SENSE too – common sense that says that caring about people, about the world around you will improve your profits. That’s because people are more apt to work for and buy from companies that are nice instead of nasty.  It is proven time and time again.

Henry Ford, one of the greatest, and most successful, capitalists in American history – the father of the assembly line – purposely raised his employees’ salaries more than he needed to in order to enable them to buy his cars.  That wasn’t just because he was a nice guy. He knew it would create generations of Ford Customers that would inevitably in the long run earn the company much more than it cost in the short run. But the byproduct of that was he made a whole lot of employees happier and better off too, and he was probably the happier for it as well!

Now I do not think it is government’s responsibility to make these companies act morally. (The exception is when the whole game is rigged for instance in the case of collusion or monopoly.) We need free will and free markets in order for moral decisions to be possible. God does not make us do the right thing, and neither should government.  

I truly believe eventually the people will get tired of being taken advantage of, and they will rise up and make these companies do the right thing with the power of their wallets.

But if everything I have said is true then it begs the question: Why have there been so many short-sighted selfish companies in the last few decades in America? 

The answer is simple – stupidity!  If everyone (the companies, the employees and the consumers) prospers more in the long run, by running a considerate and socially responsible business, then only a fool would do differently.

But thank God some of those fools are beginning to wise up.

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As Labor Day appraoches so does too the unofficial end of summer and happily the end of the summer heat. The long weekend is celebrated with backyard barbecues and pool parties, as families and friends gather together for one last chance to have some summer fun, while football fans everywhere celebrate the beginning of football season.

But do any of us really stop and think about what Labor Day is really about and why it was important enough to be a holiday in the first place? Well, the first Labor Day in the United States became a federal holiday in 1894 as a way for the government to reconcile with unions and citizens in general, after workers were killed by U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, 15 years earlier.

The killing was of course one of those tragic and unintended mishaps, but it made many in the country realize that there needed to be some safeguards installed in our system that would help to protect laborers from exploitation and abuse. Making Labor Day an official holiday was meant to signal that our government recognized that the everyday laborer, no matter how menial the job, was important, had an innate value, and was worthy of all the same human rights of business owners, gentry and those in government. And that they would never again be forgotten or mistreated.

In other words, Labor Day is supposed to remind us not only of the value of hard work, but that all those who do it are human beings, not just cogs in a machine.

But this Labor Day maybe it’s an even more poignant reminder for a very important and overlooked particular group of workers: the unemployed. Those struggling to find work are just as important, valuable and meaningful as everyone else — and it is important to remember that in the search for new work.

Helping each other

With the unemployment rate hovering above 9 percent, we all need to help those without work to find it. It’s our Christian duty to help them.

Because when we are not able to work, we feel less than human somehow, less than involved, less than important. And nobody should ever feel that.

Just as the federal government eventually recognized that every worker needed to be treated as a human being with human rights, not just as a means to production, we must all remember that our value is not just what we can produce in our labor.

We derive our value from God, and from the knowledge that we were created to love and be loved. One of the ways we can do that is by working and helping society with something that it needs. Another one of the ways that we realize that value is by letting people love us and to let them experience the divinely ordained joy that comes from that. There should never be any shame involved in needing others.

So if you are looking for work, reach out to anyone you know and proudly tell them you want to work, and ask if they know anyone who needs someone of your exquisite and unique value.

And for all of you who know anyone who needs work, it is your duty to help them to regain their feelings of worth and value, and to help them find work.

Times are tough all over, and we all need to stop thinking that “help” is a four letter word. We all need to work together in every way we can to celebrate the value of humanity — and that’s something we can really celebrate this Labor Day.

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Hope vs. Faith

Hope: Expectations for the future

Faith: Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. Belief in a set of principles

“Don’t lose hope,” said the waitress to one of the regulars at a little cafe I frequent. The patron had just poured her heart out to the waitress about losing her job.  The property management company she worked for lost their shirt in the real estate crisis, and the thirty-something single mother of two got laid off. “Keep the faith,” I muttered as she left the cafe. She smiled and thanked me for my concern.

But can such platitudes offer any meaningful comfort or direction when we are at the end of our rope?

Unemployment is still in the stratosphere. Most economists say we had better get used to that because we won’t see that number coming down for years.

Foreclosures are still out of control and may see another rise. Experts say the worst of this is behind us – but that really doesn’t make anyone who has been foreclosed upon feel any better.

Oil and gas prices are through the roof.

Everywhere you look nowadays the papers are filled with stories of people struggling to make ends meet.

So what do we all do about it? Don’t lose hope and keep the faith? But what does that actually mean?

Well maybe hope –looking forward to better times to come – makes it easier to keep going. Psychologists and common sense tell us we can endure anything for a limited time, as long as the end is in site, and we know that better times lie ahead.

But how do we know that good times lie ahead – and how do we deal with the ones we got.

That’s where faith comes in.

Maybe hope without faith is missing the point of our lives – that there is a great value to finding some solace in the situations we are in – even the worst of them. 

If you believe in what you are doing and why you are doing it, you can endure more than you ever imagined.

But faith can help us find happiness within the experiences of our ordeals themselves and how we deal with them?  Because tough times make us realize the value of our lives can’t all be measured, understood or based on our prosperity, our fortune, misfortune, or end result at all.

Our value is wrapped up in the way we live, the people, the principles and the God we live for. And in turn those are the reasons to endure the toughest times life can offer – to keep going – for all those principles and people that we love.

And we will get through.  But when we do, we will have much more than our rediscovered prosperity?  We will have the knowledge and know-how it took us to get there.  We will have the confidence in our ability to weather tough times. Most importantly, we will know better what we value, and who.

We will all keep working hard.  Because that’s what Americans do. In fact, when the chips are down, you can’t beat our spirit, our ingenuity and our faith in each other, in ourselves, and in our God to see us through.

We keep going because we know that every day, every hour, every second that we spend helping spread God’s love through our own compassion, our understanding and our endurance gets all of us one step closer to making the Lord’s Prayer a reality – “Thy will be done – on earth as it is in Heaven.”

And I HOPE none of you give up on that.

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