The Handbasket –
When I was around 31 years old, working for the government as a G5 IRS minion, I went to see the pastor at our church, not really able to articulate why.
I said, “Considering the way things are going in the world, I figure that I should either go into the handbasket business or the ministry.”
“What do you mean ‘handbasket business?’” he asked.
“The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and I might as well make a buck or two.”
“Let’s talk about the ministry…”
And we did. I chose ministry, obviously. But this was not a mere career decision. This was choosing the direction of a life.
Property… or People.
This nation – this Hopeland – has been balanced on that knife edge since its first articulation of purpose. Thomas Jefferson listed several of our unalienable rights: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
He borrowed from John Locke, who wrote: Life, Liberty, and Property. Jefferson knew Property. It provided his livelihood. But he dared to replace that sure measure of value with a much more elusive word:
Happiness.
Happiness is a slippery word.
It slides around in the mouth.
Means one thing in the morning, another by nightfall.
One thing to a farmer, another to a banker, another to a man in chains.
The question runs deeper than politics or economics. It is about value.
We begin the whole Bible with it – the Knowledge of Good and Evil. What is good? What is evil? What is something… worth?
The value of a slave can be measured by return on investment. Behind the obscenity of enslavement is a cold equation: capitalized labor.
The Emancipation Proclamation only began the change.
When I was in Kenya, talking with ministerial students, they were adamant: they were not interested in carving their lives into pieces of time in order to rent themselves out.
That sounds familiar. We once had the Employment Office. Now we have Human Resources. Like tankers full of oil. Gondola cars full of coal.
The “Homeland” is about property.
But in that office so many years ago, I chose a different measure. The value of a human being is not what they own. It is not even what they produce.
It is who they are. Individually. And all together.
Without fully realizing the weight of it, my pastor offered me the better choice. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. That hasn’t changed.
But I had the chance to refuse trying to own the handbasket. I had something better to do. I wanted to know the names of the people inside.
And if possible…
introduce them to the Hopeland.
