Day 1

Day 1: 

I prayed for God to give me a vision of what work I should be doing. How to help people. How to make money so I can be generous. Where to focus my business. 

The answer I got was “Write.” Not just write, but write and post something every day for 30 days. I don’t know why. I let God know that doesn’t make sense. He reminded me that we’re called to obey even when it doesn’t make sense. I stopped myself before giving in to the urge to argue. I did, however, voice my thought, “this doesn’t really answer my prayer,” as if He didn’t know. I don’t know how this will help anyone. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to write about. 

It also feels very “keyboard warrior”. I want to connect, build community, create unity. I don’t feel like the world needs another voice in an online world of noise and conflict, talking heads and influencers shouting over one another to get more views, clicks, and follows. It only perpetuates the silos. And yet, here I go. 

I’ve been thinking so much about the future lately and what my absolutes are. I thought I had a pretty good grip on them: God and country basically. Of course there’s more - family, integrity, purpose, service, community, charity, kindness, generosity, freedom, hard work, education, loyalty… 

I used to think they were mostly the same. They obviously went together, God and country, because American values were based on Christian values and what really made it spectacular was that we had protections that kept Christianity from becoming about power as it had elsewhere in the world. We had separation of church and state and freedoms that protected Americans from the government. Not perfect, but we’d accounted for that too, because we could amend the Constitution. It could keep getting better. 

But somewhere we stopped getting better. Or at least, we stopped getting better for most people in most ways. My vision of America seems so tainted and dark now. Freedom, taking care of our neighbors, working hard, and having a better life than each generation before us. It seems to be fading. 

Many people I grew up with, served with, worshipped with, worked with, now seem so far away from the values I thought we shared. 

I thought it was a given, an absolute, 100% undisputed fact that the Golden rule applied. That Christianity meant love, grace, charity and hospitality. Now it means judgement (by people not God), hatred, attack, greed, and power. 

I thought that America was so great because we had inalienable rights codified in our Constitution and the separation of powers. Now we’ve seen that all 3 branches are so easily bought. The founders never accounted for people with unlimited greed and thirst for power who also had more resources than most countries on earth. People who had algorithms to lie and manipulate, to ensure the truth gets hidden, and to keep people so busy and overwhelmed that they can’t see behind the curtain. 

I thought that the Greatest Generation was so because they fought and died to liberate people they had never met simply because it was the right thing to do, because tyranny and genocide was so abhorrant, we would die for others to be free. Now people are proud to be called Nazis, and federal agents are encouraged to wear masks as they kidnap and murder. The National Guard has been deployed against U.S. citizens who pose no threat. The troops who were so respected after 9/11 are told to sleep on floors and told to pick up trash during these deployments. 

America has let the wealth accumulate at the top with no responsibility to the country and the people who gave them the opportunity. No investment in infrastructure, education, justice, or healthcare. Just the opposite. They’ve exploited every bit so we’re sicker and less educated with less economic opportunity than our parents. 

We’re the only developed country in the world whose citizens go bankrupt if they get sick. We don’t take care of our children. They don’t get healthcare, nutrition, or education. Why do we care so much about forcing women to give birth but care nothing about children once they’re born? 

I’m so sick of the hypocrisy of idolizing billionaires and blaming single parents and minimum wage workers trying to survive. If we believe as Americans that we have a right to Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and as Christians that every human is made in God’s image and deserves love and respect and dignity, then why are we allowing this? Why are we allowing children to starve, to be neglected, to die from a lack of resources when the 3 richest men in America own more than the entire bottom 50% of Americans. How is that amount of greed and hoarding to be admired rather than despised? 

The truth is America favors unchecked greed in the name of capitalism more than any other value. “Where your treasure is, there also is your heart.” (Matt 6:21)  Look at the spending of our country, both the government and our citizens. (Obviously we can’t for our President, since for the first time in ever?, he refused to not only disclose his taxes but also divest himself of business conflicts of interest). Our government spends on corporate tax breaks and subsidizes un-livable wages while CEOs, boards of directors, and shareholders pocket income from the poorest of their fellow citizens. As average citizens, the median salary is about $65k. We spend money on conveniences like eating out or meal delivery or subscriptions that ship to our doors because we don’t have time to do anything else. We don’t have time to cook healthy meals. We can’t shop locally because the chains have monopolized the supply system and charge so much more that we can’t afford to support local businesses. We don’t have time to shop in person because we have multiple jobs or side hustles. We can no longer afford to live on one full-time job. Our health is suffering, our families are suffering, and our country is suffering but President Trump’s net worth increased from $2 billion to $6 billion in the first 12 months he’s been in office and Elon Musk was just given a $1 TRILLION dollar pay package. 

I can’t fathom the kind of bound-up soul you have to have to think that any one person deserves more than a billion dollars. I guarantee you every CEO is replaceable. If every manager disappeared from the planet, the people doing the work would step up and keep the world going without a hitch. People can learn management. Management cannot learn execution. Did we learn nothing from Undercover Boss? I write that a bit tongue-in-cheek obviously, but in seriousness, they don’t have a clue most of the time. They just take credit for other people’s ideas and effort. Don’t accept that people in management are worth 300-3000 times your work. It’s an absurd fallacy that capitalism created. 

I’m blanking on the name of one of my favorite CEOs. He’s in a Harvard Business School case study because he gave up his $1million salary to ensure every employee made a minimum of $70k. Business leaders were outraged. His company grew, his employees work hard, and he’s made a lot of money. Maybe I’ll look him up and write about him tomorrow. 

As you can see, I did no editing, no fact checking. This is just me writing today. I don’t know where this will go topic-wise, but it’s where I am today. I’m not perfect. I’m not claiming to have all the answers. I am exhausted from seeing so many other people exhausted from simply trying to live when God calls us to “live and live abundantly” (John 10:10) - but not at the expense of others. It’s not a zero sum game. We’ve simply made it one.