BLOG 4/27/16. IS THE MINIMUM WAGE A THEOLOGICAL ISSUE?
Front and center in the media is so much of the political and ecclesiastical debate of the day are those having to do with sexual issues: What is legal? Whom to admit? Where to go to the bathroom? Etc. Those are certainly cultural issues that require both wisdom and grace. But the ethical issue that is much more on the front-burner of scriptures has to do with the just treatment of workers and of the helpless poor, i.e. economic ethics. The prophet Ezekiel even asserts that the real cause for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was because of the failure to aid the poor and the needy. Economic ethics always looms large in the teachings of the Old Testament law and prophets, and only a blind eye can miss the encounters of Jesus with persons of wealth.
The number of those of our fellow citizens who are economically poor because of an inadequate minimum wage is vastly larger than those whose sexual lifestyle might not suit our own. And the teachings of scriptures on the subject of economic justice, the just dealing with workers, our care for the helpless poor are vastly larger than those on sexual ethics. Why are we unwilling to challenge the injustices, and the ethical immorality of unconscionable acquisition of, and use of wealth?
A few years ago the gifted writer and activist Barbara Ehrenreich decided to actually try living on the official minimum wage, and so actually forsook her comfortable existence and entered the world of one who had to live on the minimum wage for a forty-hour week. She found it was almost impossible, and wrote Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Making It in America, which was a detailed account of her journey as a single person attempting to do basic living on the nation’s minimum wage (and became a best-selling book).
When corporations, agencies, and individuals maintain their profits and prosperity at the expense others poverty, something has a foul odor. I was jolted out of my own innocence on this when as a young pastor living on our denomination’s minimum wage, and in the church’s housing, I was barely making it, and my wife and I had four small children. There really was no room in our budget to hire any help for my wife, but she desperately needed some. So we found a black lady who serviced some of our more prosperous neighbors with part-time house-keeping and asked her about her availability, and what she would would charge us to to a half-day’s work. We were astounded to find that our financially secure neighbors were only paying her half of the nation’s stated minimum wage. That was partly an evidence of the racism that existed, but it was also indifference to the teachings of scripture about just wages that my neighbors professed to believe. Mrs. (Odessa) Flake became part of our family for our years in that community, and our neighbors ultimately got the message from us and raised her wages (and were not very happy with us). But it opened my eyes.
You may remember that Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis to be a part of the garbage workers’ strike for fair wages when he was assassinated. My purpose here is to raise the issue of just wages, the existential issue of underpaid workers, and also the disparity of pay for women, and the economically discrimination due to ethnicity.
The other side of that issue is that God’s people are also to be excellent workers and to do good work for their wages, and for excellence in their relationships in the workplace. Economic sin has two sides: ethical justice in paying wages, and ethical justice in earning them. It’s a big issue in God’s plan for his New Humanity. So the issue of a $15.00 per hour minimum/livable wage is absolutely an issue of theological ethics. (The Occupy Wall Street protest, by the way, has good ethical foundations in scripture where the arrogance of the super-wealthy receives God’s just displeasure.) [If you find this Blog provocative, pass the word to your friends.
