White Privilege Conference

"You, God, have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound...You alone make me dwell in safety." Psalm 4:7,8b

Most North Americans are steeped in cultural attitudes subtly undergirded by a Gospel of Entitlement. It preaches that we deserve good things because we have been godly or smart or diligent or born in the right place. Conversely, the message is that those who suffer are somehow responsible for that suffering.

This mindset keeps domination in place by making people of privilege believe that we are entitled to convenience and wealth in a world where the vast majority of our sisters and brothers toil in poverty. Comfortable, we don blinders at will, never asking what our cheap energy, cheap consumer goods, and cheap imported foods exact from the rest of God's creation and the human community.

The dynamics of entitlement shape the lives of both the wealthy and the poor within U.S. culture, yet we are largely unaware of these dynamics. Ironically, our political lexicon instead applies the word entitlement to programs in our frayed social safety net--housing, income, and medical supports for low-income people. In the lexicons of our struggling sisters and brothers around the world, we are not "entitled." We are privileged, rich, wasteful, or complaint-filled.

Living with attitudes of entitlement carries tremendous spiritual costs. Entitlement numbs us, grounding us in a sense of scarcity that is completely out of kilter with the abundance of creation. It keeps us looking for more, feeding both consumerism and addiction, and blinds us to the tremendous blessing of being part of the human community and living in a world of miracle.

The true gospel calls us to gratitude and contentment steeped in the graciousness of God. But too often we find ourselves trapped in cycles of bickering and dissatisfaction, where nothing is ever enough.

A central biblical precept is that God--and God alone--is the source of life: of abundance, of justice, of mercy, of all good gifts. God has freely shared these gifts with us. We have no ownership over them, and our only appropriate response is gratitude.

The model of community God gives through commands to Moses exposes the Gospel of Entitlement as false. This model is rooted in complete trust in the care and provision of God and in human interrelationship. The land is a gift from God, not to be owned or accumulated, but redistributed regularly. Economic health is determined by the well-being of the entire community. At the heart of the prophets' critique is the insistence that the community strayed from this reliance on God, resulting in neighbor exploiting neighbor.

Jesus healed wounds caused by religious and cultural systems based on entitlement. To the well-off, he told provocative warning stories about wealthy landowners claimed by God in their sleep, and powerful figures trapped in Sheol for ignoring the beggars at their gate. He urged a rich man to follow him, but reminded him that spiritual wholeness demands giving away his entitlements. To those marginalized and scorned by the religious purists, he offered healing welcome and a place.

At The Other Side, we believe that we are also called to heal the wounds of entitlement--in ourselves and in the world. As we make choices that restore human community, we will be more and more out of step with a culture of affluence. We will begin to embrace what we receive with a spirit of gratitude rather than as something earned or expected. We will practice what the world views as a kind of lunatic self-sacrifice, but which we recognize as a careful reweaving of human community rooted in the graciousness of God--the door to authentic joy.

--Dee Dee Risher, Coeditor

From The Other Side Online, © 2002 The Other Side, March-April 2002, Vol. 38, No. 2.