You Can’t always get what you need….But you get what you want” by Rev. Carol Howard Merritt

Rev. Carol Howard Merritt

It was a small error, of course. When John McCain was asked how many houses he owned, and he wasn’t sure. From what I understand there were condos, or rental properties, or something that had been recently been divided, and so the number of actual homes was vague.

I can’t remember all of the details, but that’s okay, because neither could Senator McCain. He just couldn’t recall how it all ended up, so he said that he would check with his aides and get back to the interviewer with the number.

It’s unfortunate that this foggy moment overcame McCain at a time when so many Americans are wringing their hands, trying to desperately figure out what to do about the one mortgage payment that they can’t meet. When the rash of foreclosures has spread through our country, left Fannie and Freddie in a shambles, and shaken the foundations of our economy. The stark contrast made the small lapse of memory into a huge blunder.

McCain is certainly a man of means, as is Senator Barack Obama. In fact, as I walk along the D.C. neighborhood where I’m a pastor, I know that there are many wealthy people in this town. And watching the “you’re richer than me, and I’m really the common guy” shenanigans is all a part of the fun here in Washington. We can actually see the politicians scramble from their mansions and run to the chicken dinners to prove how common and ordinary they are.

Neighbors, church members, and colleagues all have a serious, personal stake in who will be elected next, so the electricity of a political season amps up a few thousand volts during this cycle. Of course, I’m not speaking on behalf of my congregation when I tell you that I am voting for Barack Obama. I’m writing as a private citizen and a Christian. I’m speaking up as a thirty-something mom, as someone who realizes that one of the reasons that this economic crisis has hit is because we have not taken care of younger generations in our country.

You know, I barely noticed the way that we, as a country, were treating our young citizens. It happened so quickly. We started seeing credit card companies, setting up tables on campuses and giving out knick knacks, t-shirts, and phone cards if those teenagers would sign up for a 23-percent-interest credit card.

It was like they were luring children with tainted candy. But we weren’t kids, we were adults, and we were not being given a tummy ache, we were given thousands of dollars. And since this was happening right on our campuses there was a clear lesson being taught. We learned in our colleges, that it didn’t matter that we couldn’t possibly pay that money back for another four years. We would just be handed the money, and then berated as idiots if we spent it.

It was easy to spend. Tuition costs for state colleges increased at a rapid 44 percent from 2001 to 2005, and so the way that those same college students could keep up was to start an uncomfortable relationship with Sallie Mae. We met with financial “counselors” at our schools, not realizing that many of them were in collusion with the banks, getting special kickbacks for pushing certain loans. With the hole of debt beginning with school bills for tuition piling up, we juggled jobs and classes, and still found that we needed to spend the credit card money on food and clothing.

As soon as we graduated, the cost of renting increased in urban areas (the places where the young could find jobs) by more than 50 percent from 1995 to 2002. As a result, 47 percent of women and 57 percent of men under the age of 24 live with their parents.

And yet, as all of these increases in housing and debt occurred for young Americans, salaries remained stagnant. Not only that, but the employment practices changed so drastically that temp work became popular among corporations. With these temporary positions, the young no longer received benefits and could be laid off with ease.

Now, thirty percent of adults under the age of 30 do not have health insurance. At a time in our lives when we used to have babies, close to a third of us can’t even pay for the doctor’s appointments.

So how did we do it? How did we manage massive school debt, high housing costs, medical crises, and stagnant wages? Well, mortgages got more and more creative, as banks began to suspend their common-sense loaning practices and offered more money that they knew borrowers could not pay back. And that brings us to our current crisis.

Right about now, you may be thinking to yourself, “What does any of this have to do with our spiritual lives? Why would all of this make a clergy person vote for Obama?”

Well… let me tell you. There’s just no way to separate the material from the spiritual. The level of depression and anxiety is huge out there. Ask any pastor who has had to counsel a couple through the pain of bankruptcy. Our economic situation means that we have difficulty staying in one place for any stretch of time; we have a hard time making commitments or forming relationships.

We have created a society where the young can get easy credit. We can buy all the frivolous things that we want, but we can’t get what we need. We have an economic circumstance where either you have rich, generous parents, or you go into debt. And then, we berate the young for their carelessness and stupidity when the interest payments get to be too much or their mortgage balloons after a few years.

We have always had a society where we did not lend people money unless we knew they could pay it back. Now, we have an environment where people have to borrow money at extreme cost, and we turn around and say that they are irresponsible for doing it.

And sadly, many Christians nod their heads as we do it.

We need to change. We need to run back to the words of Jesus, who stood on the Mount and cried out, “Blessed are the poor,” who warned us not to forget the “least of these.” We need to remember the actions of Jesus, who showed us how to love others as we love ourselves, who walked among the needy and sought healing for them, who told cautionary tales about what happens to greedy lenders.

It is out of my commitment to living out the words of Jesus that I am voting for Barack Obama. It is not because he is a common guy, but it is because, as a community organizer, he has worked on behalf of the ordinary. He understands the need for health care and mortgage relief. He has seen “the least of these.”

There is this notion out there that community organizers have no responsibilities. But as a pastor, I realize that community organizers have nothing but responsibility. They do not do it because of the money. They do not do it because of the power. They do it because they look into the eyes of the men, women, and children of their community, and they feel the huge burden of responsibility.

In the years to come, as we face these extraordinary economic crises, we need someone who surrounds himself with the best and brightest people. We will want someone who is calm and level headed. And even more than that, we will need a person who understands what it’s like to own one home, a person who will see the “least of these” in our communities.

Rev. Carol Howard Merritt
Washington, DC

Carol Howard Merritt is a Presbyterian (U.S.A) pastor and the author of Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation.