American Dream and Christianity

So, this is edited some… but originally based off a CWP (creative writing portfolio) I wrote for Holtzclaw’s class. It may seem like a boring, analytical paper in the beginning, but it actually does get interesting (in my opinion at least)

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A recent 4^th of July I was visiting a church, listening to a sermon explaining how life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness coincided with God’s will for his followers. I sat there, curious and perplexed; all my childhood years in Sunday school I heard about the things that Jesus taught. I remembered that He said things like “no greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend,” or “whoever desires to be great among you shall be your servant.” He also said, “blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Sitting in the pew, hearing that we could follow Jesus while also pursuing the riches and happiness of this world, I began to wonder in what other ways the American culture had colored or even misinterpreted the very things I claimed to believe.

Before we analyze the American Dream as it exists in society today, let’s take a short hiatus back in time a few thousand years to the establishment of Israel. I like to think of this as God’s Dream or at least His one chance to set up a social system that might succeed in the midst of a fallen world. According to Levitical Law, land was divided up by tribe, each tribe having its own territory and each family owning land within this territory. For forty-nine years the Israelites were able to work the land, sell the land, hire labor to work the land, trade land, barter, invest, essentially function as a capitalist nation. However, on the fiftieth year, known as the year of Jubilee, all land would revert to its original owner and slaves would be freed, making a new start and eliminating all debts. This system, ordained by God, balanced our human built-in desire to improve our conditions with a system that prevented the perpetuation of poverty.

The thoughts that began while sitting in the pew that fateful 4^th of July morning, have taken root and grown during this school year. As I try to connect the dots between Jesus’ teachings, Old Testament government, and the American Dream… I’m finding there aren’t many. Is it possible that the American Dream is actually in conflict with the teachings of the Bible?

Of course, the American Dream can’t be traced back to a particular event or person. In fact, it wasn’t until literary critics were floundering around looking for a phrase to sum up all the modernist gibberish going on that the term “American Dream” was even coined. In essence, the American Dream is a collaboration of immigrant rags-to-riches stories.

The American Dream appealed to the Europeans originally immigrating to the New World because of the opportunity it gave them to improve their condition and escape the social caste system they previously experienced in Europe. Uneducated farmers could come to the U.S. and launch business enterprises; poor bakers could become involved with politics; servants could rise up and become CEO’s in charge of small empires. Possibilities for those with an appetite to better themselves were endless.

Because many immigrants were also seeking religious freedom (along with aforementioned economic opportunity), all these elements of the American Dream seem to have acculturated with religion and become what is now accepted as Christianity in America today. The same melting pot where ethnic groups come together to form a society is also a country in which cultural ideologies come together with religious principles to form what we now accept as Christianity; pulling them apart is a little like separating metals in an alloy, a rather unwieldy task. However, I’m going to give it a try.

The American Dream encourages all who are involved to step on whomever they need to step on, to sacrifice whatever they need to sacrifice, and go to any and all lengths necessary in order to achieve a sense of accomplishment and security. Now, I don’t claim to be a biblical scholar, but it seems to me that this “dream” that every American is, at some level or another, striving to achieve conflicts on every level with the teachings of Jesus.

First, the American Dream encourages man to redefine his image. If you earn enough money, drive a better car, own a bigger house, then people will see that you are really worth something, according to this ideology; this ideology, however, is anything but biblical. Jesus himself says that one’s worth should not be defined by his accomplishments or by the things of this world, but in the image of Christ the Lord.

Second, the American Dream places a huge amount of emphasis on the accumulation of wealth: both in literature and real life. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the main character, Willy Loman, is driven by wealth and greed that eventually lead to his death. Jay Gatsby, driven by his desire for the status that comes with wealth and prosperity, eventually meets his demise after reaching the height of his prosperity. Both of these characters, along with hundreds of other characters throughout American literature, are united by their quest for attaining money. However, in the Bible, Jesus says “Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.” In no way does Jesus advocate a quest to attain riches in this world, “where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal.” Instead, He says to “store up for yourselves riches in heaven.”

The American Dream also promotes selfishness, a society where you fight to get yours, and once you have it you won’t give it up because you earned it with your hard work. Psalm 119:36 says, “turn my heart toward your statuses and not toward selfish gain.” Philippians 2:3 says, “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” It is littered throughout the Bible that selfishness and greed will only lead you to eternal damnation. Jesus teaches that, instead, we should be selfless and generous with our possessions, giving to the poor and helping those who are less fortunate than us.

The modern church seems to have integrated seamlessly within the American Dream, balancing a mindset of progression and comfort with a mission of following Jesus’ example and truly living out the label “little-christs”. I imagine if Jesus, a homeless man living with the poorest of the poor and sickest of the sick, a man who constantly laid down his own needs to fulfill the needs of others, a man who told others to follow in his ways, to give to the poor, and to follow him… if this man showed up in a Christian church today, I imagine he would be considered an outcast. He would be mocked for living out the example the modern church now claims to follow. Perhaps it’s time that Christians really take a step back and try to uncover where the lines of culture have permeated the lines of religion, try to resuscitate the true meaning of being a Christian. Maybe it’s time to choose what we’re living for: the American Dream, or God’s dream for us to live in his glory forever through His son Jesus Christ.