When “Common Wisdom” Fails Us

“Cleanliness,” my mother used to say, “is next to godliness.”

My mother grew up in a poor family. Her father abandoned his wife and six children so my grandmother had to make a living by doing other people’s laundry. I’m sure it was hard to keep the children clean and my mother probably heard my grandmother use that adage often to encourage her children to wash regularly.

Though often repeated and considered part of the “common wisdom,” however, that saying is among many that simply don’t ring true. Think of the millions of people living in the world’s slums, the millions of kids living on the streets. They have little opportunity to keep clean and are too busy trying to survive to worry about hygiene.

Are they not next to godliness? I would say they are closer simply by virtue of being poor.

Another such saying is, “You can be anything you want to be.” That is among the greatest of fraudulent maxims. Sure, if you’re a middle or upper class white American, the possibilities are many. But if you’re African American, Hispanic or other minority, your chances of “being what you want to be” are statistically dismal.

There are some economically successful minorities – and I wouldn’t encourage minorities to use the “victim” excuse for not trying – but the successful ones are exceptions. The facts speak for themselves.

According to an article in an online publication of the American Psychological Association,

• African American children are three times more likely to live in poverty than Caucasian children. American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian families are more likely than Caucasian and Asian families to live in poverty (Costello, Keeler, & Angold, 2001; National Center for Education Statistics, 2007).
• Unemployment rates for African Americans are typically double those of Caucasian Americans. African American men working full time earn 72 percent of the average earnings of comparable Caucasian men and 85 percent of the earnings of Caucasian women (Rodgers, 2008).
• Despite dramatic changes, large gaps remain when minority education attainment is compared to that of Caucasian Americans (American Council on Education, 2006).

• Minority children in high-poverty areas are more likely to be exposed to alcohol and tobacco advertisements (Wallace, 1999) and drug distribution (Wallace, 1999); they are also more likely to use drugs and exhibit antisocial behaviors (Dubow, Edwards, & Ippolito, 1997).

And by the way, to be “anything you want to be,” it helps a lot to be male.

What does all this have to do with the search for God? Just that if you’re searching for the God in which Christians and Jews believe, you won’t find him/her if you ignore the structural injustices that keep people from the opportunities that allow them to thrive.

“Inequality is the root of social ills,” writes Pope Francis in The Joy of the Gospel, and tolerance of social ills – such as poverty, lack of education and lack of access to health care – is really what’s far from “godliness.”

Promoting greater economic and social equality isn’t promoting “class warfare,” pitting the poor against the rich. It’s a matter of one of the two great commandments of Hebrew and Christian teaching, that of “love of neighbor.”

People searching for God can’t be indifferent about these issues because indifference gives the lie to a genuine search. Granted, you can’t solve all the world’s problems, but you can help in any small or big way. Organizations that work to solve them always need help from volunteers and donors.

And people genuinely searching for God will keep these issues in mind when voting.