Hello everyone, my name is Charles, the lead pastor here. Welcome to our Zoom Sunday service at The River. We’re in a sermon series called, “Invisible Beliefs that shape life and country.”
We’re looking at various belief systems throughout history that still have major influence today, and compare them to Agape Love. What difference would it make, if Agape Love was our foundational value as opposed to some other value, because as Christians, Agape Love SHOULD be the core foundational value, right? It’s been a great series so far, and today, I’d like to talk about the Tyranny of Meritocracy.
Merit can be another way to judge and rank people’s worth, and it’s an invisible belief that shapes so much of life and society in the U.S. merit based system. It sounds fair, no argument there. But even if it’s fair, if merit is used as a tool to judge the worth of a human being, it becomes yet another fig leaf, a fruit of knowledge of good and evil, worthy and unworthy. And THAT will lead to a whole host of problems, the Bible tells us from thousands of years ago.
And now? Secular scholars are noticing the dark side of meritocracy too. Michael Sandel is a famous scholar who specializes in justice in society, he’s a professor at Harvard. He wrote a book that’s getting a lot of buzz recently called, “Tyranny of Merit.” He points out that America is built on a merit based system, this is the “land of opportunity” after all. If you can’t make it here, well, that’s on you because here, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Never mind if you don’t have boots to begin with, doesn’t matter, this is the land of the free where you can move up if you just try hard enough.
It’s not like the old Europe with nobles and peasants in fixed positions or communist countries where nobody can move up the ladder. So, there isn’t a lot of sympathy for those who are lagging behind. That’s why our welfare programs lag other developed countries. We’re the only advanced country without universal healthcare.
Foreign scholars marvel at the lack of compassion shown to the poor in America. Sandel points out that because of the invisible belief in the myth of meritocracy, those on top tell themselves that their success was their own doing, a measure of their merit, and those who lost out have no one to blame but themselves.
So, your success or failure shows your effort, your character, your worth, but not everyone has equal chance to rise. The truth is, America has fallen BEHIND Europe in terms of upward mobility. Let me repeat that, America is NOT the land of opportunity it used to be, even old Europe is better than here. Even England, which has the reputation of stuffy class fixtures, is better than here.
Almost 50% less people in the bottom fifth get to move up here than in Europe. The average pay of a CEO here is over 300 times more than that of the average worker. The top 1% own almost half of all wealth in America. The divide between the winners and the laggards in our country has never been bigger.
Sandel says children born to poor families tend to stay poor when they grow up and rich people are able to pass their advantages on to their kids. For example, there are more students at Ivy League colleges from the top one percent than from the entire bottom half of the country. There are numerous structural obstacles to moving upward in our country.
So to believe it’s all up to each individual, to believe people who are poor have only themselves to blame, to believe “I deserve all my success. I did it all.” That’s not true. There are built-in advantages to those on top. More than that, this invisible belief is profoundly anti-Christian. The Bible tells us:
1 Corinthians 12:12-27
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether the Bible believer or the secular, slave or free, rich or poor—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
Isn’t this a great passage? We are ALL part of one body. We ALL need each other. Everyone belongs, Unconditionally, no matter who you are, you are important. The head cannot say to the foot, I’m better than you, because I’m at the top, I deserve 300 times better treatment than you. That’s not allowed for a Christian. Now why is that?
According to the American narrative, according to meritocracy, that’s how it should be. But that kind of mentality leads to terrible results for everyone. For those on top, it leads to a “rich in spirit” mindset and THAT will lead to damnation because that makes it impossible to accept UNconditional love of God.
If we’re all puffed up on our own success, our own merit, you are now eating from the knowledge of good and evil, worthy and unworthy based on some outward success.
That’s a fig leaf we’ve been talking about in our series. We will end up feeling worthy in our own eyes because we’re successful or beautiful or righteous. Those are coverings that make it impossible to accept the unconditional worth given to us by the Cross.
It’s one or the other.
It’s UNconditional or it’s based on some merit of yours. THIS is what decides whether you’re Christian or not, which will be the basis of your life? THIS one decision will decide whether you belong to the Kingdom of God or not.
This is why Jesus said: “How hard it is for those on top to enter the Kingdom of God!” Matthew 19:23
It is impossible to belong to God if we have all these “characteristics” that make us feel worthy, whether that be success, or righteousness, or Bible knowledge, doesn’t matter, because we will then base our identity on some characteristic of ours. THAT is the Original Sin that leads to exile from God. This is why Meritocracy is so dangerous. It’s not only bad for the rich, it’s bad for the poor too. Instead of feeling worthy inside which gives us the power to rise up, we will feel like we deserve the bad things happening to us. You can end up feeling abandoned, so you end up abandoning yourself. No. God has not abandoned you.
God is with us when we fail, God is with us even when we’re struggling. Jesus said, I will ALWAYS be with you. There’s God given dignity to each and every one of us.
Martin Luther King Junior said, there is as much dignity and necessity to a garbage picker as a doctor. Our society needs both. Just because a doctor makes more money, that does NOT make doctors more worthy. The eye and the hand and the foot, every part of our body is worthy and necessary, so too a society needs every kind of person. No one can stand alone. To believe otherwise does terrible things to our society, our life, together.
Michael Sandel says in “Tyranny of Merit.”:
“But the problem isn't only that we fail to live up to the meritocratic principles we proclaim. The ideal itself is flawed. It has a dark side. Meritocracy is corrosive of the common good. It leads to hubris among the winners and humiliation among those who lose out. It encourages the successful to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. And it leads them to look down on those less fortunate, less credentialed than themselves.”
“It is time for a moral, even spiritual, turning, questioning our meritocratic hubris. Do I morally deserve the talents that enable me to flourish? Is it my doing that I live in a society that prizes the talents I happen to have? Or is that my good luck? Insisting that my success is my due makes it hard to see myself in other people's shoes. Appreciating the role of luck in life can prompt a certain humility. There but for the accident of birth, or the grace of God, or the mystery of fate, go I.
This spirit of humility is the civic virtue we need now. It's the beginning of a way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart. It points us beyond the tyranny of merit to a less rancorous, more generous public life.”
I love it. Spirit of humility, we desperately need it now more than ever in the era of Trump. There is a disease in America rooted in Caste mentality. We need to repent. We need to repent of this mentality that it’s ALL up to the individual merit. If you’re successful, it’s a sign of God’s blessing. If you’re struggling, God is punishing you. This is a profoundly Anti-Christian belief. It leads to tyranny of merit, a fig leaf that stands against the message of the Gospel.
We ALL belong to ONE body. The poor and the rich, the straight and the LGBTQ, the black and the white, we are ALL ONE body in Christ, unconditionally valued and honored by God.
Repent and Believe in this Gospel, people. YOU are honored. YOU have dignity. YOU are valued. NO MATTER WHAT. If you can say yes to this invitation from God, so much of life can change. It can give you energy and resilience and hope and faith, even through the dark days of the valley of shadow of death.
During the pandemic, many of us are struggling. Life is not easy to begin with, and the pandemic has made conditions so much worse. During this time, it’s easy to think, “I’m failing, I deserve it. I alone am to blame.”
We MUST fight these thoughts of self-condemnation. We MUST take in the love of God that says you belong. You’re NOT alone. God is with you, no conditions attached, ALWAYS.
Believe in the Gospel, and the Spirit of God will come and fill up your heart and lift you up. Even now, even this week, you will feel the presence of God lifting you up. You will feel less anxious, more free, more hopeful. God can do this for you. You’re not alone. You belong. This is the Gospel that can change us, change our society, open up the door of heaven for us. Amen!
Now, some of you have noticed that I don’t give out as many practical suggestions on these YouTube videos. Not as much as before. That’s because I want to keep these videos short at under 20 minutes.And also because we have Zoom Sunday service discussions starting at 11:40 A.M.
That’s where practical applications get talked about, so please come to these discussions.
Good things are happening there, people ask questions, share personal stories, swap ideas.
We started doing this just a few weeks ago, so not many of us are participating right now. So. I would like to make a personal appeal to you all. Please come and say hi. Let’s stay connected while we wait for our church to be able to meet again in person. I hope to see you at 11:40 on Sundays!
Now, may God who can do all things, lift you up into the light of heaven today and this week and forever. Amen!
We’re looking at various belief systems throughout history that still have major influence today, and compare them to Agape Love. What difference would it make, if Agape Love was our foundational value as opposed to some other value, because as Christians, Agape Love SHOULD be the core foundational value, right? It’s been a great series so far, and today, I’d like to talk about the Tyranny of Meritocracy.
Merit can be another way to judge and rank people’s worth, and it’s an invisible belief that shapes so much of life and society in the U.S. merit based system. It sounds fair, no argument there. But even if it’s fair, if merit is used as a tool to judge the worth of a human being, it becomes yet another fig leaf, a fruit of knowledge of good and evil, worthy and unworthy. And THAT will lead to a whole host of problems, the Bible tells us from thousands of years ago.
And now? Secular scholars are noticing the dark side of meritocracy too. Michael Sandel is a famous scholar who specializes in justice in society, he’s a professor at Harvard. He wrote a book that’s getting a lot of buzz recently called, “Tyranny of Merit.” He points out that America is built on a merit based system, this is the “land of opportunity” after all. If you can’t make it here, well, that’s on you because here, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Never mind if you don’t have boots to begin with, doesn’t matter, this is the land of the free where you can move up if you just try hard enough.
It’s not like the old Europe with nobles and peasants in fixed positions or communist countries where nobody can move up the ladder. So, there isn’t a lot of sympathy for those who are lagging behind. That’s why our welfare programs lag other developed countries. We’re the only advanced country without universal healthcare.
Foreign scholars marvel at the lack of compassion shown to the poor in America. Sandel points out that because of the invisible belief in the myth of meritocracy, those on top tell themselves that their success was their own doing, a measure of their merit, and those who lost out have no one to blame but themselves.
So, your success or failure shows your effort, your character, your worth, but not everyone has equal chance to rise. The truth is, America has fallen BEHIND Europe in terms of upward mobility. Let me repeat that, America is NOT the land of opportunity it used to be, even old Europe is better than here. Even England, which has the reputation of stuffy class fixtures, is better than here.
Almost 50% less people in the bottom fifth get to move up here than in Europe. The average pay of a CEO here is over 300 times more than that of the average worker. The top 1% own almost half of all wealth in America. The divide between the winners and the laggards in our country has never been bigger.
Sandel says children born to poor families tend to stay poor when they grow up and rich people are able to pass their advantages on to their kids. For example, there are more students at Ivy League colleges from the top one percent than from the entire bottom half of the country. There are numerous structural obstacles to moving upward in our country.
So to believe it’s all up to each individual, to believe people who are poor have only themselves to blame, to believe “I deserve all my success. I did it all.” That’s not true. There are built-in advantages to those on top. More than that, this invisible belief is profoundly anti-Christian. The Bible tells us:
1 Corinthians 12:12-27
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether the Bible believer or the secular, slave or free, rich or poor—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
Isn’t this a great passage? We are ALL part of one body. We ALL need each other. Everyone belongs, Unconditionally, no matter who you are, you are important. The head cannot say to the foot, I’m better than you, because I’m at the top, I deserve 300 times better treatment than you. That’s not allowed for a Christian. Now why is that?
According to the American narrative, according to meritocracy, that’s how it should be. But that kind of mentality leads to terrible results for everyone. For those on top, it leads to a “rich in spirit” mindset and THAT will lead to damnation because that makes it impossible to accept UNconditional love of God.
If we’re all puffed up on our own success, our own merit, you are now eating from the knowledge of good and evil, worthy and unworthy based on some outward success.
That’s a fig leaf we’ve been talking about in our series. We will end up feeling worthy in our own eyes because we’re successful or beautiful or righteous. Those are coverings that make it impossible to accept the unconditional worth given to us by the Cross.
It’s one or the other.
It’s UNconditional or it’s based on some merit of yours. THIS is what decides whether you’re Christian or not, which will be the basis of your life? THIS one decision will decide whether you belong to the Kingdom of God or not.
This is why Jesus said: “How hard it is for those on top to enter the Kingdom of God!” Matthew 19:23
It is impossible to belong to God if we have all these “characteristics” that make us feel worthy, whether that be success, or righteousness, or Bible knowledge, doesn’t matter, because we will then base our identity on some characteristic of ours. THAT is the Original Sin that leads to exile from God. This is why Meritocracy is so dangerous. It’s not only bad for the rich, it’s bad for the poor too. Instead of feeling worthy inside which gives us the power to rise up, we will feel like we deserve the bad things happening to us. You can end up feeling abandoned, so you end up abandoning yourself. No. God has not abandoned you.
God is with us when we fail, God is with us even when we’re struggling. Jesus said, I will ALWAYS be with you. There’s God given dignity to each and every one of us.
Martin Luther King Junior said, there is as much dignity and necessity to a garbage picker as a doctor. Our society needs both. Just because a doctor makes more money, that does NOT make doctors more worthy. The eye and the hand and the foot, every part of our body is worthy and necessary, so too a society needs every kind of person. No one can stand alone. To believe otherwise does terrible things to our society, our life, together.
Michael Sandel says in “Tyranny of Merit.”:
“But the problem isn't only that we fail to live up to the meritocratic principles we proclaim. The ideal itself is flawed. It has a dark side. Meritocracy is corrosive of the common good. It leads to hubris among the winners and humiliation among those who lose out. It encourages the successful to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. And it leads them to look down on those less fortunate, less credentialed than themselves.”
“It is time for a moral, even spiritual, turning, questioning our meritocratic hubris. Do I morally deserve the talents that enable me to flourish? Is it my doing that I live in a society that prizes the talents I happen to have? Or is that my good luck? Insisting that my success is my due makes it hard to see myself in other people's shoes. Appreciating the role of luck in life can prompt a certain humility. There but for the accident of birth, or the grace of God, or the mystery of fate, go I.
This spirit of humility is the civic virtue we need now. It's the beginning of a way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart. It points us beyond the tyranny of merit to a less rancorous, more generous public life.”
I love it. Spirit of humility, we desperately need it now more than ever in the era of Trump. There is a disease in America rooted in Caste mentality. We need to repent. We need to repent of this mentality that it’s ALL up to the individual merit. If you’re successful, it’s a sign of God’s blessing. If you’re struggling, God is punishing you. This is a profoundly Anti-Christian belief. It leads to tyranny of merit, a fig leaf that stands against the message of the Gospel.
We ALL belong to ONE body. The poor and the rich, the straight and the LGBTQ, the black and the white, we are ALL ONE body in Christ, unconditionally valued and honored by God.
Repent and Believe in this Gospel, people. YOU are honored. YOU have dignity. YOU are valued. NO MATTER WHAT. If you can say yes to this invitation from God, so much of life can change. It can give you energy and resilience and hope and faith, even through the dark days of the valley of shadow of death.
During the pandemic, many of us are struggling. Life is not easy to begin with, and the pandemic has made conditions so much worse. During this time, it’s easy to think, “I’m failing, I deserve it. I alone am to blame.”
We MUST fight these thoughts of self-condemnation. We MUST take in the love of God that says you belong. You’re NOT alone. God is with you, no conditions attached, ALWAYS.
Believe in the Gospel, and the Spirit of God will come and fill up your heart and lift you up. Even now, even this week, you will feel the presence of God lifting you up. You will feel less anxious, more free, more hopeful. God can do this for you. You’re not alone. You belong. This is the Gospel that can change us, change our society, open up the door of heaven for us. Amen!
Now, some of you have noticed that I don’t give out as many practical suggestions on these YouTube videos. Not as much as before. That’s because I want to keep these videos short at under 20 minutes.And also because we have Zoom Sunday service discussions starting at 11:40 A.M.
That’s where practical applications get talked about, so please come to these discussions.
Good things are happening there, people ask questions, share personal stories, swap ideas.
We started doing this just a few weeks ago, so not many of us are participating right now. So. I would like to make a personal appeal to you all. Please come and say hi. Let’s stay connected while we wait for our church to be able to meet again in person. I hope to see you at 11:40 on Sundays!
Now, may God who can do all things, lift you up into the light of heaven today and this week and forever. Amen!