The Anti-Manichaeist

I unfortunately temporarily(and perhaps permanently) misplaced my glasses when I was in Pridniprosky this weekend. I was going to wrestle some of the local youth and took off my glasses and then got going on some other games and did not put them back on and later that night I could not find them, as well as the next day, yesterday. And so I spent yesterday picking cherries, mainly. It was relaxing activity and something I was pretty good at as I’m taller than most Ukrainians and like pulling down those really high branches that are very much ladened with cherries.

Ukraine is amazing in the fertility of its soil. Most people are poor here when you measure their incomes in dollars, but they have a lot of local natural assets that are undervalued because of the difficulty of shipping local produce abroad and they are primarily for local consumption, keeping people alive. But they are blessed with much local fruit. I earlier had the blessing of working at one of the gardens of my family here and I started off with picking mulberries, a very remunerative work, and later helped to pull some weeds in their garden where they grow the potatoes they eat so often(I recently introduced them to ketchup as the condiment of choice for fried potatoes and hamburgers, but they use it on pretty much anything including mashed potatoes and spaghetti.) and grass to feed to the rabbits they raise for personal consumption.

I am now in Kiev. I am comparing Kiev to Mexico City in my mind. I think it is very clear that there are many advantages in Kiev over Mexico City. It has not suffered from a longstanding policy of courting extensive migration from the rest of the country. It, and Ukraine in general, does not have as serious of a population problem and generally has a higher level of education. I got a chance to see a “high school” graduation the past weekend. The age level was fifteen, but that is still a pretty high level of education relative to many poorer countries. The music was a crude imitation of western music with ukrainian/russian lyrics. Though, I’m told that since the OR, there has been better Ukrainian music, as people in general have become more patriotic and their musicians have found better things to sing about besides their latest relationship or what not.

I probably have seen mainly the better part of Kiev, but I only really saw the better part of Mexico City. I have to confess I avoided the not-so-great part of Mexico city like a plague/tourist. Yet, Mexico City is such an enormous city that the nice looking part of it is pretty big and one can take a safe airport taxi to that part and avoid the rest of the city for the most part if you want.

I asked my friend if they had any problems with taxi drivers kidnapping passengers in Ukraine, like there is a problem in Mexico. He said there is no such thing, so it seems that the level of corruption(a prerequisite to have a thriving taxi-kidnapping business) is nowhere as serious in Ukraine as it is in Mexico. In Mexico, the police get paid very little and they have to buy their own bullets and so corruption is pretty much a necessity. I am told that when they had Rudy Giuliani come to visit in Mexico, they pretty much had him just repeat a large number of reforms they had been advocating for quite some time and the groups of very rich mexicans paid for his visit. It seems that some people are willing to listen to foreign celebrities, but not the local people who understand the system and how things can be made better. I guess there is always resistance to change in all bureacratic systems and an external shock to the system usually is needed to make serious change happen.

But as a Christian, I think it is wrong to leave such change to the haphazard whims of history. We should be able to internalize the need for ongoing reforms. I’ve been thinking some about how one could help to make more changes happen in Ukraine. I think one thing churches could do here is come out publicly in declaring that it is a sin to decide who you are going to vote for based on a bribe. This is very common and widely accepted and so it will take a serious theological argument to counter it, but such sort of behavioral change is needed both in Ukraine and Mexico(where you only get paid a torta rather than 4 dollars for your vote) for further political changes to be made possible.

I think the theological base will have to be that the essence of the law is for us to love God and Neighbor with how we act politically being an essential part of how we love our Neighbor. For we may not all called to be extensively involved in politics( or political bloggers) but we are called to participate in ways we have been blessed with, such as with the right to vote. As such, to decide the vote based on a bribe is a sin, because you only care about yourself and mammon and not your neighbor.
One can use some promises of reasonable benefits for your household as a criterion for deciding whom to vote for, but these benefits should be determined officially by legislation and mandate people to support intermediary organizations to hold politicians accountable for their promises. When people only care about their immediate bribe/torta, they are not compelled ethically also to participate somehow in the ongoing debates within various intermediary institutions. They do not participate in the process of determining whose interests are going to be protected by the gov’t and, not surprisingly, their own interests are often given the shaft as a result.
But this sort of argument will probably need to be championed by the protestants in Ukraine first, as, unfortunately, many of the Orthodox/Catholics have the view that one can “sin” and then light a candle to repent for such a sin. But to sin and repent as such does not exhibit much love for one’s neighbor. But maybe if this catches on, they will be forced to take a stand. I don’t know, but I think that is one way that Churches here in Ukraine can foster more political change without getting too close and cozy with any political party.

dlw