Jesus and Minimum Wage

So I guess today was the day that people around the country walked out of their jobs to protest in the #fightfor15 movement, which if you haven't figured out, is a movement to raise the minimum wage to $15. Now, according to Matt Walsh, people who work for minimum wage don't deserve to make $15.00 an hour, because flipping burgers or working a cash register doesn't require any sort of skill or education whatsoever, and their jobs just aren't important or valuable. But if you ask me, Matt Walsh is just an a-hole. Believe it or not, I actually used to really like him, but my feelings have changed over the past couple years  and I've gained a little more perspective than just the strictly conservative viewpoint. I don't know if he's changed or if I've changed or if we've both changed, but I do know that I no longer find his rants to be helpful or useful in any way, and I find that his utter lack of compassion is not quite the reflection of Jesus that he claims it to be.

But with that aside...it's not so much that I think we should raise the minimum wage, but rather that we should ask ourselves this important question: "Who are we to decide who 'deserves' to be paid a livable wage and who is not?" I mean, what are our criteria for deciding who should be able to pay their rent and utilities and car payments and any other bills that come their way? Is it only the college educated people, who probably already had the money to begin with, as evidenced by the fact that they were able to get in to college, pay for college, or even receive a loan to pay for college? Is it just the people with "important" jobs like doctors and dentists and teachers and lawyers? How about people with office jobs? Do they deserve a higher minimum wage? Or people with sales jobs? Nonprofit jobs? Retail jobs? Government jobs? What is our determining factor here? Where do we draw the line? Because honestly, the only criteria seems to be an education, and a person's work ethic seems to have absolutely no bearing whatsoever, even though we like to assume that minimum wage workers are lazy. For example, you could have a completely uneducated worker in the office who makes $9.00/hr and works harder than anyone else, and then you could have a man with a bachelor's degree making $20.00/hr who does virtually nothing, but according to most people the uneducated man doesn't deserve higher pay because, well, he doesn't have an education. Sure, he probably has tons of work experience, a good work ethic, and on-the-job training, but he doesn't have that degree, so he's just not as important. He doesn't deserve to be better able to care for his family.

And when it comes to fast food workers, who are we to say that they don't deserve to earn more money? Who are we to assume that they don't work hard? I have a sister-in-law who's spent the last 20 years working her butt off at Arby's just so she can care for her two kids. She's worked her way into a management position, but does she make as much money as she deserves? Absolutely not.

I think a year ago I would be right there with the Conservatives on this, shaking my head and talking about how utterly ridiculous it would be to raise the minimum wage, how undeserving minimum wage workers are. I probably would have kept on believing this had I not ended up working at Target this past summer after we first moved to Colorado, down one car, unable to find a job in my field, and desperate for money. At first, I considered myself entitled. "I have a Master's degree," I kept telling myself. "I deserve so much more than this." But you know what? I don't deserve more than a Target job. My education doesn't make me a better or more valuable worker to anyone, and I found that out real fast. Working at Target was one of the most difficult and physically exhausting jobs I've ever had, and the majority of people I worked with were really hard workers. They didn't get paid well and they didn't get the recognition they deserved, but they still did their job and did it well. The people who were the laziest....were the managers. Yup, that's right: the people with the college degrees. I found myself shocked when Target employees would do their grocery shopping after they got off work and then pay with their SNAP cards. I didn't understand how they could work so hard and still need government assistance, but I came to understand real fast once I figured out what my yearly salary would technically be, and what it would be like for me if I had to live off of that alone. It would have been virtually impossible to even pay our rent.

For the short time that I worked at Target I absolutely hated it. It was a crappy company to work for and they didn't really care about their employees, but looking back, I'm still thankful for my time there. Working retail while I was in college was one thing, but as an adult who was dependent on that tiny little paycheck it was an entirely different experience, a humbling experience, an eye-opening experience.

Maybe raising the minimum wage to $15.00 will really change the face of poverty, maybe it won't. Maybe $15.00 is too high and we need to compromise for less. Maybe it needs to stay the same. I don't know. But here's what I do know: We've got to stop telling people that they're livelihoods don't matter and that their jobs are unimportant. We've got to stop assuming that minimum wage workers don't care about their jobs and don't work hard at them. We've got to stop treating people like they're less because they don't have an education. We've got to stop telling people that they don't deserve a life free of the stress of living paycheck to paycheck, just trying to make ends meet, just because they haven't ever had the opportunity or advantage of a higher education. And we've got to stop pretending like the fast food workers and retail workers of the world are the only ones who think they're entitled to higher pay, because I think if those of us with a higher education and higher-paying jobs take a good long look in the mirror we'll realize that we too have that same entitlement. If you don't think so, try working at Target for a couple months. That entitlement will rear it's ugly head reeeeeaaaal fast.

I think the thing that frustrates me the most about the whole battle over minimum wage is that the very people who complain about their tax dollars going to assist people on welfare are the same ones dead set against those people dependent on government assistance receiving higher pay, which would actually wean them OFF of government assistance. So what exactly, then, is the solution that you propose? That the poor get a job? Because guess what, most of them have jobs. They just unfortunately don't pay enough money for them to afford the basic costs of living. So what, then? Should we just forever have food drives and never give them the dignity of being able to pay for food themselves? What, exactly, is your alternative solution? Or I guess the real question is, do you even care about a solution? Do you care about the poor, or would you prefer for them to be out of sight, out of mind? Would you prefer to go on believing that the poor deserve to be poor? That seems to be what most people prefer. After all, what could be more true than the welfare queen who uses her welfare money on TVs and expensive jewelry, who doesn't work even though she's perfectly capable, who is overwhelmingly lazy and the perfect example of someone who deserves to be poor. Never mind that this picture doesn't even remotely represent the majority of welfare recipients.

I won't pretend that I know what the perfect solution to poverty is, but I do know that the best way to find a solution is to stop making assumptions about the poor and start listening to those who are actually in poverty. Listen to their stories, their hardships, their successes. Try to understand the factors that are preventing them from success, and be willing to admit that perhaps sometimes we, the educated, middle-class, and rich are part of the problem. Be willing to serve them in ways that give them dignity, honor, and respect and to be a voice on their behalf when so many others are trying to silence them. This is what Jesus would do. He would not make his allegiance to a certain political or economic doctrine determine how he would treat people, but he would instead seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Our love for God and for our neighbors should shape our politics, not the other way around. And just as He would act on behalf of the poor, love them, listen to them, and serve them, so should we.

If you were to stop a homeless man on the street or a single mom in the grocery line paying with her SNAP card and ask them "how have Christians helped you?", let us hope that their answer is more than "they gave me a four year-old can of garbanzo beans in a food drive." Because if that's all we're doing for the poor, it's just not enough. We actually live in a country where we can use our voices and our positions to help protect the poor and give them a better life. So by God, let's stop blaming the poor and use what we've been given to give to others.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:3-8 ESV)

Hilary For President...Or Not.

So I guess Hilary Clinton announced she's running for President today. I can't say I'd be shocked if she won, but I would be disappointed. It baffles me that someone can have that much scandal tied to them and yet people STILL support them and think they'd make a good leader of an entire country, as if a person's character doesn't actually matter.

And no, I don't dislike her because she's a Democrat. I could care less about party lines. I'm not a Democrat and I'm definitely not a Republican. I'll vote for whoever I think would make the best leader, recognizing that in the end it probably doesn't matter anyways, because let's face it, they're all corrupt. That's how they got in to politics.  

But when it comes down to it, even though Hilary may be a very bad idea, it probably won't make a difference no matter who we vote for. Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green Party. None of them care about the people. They're in it for the power and the money, and they'll all keep getting what they want at our expense, and we'll keep showing up at the polls, pushing for a certain party, thinking that our votes are making a difference and making this country better when they're clearly not. Voting for a third party might be the lesser of two, well three, evils, but we'll probably never know what it would be like to have a third party president. People are too caught up in throwing their money at the Republicans and Democrats.

I no longer know what the point of this post is, and I have clearly reached the point of apathy when it comes to "political change." So I'll just leave this here...

Murder Board

Remember that time I posted about my addiction to Serial and told the world how badly I want a murder board, because, you know, that's a totally normal thing? Well, today I came home from work to find a GIANT box at our front door. At first I thought it was a T.V., which we totally do not need at all, but upon opening it we discovered that it was, in fact, A FREAKING MURDER BOARD. Well, cork board to be exact, but we knew it's intention. I seriously have the best friends. Thanks for the awesome surprise, Jen Jen! Soon...

Hidden God

I just finished reading Lauren Winner's book Still: Notes on a Mid-faith Crisis. Of course, the fact that it had the term "mid-faith crisis" in it is what caught my attention, because I don't think any other term could better describe where I'm at right now. There were many things she said that I found myself able to relate to, but I think the most profound thing is what she quoted a rabbi as saying during the Jewish holiday of Purim:

“All throughout Torah, we find people looking for God, and not finding God, because God doesn't often conform to our expectations. God is somewhere other than the place we think to look, and our sages show that you can respond to God's hiddenness in many different ways. You can, like the writer of Lamentations, respond to god's hiddenness by mourning. Or, like the writer of Ecclesiastes, instead of asking where the god you thought you were looking for had gone, ask what god is like now. Or you can respond to god's hiddenness by being like Esther: if God is hiding, then you must act on God's behalf. If you look around the world and wonder where God has gone, why God isn't intervening on behalf of just and righteous causes, your very wondering may be a nudge to work in God's stead.” 
― Lauren F. Winner, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis

Sometimes God is hidden. He is not recognizable in the same way that He used to be. You do not meet him in the same places that you used to go to meet Him. He does not speak through the same people or books or Bible verses that He used to. Somewhere along the way, your relationship with Him has changed and you realize you're not quite sure who He is anymore, but you're also not quite sure who you are anymore either. You have to get to know each other again, ask each other new questions, tell each other new stories, and be willing to experience what is uncomfortable and unexpected. It is a time to refocus and reevaluate your relationship and your purpose, and these same questions come up over and over and over: Where are you, God? What are you like now? Why aren't you intervening?

I of course don't know all of the answers to these questions. If I did, I wouldn't be in a mid-faith crisis, but I can trust that though God is hidden now, there will come a time when He will reveal Himself. Maybe it will happen a little at a time, maybe it will happen all at once, but He will reveal Himself. And in the meantime, He is still here. Listening to my frustrations. Healing my brokenness. Leading me in a long, seemingly never-ending journey of what it means to trust when my faith fails.

Nerding Out: SERIAL

So back in December we went home to Kansas for Christmas, and we thought, "Hey, we have 8 hours of driving on two different occasions...this is the perfect chance to listen to Serial!" So on the drive there, we listen to one episode and I'm already hooked, but Seth...he's not really into it. He doesn't want to listen to another episode, and he's the driver, so what he says goes. Plus, I think it makes him sleepy, and I prefer to not die in a car accident on I-70 because my husband fell asleep at the wheel because I was adamant about listening to a murder podcast. That's just not how I want to go out. So fast forward to a couple weeks ago when I decide that since I'm already listening to other podcasts as I get ready in the morning, it's time for me to start listening to Serial again, just on my own this time. I pick up on episode two, but don't finish it by the time it's time to leave, so I ask if we can finish it in the car, and he's okay with it. This is the first sign of hope. By the time we get to work, I have a slight inclination that he likes it. This suspicion is later confirmed when I get off of work, open the door to the car, and Seth immediately shoves his phone in my direction and yells "Serial!" No other words, just "Serial!"

Yessssssss. Since then we've been listening to it on our rides to and from work. We've been so obsessed that we were actually excited for the hour drive down to Aurora for Easter so that we could listen. When we got back from Aurora yesterday afternoon, we still had twenty minutes left in the very last episode by the time we pulled into our apartment parking lot, which is pretty much torture, and quite the dilemma. I mean, do we just awkwardly sit in our car in the parking lot for the next twenty minutes, do we go inside and listen, do we just wait until our car ride in the morning? Thankfully I didn't have to think about it for long, because as soon as he puts the car in park, Seth looks at the phone and then looks at me and shyly asks, "Do you want to drive around some more and listen?" Um, YES!!!

Now that we've finished, we're constantly theorizing about who did it and why, about things in the case that don't make sense or other things that are kind of fishy. We spent our entire lunch talking about it, and then our 2 year anniversary dinner (Yes, today is our 2 year anniversary) presenting all the new facts we each discovered throughout the day, because yes, we googled it. And not just any ol' google search with Reddit and Wikipedia sources. I mean, I'm a librarian, people. I know how to research. I'm talkin' lawyer blogs and original court transcripts. When I say nerding out, I mean NERDING OUT.

We joke about having a murder board in our guest room, like in Castle, with timelines and photos and red string everywhere. And by "joke about it" I mean, I "really, truly, do want to make a murder board." But I haven't admitted that to Seth yet. Plus, his best friend is visiting us this week, and it might be kind of awkward for there to be a murder board in the room where he's staying. We joke about starting a murder club, too, like in Gillian Flynn's book "Dark Places," where we all get together and pore over murder cases and try to solve crimes. I mean, I could totally solve murders as a hobby! Just maybe not as a job. Definitely not as a job.

So anyways, I thought that if I'm going to really nerd out about this like everyone else is, I might as well just share some of my theories. Not that they matter or that I even remotely have all the facts. Plus, I have completely lost track of which source says what, so you won't be getting a fancy "works cited," but hey, I might refer you to a couple places. And just a note, I'm pretty convinced at this point that Ahnan really is innocent, so none of my theories assume his guilt anymore. I'm thinking out of the box now. ;-)

Theory 1: Jay did it, and Jen knows more than she's letting on. The motive? He was cheating on Stephanie and Hae confronted him about it and threatened to tell her. At this point in his life, Stephanie was the best thing to ever happen to her, so when he realized he could lose her because of Hae, he snapped. Maybe he and Hae ran into each other during "the time frame," maybe they had arranged to meet. Maybe Hae wanted to buy some pot from him. Who knows? But what we do know is that Jay knows key details about the murder, and the entire case against Adnan hinged on the fact that Jay knew where Hae's car was dumped. He went back and forth on every other detail, but he knew where that car was. His story never completely matched with the cell phone records, and they only minutely began to line up after the detectives showed him the records. Even now, with his latest version, they don't completely line up. So what if all this time Jay is able to recount all of these details because it was him, not Adnon, who murdered Hae, and he's just changing the details as it's needed to exonerate himself. And Jen, Jen was the one who helped him dump the body, or at least get rid of his clothes as they both testified. There were a lot of calls between them that day, so it wouldn't be a stretch that she knows a lot more than she's pretending to.

Theory 2: Don, don don don. Don don don don doooooooon! I know the police ruled him out because he had a "solid alibi", according to their timeline, but I'm still not convinced it's as solid as it seems. First of all, his mom was his boss. Of course she vouched for him. What Mom wouldn't? And I don't doubt that he was at work until 6, not one bit. But somewhere along the way, someone left out Hae's friend's testimony that Hae told her she was going to go see Don after school that day. And let's not forget the note in Hae's car, to Don, that started "Sorry I couldn't stay..." Stay where? What are you referring to? Was she going to drive to the mall and leave the note on his car, referring to not staying over the night before? Did she go to the mall and actually see him there that day, and he failed to mention it so he wouldn't implicate himself? After all, he was way too quick to have a solid alibi. He said himself that he knew as soon as she was missing that as the boyfriend he'd need to have an alibi, the exact opposite of how Adnan reacted. And probably the exact opposite of how I would react. If my husband went missing, I'm not trying to come up with an alibi. I'm freaking out and trying to figure out where he is and what's happened. An alibi is the last thing on my mind, especially if I'm innocent. Also, this is a stretch, but I've seen on Reddit that there is a Don by the same name who graduated in 1995 whose father also happens to be a Baltimore cop. If that Don is the same Don, this opens a whooooooole new can of worms. I just think they dismissed the boyfriend far too quickly, and we just don't know enough information about him to be able to rule him out.

Theory 3: Dirty cops. Dirty lawyers. This isn't that much of a stretch. For example: this. It sadly isn't that uncommon for police officers to coerce a false confession, sometimes by a slip of the tongue with some key information, other times intentionally with threats of jail time...particularly where drug dealing is concerned. So maybe the cops have a lot of pressure on them to close the case and close it fast. Maybe they don't care so much about getting a true conviction and would settle for just a conviction. So when they start looking into Adnan and find Jay, he's like a gift from the gods. They tell him he can either serve the maximum sentence for dealing or testify what they tell him and serve no jail time at all. After all, it did work out quite nicely for him in the end, wouldn't you say? And not only were the cops dirty, so was the state's prosecution lawyer AND Jay's lawyer. As it's been touched on, it is completely unheard of for a prosecution lawyer to recommend a lawyer to a witness, and then have that witness's lawyer end up being conveniently pro-bono. At one point, Jay even approached the judge about withdrawing his plea bargain, claiming that his lawyer didn't seem to be working on his behalf, but rather the prosecution's. And in that meeting with the judge, where the prosecution lawyer opted out of his own presence there (which is the only instance which makes this meeting even legal, apparently), there is conveniently no record of what was said. This shady business should have been grounds for ANOTHER mistrial. And heck, let's not forget about the fact that once the cops honed in on Adnan as a suspect they just completely stopped pursuing any expulcatory evidence. Forget DNA, who needs that? We have Jay! And some cell phone towers!

I am more inclined to believe theory 3. Jay didn't do it, and neither did Adnan. The cops just wanted a closed case and they went for the easiest target. I've read about too many cases lately in which this exact scenario happens. The law isn't always just, nor honest. And honestly, every one keeps claiming that "Of course Adnon did it! How could anyone be that unlucky?!" But in reality, it's not a matter of luck, it's a matter of the law not doing its job honestly nor doing it well. The police did a bad job, literally everyone's  lawyer, including Adnon's, did a bad job. The judge did a bad job. The jury did a bad job. Even if Adnon really is guilty, he shouldn't have been convicted that day. There was too much reasonable doubt. There were a lot of missed leads and bad calls of judgement, and the real question in this case is, were they intentional?

So there ya have it, my OBSESSIVE theories. Are any of you as obsessed as I am? What are your theories? Have you thought these same things, too? And are you anxiously awaiting Adnan's appeals trial in June as much as I am??? Hurry up, June!!!

When Life Surprised Us...

It's been a year since I've posted anything, and I think there was a year between the post before that. I used to love blogging, but I think once it became a "thing" and everyone and their dog had a blog I kind of got a little insecure about it. After all, what can I say on here that eleventy billion other people haven't already said on their blogs, and probably said it better than I ever could? But nonetheless, there's also something therapeutic about blogging and I miss it dearly, so I've challenged myself to blog every day for the next month. Who knows what I'll end up blogging about, and who knows if anyone will actually read it, but I think it's something that I need to do just for me. After all, like I said...it's therapy. ;-)

So here's a very brief update on life...

2 years ago I quit my ministry to marry a youth pastor who worked at a different church, and so I got my dream library job instead. But 9 months into our marriage my husband unexpectedly lost his job, so we thought, "Well, let's move to Colorado." So we took a major leap of faith and Seth moved on the day of our one year anniversary, whereupon the very next day my car permanently died on the way to work. Super fun. He had his final interview at a Christian publishing company the day after he arrived in Colorado and found out at the end of the week that he got the job. Yahoo! He found us a super awesome apartment in Longmont, and a month later I moved me out here to join him. At the same time that I moved out here, my sister-in law also moved out here because she FINALLY got a pharmacist job in Colorado, which she'd been trying to get for months. I myself went on the library job hunt, but meanwhile my brother joined my sister-in-law here and we took our unemployed selves on many hikes and lived it up in the wilderness while we could. Unfortunately, I couldn't even get a library interview, so I ended up working at Target for a few months, which was absolutely miserable. I kind of hate Target now. But THEN, a miracle happened and I got a job at the exact same Christian publishing company where my husband works! Since we are down to one car still, it's absolutely perfect. We save on gas and are able to ride to and from work together, with our work schedules within an hour of each other. It's also just a really great place to work. So now we are just getting back on our feet again. We've found an awesome church and became part of an awesome small group. We're making friends, getting outdoors, and really loving living in this amazingly beautiful state. We, of course, miss our family and friends back in Kansas constantly, but given the way things have worked out so perfectly with this move, we have no doubt that right now, this is exactly where we're supposed to be. What's next, who knows? We're just praying this will be a time of putting down some new roots, getting our finances stabilized, and learning to trust God in a whole new way.

So that's it. Life as we now know it. Life tends to have a way of surprising us again and again, doesn't it? And while the anxiety-ridden part of me hates all of the fear and lack of control in those surprises, the adventurer in me loves it and eventually appreciates it. Here's to many more adventures!