Me or Us?

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Recently, I attended a reception for the new pastor of our little parish in Granger, IA. I was sitting at a table with fellow parishioners when the priest, who is from Ghana in West Africa and recently received a graduate degree in psychology from a Minnesota university, joined us.

Someone asked him whether he liked it in the U.S. As expected, he said he did, and to the relief of the people at the table, he said he felt welcomed and at home in his new parish.

“What I don’t like,” he added, “is American individualism. Many people have told me they don’t even know their neighbors. In Ghana, we are all very friendly with our neighbors and depend on them.”

Most of us haven’t given much thought to this “ism.” We may be concerned about consumerism, and some are concerned about socialism and even communism, but individualism? Many don’t even know what it means.

Oppose interference

“Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual,” according to Wikipedia. “Individualists … value independence and self-reliance and advocate interests of the individual … over the state or a social group, while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government.”

Unlike people in Ghana, most Americans are not keen on the idea of “depending on our neighbors.” People like me who grew up watching cowboy and World War II movies have no trouble understanding that.

The taming of the West required independent thinking and a willingness to take matters into one’s own hands. The war movies emphasized individual courage and initiative, even among soldiers who were bound by a chain of command.

From its beginning, America has been deeply uncomfortable with autocratic government and its intrusion into the private lives of citizens. An emphasis on individual rights has distinguished us from the oppressive and socialistic governments of other parts of the world.

But individualism is a problem for people searching for God, to say nothing of people who take seriously the Christian and Hebrew bibles. Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible, reminds people that we are “our brother’s keeper.”

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In the Christian Bible, Jesus told stories about the Good Samaritan and said that the criterion for entering his kingdom has nothing to do with how much we protect our individual rights but whether we feed the hungry, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and those in prison.

In my view, individualism has gotten way out of balance to our obligations to each other and to the common good. One politician has said that when you hear people talking about the common good, “reach for your pocketbook.” In other words, someone – likely the government - is going to ask you to be responsible for the well-being of someone else, and that’s “un-American” or “socialistic.”

Many of these politicians, and their followers, by the way, call themselves Christians. They obviously see no contradiction between their faith and their political philosophy, often justifying it by denying the role of the government – another way of saying “us” – in helping the poor.

That, in my mind, is a good example of exaggerated individualism and is incompatible with Christianity, Judaism and the search for God. We are, after all, not only individuals but members of society, including the broader society of humanity.

If you haven’t heard much about individualism, you’ll hear plenty about it when Pope Francis makes his appearance in the U.S. next month. I predict there will be a lot of squirming in Congress, as well as at the U.N.

What We Don’t Want to Hear

Like a Hebrew Bible prophet whose job it was to tell people what they didn’t want to hear, Pope Francis has courageously criticized the exaggerated individualism that results in the “idolatry of money,” and “an economy of exclusion.”

Regarding climate change, he has reminded us of our obligation to “our common home,” and has zeroed in on growing income inequality and how climate change has a disproportionate impact on the poor.

A recent America magazine article describes the pope’s message as lamenting “the poverty of the spirit in the rising sea of affluence” and the “globalization of indifference.”

None of this has won him friends, and greater pushback is surely in store. Indeed, a July Gallup poll found that the pope’s favorability rating among Americans has fallen from 76 percent to 59 percent since early last year.

No surprise there, judging by the growing popularity of politicians who preach the opposite. I don’t believe the pope is interested in popularity, though I’m sure he’s interested in being heard and in getting people to think.

People searching for God who place their political or social ideologies first, and cling to individualism, will have a harder time finding him/her because he/she is found, first of all, in others.

The new priest had a valuable insight. Perhaps a good, brief description of exaggerated individualism is, “It’s all about me, not us.”