christian pastors should pay their prostitutes.

If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people. – Marx

there is a girl i want you to meet…

her dilapidated face swallowed by wrinkles echoed with stories no one has time to hear. she participates in unethical acts to survive. and, you will only see her at night, on corners where lonely broken men come to find a moment of salvation from the guilt of being a lousy lover. for her, this isn’t some passing phase or some career choice – it’s a choice founded upon the fleeting promise of survival. her circumstances? you don’t want to know: it involves a father who beat and raped her and died too young hopped up on narcotics and a mother who drowns herself in a bottle because she thinks her story has already been told.

unethical, really? work is unethical? survival is evil?

ethics tend to be some set of social rules that is assumed everyone should agree upon (i.e., don’t steal, kill, or cheat on your spouse and etc.). the promise is that if everyone follows these normative laws that all will be well. and those that don’t will somehow be ostracized, marginalized, and rejected by the rest of ‘normal’ society. but that isn’t peace, that is a false sense of socialized equilibrium. baudrillard once stated that prisons existed only to show that we believe that the world is not a safe place to be in, but also that it demonstrated the false illusion of peace. because we need prisons, ethics (normative or globalized), laws, and structures, what is really being said underneath it all is that we don’t believe we have the ability to be human without these things. that we need all of these things to mediate for us. in that, is the confession that we don’t feel safe. that the others we are trying to stay away from, are monsters.

ethics should not be something we do to gain something from. i should not have to be a good employee so that, over time, i would get paid better. i should not have to help an old lady or pay a homeless guy so that god could love me more. i should not have to steal because other’s might not like me. if ethics (or morals) or based upon reception of a gift of some sort, than ethics will never be about the other. if ethics are based on a value system then people are the commodity, then what i do and don’t do will tell a bunch of others what i really think about them. if ethics are based upon value then ethics become about self-prostitution to a ‘pimp’ that has no grace.

so when christianity (as a system) endorses a specific kind of ethics and then speaks of a universal message for all, what is happening is a circle is being drawn around those who don’t have those specified ethics thereby rejecting the universal nature of the christ-message being claimed. and this isn’t about hypocrisy, we are all bad at that, this is about the singularity of their claim. i mean, christians (all across the board) have spoken/speak of caring for the poor or defending the weak, but the reality is when we do so under the guise of some social/spiritual penance we do nothing for the other (yes, even if we change their lives) because the intention erupted out of some socialize understanding based on a guilty law of ethics and rights that only serves the one following it.

so, that brings me to the ten commandments.

historically speaking, this was a document that symbolized a contract between god and the hebrew nomads (i.e., not the rest of humanity). what the hebrew people did was to make god their own. there are no concession on god’s part (the verse where it says ‘i will be your god and you will be my people’ is a poetic device and symbol for that very line – the authors are speaking in place of the divine). when we totalize ethics and create a spiritual system of belief around but promise the message to be universal (for everyone) we participate in creating the very line that separates people from the divine.

when we judge a prostitute and state that what she does is wrong or morally corrupt, we draw that line. rather than pay her and actually help sustain a human life, we help draw the line that kills her. when we condemn another for not holding to the same way of life we do, just because we are passionate about our beliefs, we help imprison them through our beliefs. we box them in, and no matter how much they change, we keep them there. but, here’s the problem, when we pay the prostitute we also agree to the system in place. most prostitutes didn’t dream of becoming prostitutes, they didn’t sit in their childhood classrooms wishing to give their virginity away again and again. some of them want out. the issue here, then is not the prostitution, but our very own decision making. what systems are we going to continue to support? because, if we agree with the current crisis of capitalism well, then you should pay your local prostitutes. you really should. if you don’t, then this article, has nothing to do with prostitution and more about gathering people who believe in a fragmented heaven on earth. no, not perfect (in the idealistic sense), but different, a place where we don’t have to draw lines and justify them by calling them ethics.

ethics are that which erupt out of us. that which compels us to be responsible for another, not choose for them, not judge them, but merely and meagerly love them. love, to me, is both violent and meager. it is about the other, but it is also about meagerly exhausting one’s self. i use meager not in the traditional sense, but rather to make the claim of non-value, that love cannot be a value of any kind that we either have to earn or even understand receive. meager violent love might be the thing we need to help make the world a better place.