"One effect of education and the media and the ideologies pertains in a special way to distribution: A general and unchallengeable conviction is created that those who do certain kinds of work ought to receive lower incomes and be content with lower levels of consumption than those who do other kinds of work. A classist society is thereby, in people's minds, canonized as something morally correct, as a situation demanded by justice. Although both ideas are equally false, this conviction should not be confused with the medieval belief that the son of a shoemaker should also be a shoemaker and the son of a prince should be a prince; sociologists call this situation a lack of capillarity or social mobility. Today one can indeed 'ascend' the classist ladder and it is even ideal to do so. The depravity to which I refer is the conviction apparently ineradicable although entirely mythological, that certain work is forever destined to receive low income and other work is 'in itself' worthy of greater remuneration. This conviction is one of the worst violences inflicted on the workers to force them, in the labor contract (and in its indispensable complement, the multiple contract of bargain and sale of consumer goods and services), to submit to the conditions which are favorable to the capitalist class."[Note: I have this book because I wanted to understand how some Christians can accommodate Marxist thinking into their theology, which is known as liberation theology.]
Miranda, José. (1974). Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression. (John Eagleson, Trans.). Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, p. 9.
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I have to backtrack some because I decided to look through the human rights report I wrote while living in Russia, and there is something I missed, so I'm just going to quote it here:
"Before I left for Vienna my Father told me that I might be requested to undergo a security briefing at his work. He had already told me that he had a security clearance through the Pentagon (not through Boeing, per se, as I understand it). I didn't think anything of this, that it was anything to worry about. Dad was always very supportive of me going into mission work. Nothing ever came of the possible briefing, but Dad did also mention that it was possible that in a communist country someone might try to kidnap me in exchange for information from Dad. (That was the only concern I ever heard about to this point.) I got the impression that everyone thought that I was trustworthy on that regard - although it wasn't until much later that I thought about it like that.So that fills in some gaps. I had forgotten that they didn't have the apartment for me right away and also about the part about dad. The part about dad, I think, is especially important because there will be some things that happen in Vienna that apart from influence from his work would be hard to understand... and things are hard enough to understand anyway.
Actually it never occurred to me till several years later that it was even possible for me to have problems on account of Dad's work. But after my Vienna years, back in Seattle, [D. B.] of Campus Crusade for Christ told me that many people whose parents are in military work aren't even allowed into East European Mission work. That certainly had never even crossed my mind as being a possibility. By that point I had lived through enough that it didn't matter. I had already decided that I had to obey God rather than man (i.e., government) and I felt called by God to work in those countries, especially the Soviet Union. No one had ever told me not to study Russian, work with emigrants, etc., anyways. I had already spent several years of my life in preparation for that kind of work and it was the primary professional training I had received.
I later had to study some about professional espionage workings in order to make sense of what was happening to me...
I left for Vienna via Holland and train from there in June of 1987. Sure enough I was put up with [the secretary from Alaska] in another girl's apartment (she lived alone because she was in women's ministry) who was in Dallas for the summer working on her Master's degree.
It quickly became clear that this was a very clickish [sic] group. It is quite contrary to any theory of Christian missions or Biblical example or teaching of the same to operate as they did...
Here I am going to unabashadly reveal what to these mission groups are great secrets. The purpose is to expose their unjustice since neither the churches in America or [sic] the Russia have proven themselves inclined to do anything about them which is how it should Biblically be handled. It's a shame and disgrace for 'the world' to have to be judges of the Church, but if the Church won't do it, then someone should.
I figured that since I was told I'd be a secretary and that I, in this position, probably wouldn't travel much (i.e., into Eastern Europe), that I would be able to work with/amongst the Austrians in my free time.
As it turned out, almost everyone except those who specialized in E. Germany and a few exceptions (such as.... ) attended one of two English speaking Evangelical churches and had little contact with the Austrians. Although one month of German language training was technically promised all this was rarely realized in fact. It seemed to me that as workers could be 'trusted' they were allowed this 'privilege,' but the stated reason was that there was too much work to do. However, this logic didn't really seem to match the circumstances a lot of times, as in my case.
I was 'allowed' to attend church with ... (that church was the nearest where I lived). I was accepted well by the believers and was invited to teach a Sunday School class, even in my early months in Vienna.
We "found" an apartment for me within walking distance of the ... office. It was a studio apartment which was already furnished. The owner, ... a young veterinarian attended the Vienna International Chapel and was a friend of some of the [mission] workers. A former [mission] worker... had also lived there a few months before I came."
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I think this is enough for this post, so next time we'll start where we left off, which is July 10, 1987.
