New Mexicans: Thirsty for Justice

I recently wrote an op-ed piece as an assignment for a class I am taking through Mars Hill Church in Seattle. That article can be seen here. The assignment was to interpret and comment on a particular aspect of culture from a Christian worldview. I have invited some of my friends from the Albuquerque portion of the class to share their papers as a guest post on this blog. I will be sharing some of their pieces over the next few weeks. As a side note, several of their papers deal specifically with Albuquerque culture. However, all of them have some great insights that are relevant and applicable to a variety of cultures. Enjoy!

New Mexicans: Thirsty for Justice

Justice in Albuquerque has a name.  When no one else seems to be willing or able to help the people, we call Larry Barker.  Minus the mask, cape and high-tech gadgetry, he’s the Batman for our own Gotham City, taking on corruption at the highest levels.  The mere mention of his name brings hope to the downtrodden and fear to wrongdoers. 

Barker’s reputation is not undeserved.  Over a 38-year career in broadcasting, his name has become synonymous with investigative reporting in the state.  Just in the past year, he’s uncovered illegal horse racing linked to Mexican drug cartels, life insurance paid for by the state that it’s employees rarely can collect, a NM law that gives licenses back to DWI repeat offenders who cause the majority of the state’s fatal car accidents, and numerous cases of wasted tax payer monies at the city and state level.  Year after year, Barker relentlessly speaks for those who find it difficult to speak for themselves…the ordinary people of New Mexico…and we love him for it.  All the tired, huddled masses need to say is, “Don’t make me call Larry Barker.”  You can even get T-shirts and bumper stickers to show your allegiance and put would-be wrongdoers on notice.

Barker’s popularity in the state made me curious about the history of investigative reporters, those journalistic dirt-diggers that President Theodore Roosevelt famously once called “muckrakers.” In doing so, the president was alluding to a character in John Bunyan’s seventeenth-century allegory Pilgrim’s Progress who could not be troubled to take up the journey to the celestial city because he was so focused on raking the “filth of the floor”.  Roosevelt meant it as an insult, but the muckrakers adopted the term as a badge of honor.

It turns out that our own muckraker, Barker, follows in the footsteps of a long line of journalists who thought it their duty to gather and boldly present facts that challenge authority and oppose the abuse of power on behalf of ordinary citizens. The decade of 1902 to 1912 is known by many as “the golden age of public service journalism.”  Government corruption, corporate wrongdoing and social injustice dominated the journalism of the day and the people loved every written word of it because there was someone who saw what wasn’t right and had the courage to stand up and say so.  The cause of right-ness or more religiously, righteousness, was claimed by the first muckrakers and embraced by their eager audience.  Lincoln Steffens, one of the most famous muckrakers during this time declared, “I was not the original muckraker.  The prophets of the Old Testament were before me.”  Always controversial and frequently persecuted by the powerful they seek to expose, the muckrakers do have a prophetic quality to them.  They are first and foremost proclaimers of the truth and defenders of an ideal form of government where the eyes of lady justice truly are blind and the guilty are always punished. 

But what is it within us that wants to see the powerful and corrupt brought down?  It seems that the rise of the muckrakers and their crusade to restore justice is built upon an objective sense of right and wrong, to which we all instinctively adhere.  It seems surprising in the 21^st century, the age of tolerance for so many things that were condemned by previous generations, that there still remains in us a moral outrage against certain actions that makes our blood boil in righteous indignation. 

However, rather than condemn Barker and his colleagues for their hubris to keep digging until they expose the corruption hidden within the corridors of power, we embrace them as folk heroes in the vein of Robin Hood or the Caped Crusaders of the comic books we all read as kids.  There is something in us that knows that right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter how often the evolutionary theorists try to tell us otherwise.  From earliest childhood we can see evil in others even if we are slow to confess it in ourselves.  It is human nature to cry out for justice when we are wronged or when we see others wronged who have neither the strength nor courage to make it right.  And therefore, we cheer our own Larry Barker when he gives a voice to those who would otherwise have not been heard. 

Maybe Steffen’s claim to be a modern-day prophet isn’t merely religious self-promotion.  Like the Old Testament prophets we read about in Sunday school, Muckrakers assume the worst, dig till they find it, and proclaim what was once in darkness from the rooftops.  But perhaps, the muckrakers should look to the Bible’s most famous prophetic voice for courage to face their most powerful opposition.  The language Jesus used against the political and religious elite of his day would make even Larry Barker blush. 

The “brood of vipers” and “white-washed tombs” of his day had failed the oppressed and marginalized masses living under the heavy hand of Rome, instead using spiritually exploitative practices to line their own pockets.  Not above overturning tables and driving out purveyors of corruption with a whip, the gospels paint a very different picture than the modern-day conception of Jesus as a good moral teacher, more fond of feeding the poor than opposing the powerful.  But that’s not how Jesus’ own mother described his ministry.  She proclaimed:

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.  He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.  He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)

Mary had the longings of all people who are oppressed and want someone to come and right the wrongs of this world.  She raised a reformer who, in true muckraker tradition, opposed the powerful and was persecuted for it, ultimately costing him his life after a mock trail and brutal public crucifixion.

New Mexico loves Larry Barker because we love justice.  Perhaps deep in our bones we are also longing for Mary’s son to proclaim a truth that won’t just expose the guilty but will free us from the evil that we know lurks within us as well.

______________________________________

Matt Kelley works as a corporate recruiter at Summit Electric Supply and is also a lay leader at Mars Hill Church at 4100 Sant Mateo NE in Albuquerque.