Dives and the Digital Divide

The Federal Communications Commission will vote on a new program aimed at repurposing $2 billion to expand Internet access in poor communities. Republican members of the Commission have expressed opposition to the plan which another FCC Commissioner calls a response to “the homework gap.”

The digital divide. Homework gaps. Eternal chasms. Whatever the metaphor, income inequality is not just about partisan positioning. It’s about the lives of real people, in this case children. Like Lazarus, they lie at the gate of Dives, or trying to concentrate on a crowded school bus for an hour and a half every morning and every night, “longing to satisfy their hunger” for the opportunity to learn, to compete, to succeed. There are those “dressed in purple and fine linen and who feast sumptuously every day” who seem very content to have this great income chasm “fixed” (not repaired, but made permanent) in this world, oblivious or indifferent to Lazarus at the gate. Even the sight of children on the sidewalk slowly sucking connectivity through the walls of their school at night seems to make little impact. Pious thought of these children one day embraced by Abraham in eternity is its own sacrilege if that is what comforts callous Dives. Let us attend, however, to the rest of the tale. Income divides lead to moral chasms that can never be undone. And yes, those divides are not just metaphors, but judgments.

[Rev. Thomas, the former General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, is now a professor and administrator at the Chicago Theological Seminary]