Author and documentary filmmaker Jamie Johnson, (yep, from the alpha-family who created all that baby shampoo), has made something of a career by talking about the world he knows best…the upper 1% of American society. Street cred and generations of trust funds aside, one of Johnson’s recent articles in Vanity Fair sheds new light upon the oil spill which has affected an already beleaguered Louisiana.
‘The situation in the Gulf Coast is truly tragic,’ he writes, ‘but you wouldn’t likely be seeing it if the wealthy Northeastern population lived there. The rich are able to protect themselves, while others are left undefended.’
This tale of two seaboards illustrates how ‘grace’, as defined by the world, often pays deference to Lazarus rather than Dives. Yet this is also why a Gospel which is no respecter of persons will always be relevant; not because it pours forth condemnation like the Law, but because it sheds atoning blood to stem the tide of guilt completely.
