When you are furious with them and all you really want to do is rant and rave and pound them into itty bitty little ... *sigh*
Not the source, but a definite and frightening and angering symptom...
It's been a long time since I've been so angry... a long time since I felt like someone was attacking the very core of me. It doesn't have to be someone I know. But this goes way beyond me... 'Me' is too small. 'Me' is too petty. This is much much bigger than me. He, and sadly many others, is not attacking me. He's attacking a representation of real people with real problems... people who really are starving because we, in our wealth, are unwilling to pay a few more cents to a dirt-poor farmer - literally, because the land he is farming is wasting away due to ignorant farming practices or being stolen from him by multi-national free trade cooperations. People who really are oppressed by our government... be it militarily... Colombia (present), the whole of Latin America (past)... economically... an influence that expands beyond just Latin America, but whose brunt is felt there because of it's geographical proximity to the United States... politically... who really is the oppressor and who is really being oppressed?, how can you say democracy is light and purity and socialism is darkness and wickedness or inferiority? Tell me, what has democracy, in it's "pure" form, brought these people? Our "pure democracy" isn't pure at all, but a mask for capitalistic advancement to our glory and to our ends. It does nothing to aid them. Why should they love it? Why wouldn't they rather choose democratic socialism, a democracy that, at least in word, is for people, not for sums of money and economic gain... Sorry. I'll step down off my political soapbox... (I'm a communist at heart... though my love for communism isn't based on a system designed by the Bolsheviks or by the foursome of Fidel Castro, his brother Raul Castro, Che Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos - for all of you who were dieing to know that Castro didn't lead the revolution by himself. grins Couldn't help myself. My love of communism is based first and foremost, despite how alluring the ideology of communism as we know it can be, on that found in the Bible - Acts 2:42-47. The intimacy of community, of sharing a common life with one another, of bringing the rich lower and raising the poor out of the dust is too... too beautiful a thing for me to dismiss altogether. I can't through the baby out with the bathwater, if that makes better sense. Acts...
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
This I can't help but love. So you'll have to forgive my communist heart, and love me anyway, and maybe (if you have strong feelings again everything communistic) we can help each other see the world with different eyes...
And that brings me to another point of disgust and anger.
Where, in that whole article is love? All I saw was hatred and bigotry, an ignorant fuming of racial and economic prejudice. This is why the world hates Christ. If this is all the world is seeing?? no wonder! Christ showed the least patience with those who misrepresented him and to the Pharisees, whose love extended no farther than their own greedy hearts. This puts "fearing the Lord" in a new perspective... one which causes me to examine myself and my representation of him. What are people seeing when they see me?
Has the author of this article, and any people who might be following his ill-based lead, forgotten that God, the God of heaven and earth, our Creator, is the God of the POOR and the MARGINALIZED and the OUTCASTS, not a God who caters to the rich and powerful, to those who have their world nicely ordered to their liking and benefit????? Do you believe anything in the Bible??? Are you aware of anything that Jesus Christ taught and did in his 3 years of ministry before he was crucified??? Take for example, these words Jesus spoke to his disciples (Luke 6:20-26):
...Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.
But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.
Wore to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.
And if you happen to have any doubt in Jesus' words and how he walked and how he calls each of us to walk, then take a look at the Old Testament and how God reacted to those who oppressed the weak and stole from the poor to add to their wealth. Did you ever think that maybe you were blessed with your good education and the wealth that you do have (because believe me, the simple fact that you are a citizen of the United States puts you at a much higher advantage than any of those "noble savages" or "peasants" of the Third World) so that you could in turn bless them with the blessings you have received by alleviating some of their sufferings??
and Fair Trade inferior?! The first lesson in writing such things is to do research beforehand to make sure what you're writing is able to be supported. This is NOT. Please demonstrate the inferiority of Fair Trade. And then allow me to give you a tour of coffee plantations and farms that are under this umbrella, and show you the positive environmental affects of good stewardship and farming practices, the increased profits of farmers who are then able to feed their wives and children, the dignity and pride restored in their lives so the men don't spend what little profit they do make elsewhere on liquor to drown their feelings of failure and inadequacy at not being able to meet the needs of their families, the families that are able to remain whole families because they don't have to send a father or older brother to the United States as an immigrant to work to get a higher wage to send back to their families so they can provide food and shelter for their families, the families (because entire families work, not just the father and mother) who are able to keep their good health because chemicals that are illegal in the U.S. but "overlooked" in the Third World which are causing cancer of the skin and stomach and asthma and other respiratory diseases and and skin diseases aren't being used in Fair Trade operations. And here is a very small list. Show me the inferiority of Fair Trade. Because I certainly don't see it.
I am trying hard not to judge you, I really am. I'm trying to look at my own misrepresentations of Jesus, of God. But in saying that, please do not call yourself a follower of Jesus Christ if you are not following him, if you have no idea of the life that he lived and calls us to live.
(p.s. thanks for your blog on this, Dan, I really appreciated it.)
3 comments:
rachel rachel rachel,
didn't your mother tell you never to argue with idiots? they'll drag you to their level and beat you with experience.
[grin] awesome post. first time i have seen you angry. i just read mr. carman's blog, hence the comment above.
dearest Rachel,
If you run for President of the United States, I will finally wish to vote.
preach it sista friend.
That article makes me want to vomit on any number of levels. Let's ennumerate them, shall we?
1.) The victim mentality of the whole damned thing. Oh, I'm sorry, you poor poor little private Christian college student living in an extraordinarily well off suburb in upstate New Your who owns his own vehicle. Your life must be so difficult. I bet sometimes you go to bed hungry at night because, well gosh darn it, you just couldn't afford food today. It's so sad that your life is so so difficult.
2.) The raging stereotypes.
3.) The fair trade slam. Fair trade is, as you say, better both for growers and for the environment. And the coffee quality and the roasting is excellant. In taste tests no one can tell the difference between fair trade and other high end whole bean coffees.
4.) The ridiculous use of quotations. Guess what? A quotation marking sarcasm doesn't hide the obvious prejudice behind the comment.
5.) The hypocrisy of the "questionable cause" concern. It seems to me that the authors major concern is economic, not moral. If it were moral, why slam fair trade? AND if your concerns really are about question able cause, are you boycotting Sam's Club/Walmart? How about Nike? What about any of the other producers that the watch dog organization again and again identify as using unfair labor practices?
6.) The statement that Houghton students don't have a choice. My friend, you ALWAYS have a choice. You think gas is too high? Ride you bike. Trust me, there are always ways to work it out, if you are will to bend and make sacrifices. You have no idea what it means to not have a choice.
It makes my heart rage to hear this kid go on and on about how rough life is and how he doesn't have a choice while he puts down and cooperates in a system that holds down the majority of the world, raping them of resources, dignity, and true choices.
People wonder why Christianity so often seem irrelevant in the world. And it's because so often we are so consumed with righteous indignation that any of OUR comforts might be compromised to be worried about people who actually know suffering.
Glad to hear an intelligant response to a boldly ignorant article.
PS - Communism is gold on paper. I whole heartedly agree. And I hope and believe that if Jesus walked today, this would be a case were the temple tables would be knocked over and we would hear him say that we have turned his house into a den of robbers.
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