We all have a sense of justice. Often we only allow it to extend to our basic desire for personal justice - from the who-got-the-biggest-brownie rivalry of early childhood, to who deserves the last seat on the subway at the end of a busy work day. While sometimes trivial, this childish sense of outrage comes from a deep awareness that life isn't fair despite our intrinsic feeling that it should be.
The purpose of this blog is to investigate what it means to live justly. How can we make changes in our daily lives to consider the rights and needs of our global citizenry in an equitable manner? What are the ways in which we are creating injustice and how can we redeem these transactions?
While this is not intended to be an exclusively faith-based discussion, in the interest of full disclosure, it should be said that I am a politically left-leaning, theologically centrist Christian, and often I will draw from my interpretation of the Bible to investigate the central questions around living with justice. Rest assured that even if you are from a different faith, agnostic or are an evangelical atheist, there is still place in the discussion for you.
If you decide to follow this discussion, I hope you will be prepared to say and do courageous things to bring justice, peace and mercy to those around you. Let us begin:
Your alarm goes off at 7:00 am – much too early to be considered civilized, you think. Grumbling at the injustice of it all, you push down your 400-thread count cotton sheets, nearly knocking over the fresh flowers on your nightstand. You throw on a T-shirt and stumble into the kitchen where your reliable and beloved coffee maker has your morning brew all ready for you. You pour yourself a bowl of Rice Krispies and top it off with a banana – all part of your complete breakfast. Probably at no point in your morning meanderings have you considered where all of those things came from or who produced them. You probably didn’t think of a farmer in his sun-baked cotton field, a coffee picker in the sultry climes of a plantation or the harvester stooped in the lush greenery of a rice paddy. And yet, in those first few moments of your day, you have met with the potential to invest in six Fair Trade commodities.
Obviously there are many ways to be both just and unjust. Perhaps the issue dearest to my heart, however, is Fair Trade. While it isn't perfect, it is an attempt to address some of the key injustices in our global commodity chain. I have lots of thoughts on this, but I'm hoping that someone out there in the ether will tell me what they think about the above. Where do you feel you can engage with this? Where do you feel overwhelmed? How can we make it better?
I have to say that Fair Trade has never been an overwhelming concern of mine. I'm not an activist. I have only once "marched" in protest or picketing and that was against the "Adults Only" store that moved onto the corner where my kids crossed to go to school. I seldom get outraged at things, but anger is an important motivation behind seeking justice.
ReplyDeleteStill, there are things that bother me such as the widespread slavery that is rampant in many parts of the world but is also present a lot closer to home than we'd like to see. The fact that many of our Indian reservations are without plumbing is disturbing and the disconnect, disenfranchisement and despair of our urban aboriginal population needs serious attention.
There are cycles of injustice so embedded in our culture and endemic to the sinful condition of man that it seems impossible to bring change and yet change has occurred for some, like the ending of slavery of blacks in the United States.
I agree that we have an innate sense of justice but we often use unjust means to accomplish justice. I think of, as a child in charge of my younger sisters, the methods I used to make sure they did their fair share of what needed to be done. I was heavy-handed and anything but just.
When I look at the other side of the coin, I realise that in order to gain justice for others, I might need to accept injustice for myself. Jesus dying on the cross for us is an example of this. What happened to him was anything but just and fair.
I am rambling, thinking out loud about the whole issue of justice and how I connect to it. I have subscribed to your blog and will be reading it. I'm looking forward to what you have to say.
I've been thinking about fair trade when it comes to groceries, and I marvel at how exotic my tastes are (chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, bananas, olive oil, etc., etc.) It bothers me that I cannot actually imagine my life without these things. It would be far more environmentally sound to subsist on what can be responsibly cultivated nearby, but my imagination falters and I picture myself subsisting on turnips throughout the winter months.
ReplyDeleteKermo! Long time no see! It's good to "see" you.
ReplyDeleteThere is a man who has been living on potatoes only for 60 days this fall to prove that it can be done. When Mikael was living on his own and had little money, he would go across the river to a little grocery store that sold 50 lbs. of potatoes for about $8. He found creative ways to prepare them. Subsisting on turnips all winter sounds a little more drear than what our ancestors had--even those who had no ready access to imported goods.
Maybe its the International Studies majors that bind us but these things are things I think of every single day. I have gone through cycle after cycle of only buying organic, of buying fair whenever possible and then my grocery budget creeps up to 800+ dollars and I am forced to make a decision. A decision that makes me sick every time.
ReplyDeleteI live in no fairytale of where those sheets, flowers, coffee or bananas come from. And to Debbie's comment I think that human slavery is the issue at stake here. Much of what we enjoy at a low price in North America is on the backs of modern day slaves in the developing world (and one could argue that modern farming in the US can resemble this, as farmers are forced to comply with big corporation and small wages or go under).
However, I am no saint. To make the choice to live the way that is deep in my soul would require a drastic change in life. For one, I work in Oil and Gas, for two, the cost of evaluating every item you buy is huge. In order to feed my family alone would mean drastically cutting other aspects of life. Something that is not easily done, especially if your spouse does not share your "extreme" views. And it does come at another cost. At the end of the day, we live on a tight budget and though we could always make up some of the cost differnce the overall difference comes at the cost of giving to others, and I am not sure that is always worth the trade-off.
After spending many years beating myself up about how I help to continue this unjust system I have come to the conclusion that all I can do is hope/pray that God speaks and I listen. I buy locally when its not a huge difference, we buy a half of an organic/grass fed cow every year and I try to buy used clothes etc. In recent years, God has told me that it is more important that I spend my time/money/effort on addressing those around me so now instead of organic veggies we often eat Costco but the difference is spent loving people. Either way its an injustice being met I suppose.
P.S It's being okay with baby steps that I suck with :)
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