5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?
James 2:5-7
I have been to another country in where the faiths of those Christians I have come in contact with have blown me away. The depth of their relationship with their savior far surpassed mine and in fact at times left me feeling like I was the one lacking. Yet when I read these verses I am led to blogs I have read previously this week. See them here.
http://aidwatchers.com/2011/02/in-zambia-pittsburgh-won/
http://aidwatchers.com/2011/02/world-vision-responds-to-blogger-questions/
See a lot of people here are ripping on World Vision for sending these shirts to Zambia, but my struggle is not really about sending the shirts and if it is really right in the economics and all the others here. Instead it is with why do we even have all these excess shirts in the first place. It is our culture that is creating this but hardly anyone is talking about that fact. We need a shirt that says congrats Champs Packers or Steelers within 5 seconds of the end of the game? This confuses me beyond belief. Now I am not picking on this situation alone and I am just as guilty as the next. Why? Well, I buy rotisserie chicken once and a while and now that I know more I feel this is just as bad. This may seem like a stretch but let me explain.
A couple of weeks ago while in a local grocery store I saw 24 Rotisserie chickens going straight to the garbage can at 4:30pm. I couldn't believe my eyes. These chickens have a shelf life and I understand that there maybe some health risks but really 24 chickens, with all the people in the world that can't put a meal on the table I just watched at a minimum 24 meals going straight to the dump. The numbers get even worse if you take that and multiply that by the number of stores in the local area. Lets just say 50 stores at 20 chickens that is over 100 meals wasted in just a part of one day. The numbers are staggering.
I struggle that it as my need for an instant gratification (a meal in this case) is so great. Just because I am rich in the terms of this world I can afford to go and buy a champion t-shirt the next morning or a Chicken that I can drive home and put on my table fully cooked to eat that very moment. While others can't even afford to buy a meal for their table or a shirt for their back. Can this be the exploitation of the poor? Now this maybe a stretch, but I am just using this to put a little thought into the way I live my life from day to day as I definitely have a lot of growing to do in my life.
