Save Money, Live Better

A little while ago, I took a group of students to Wal-Mart, because that's where they wanted to go. It's not my first choice of store, and I have heard many things about their unethical practices. While I was there I bought a pair of pants, and I'm sitting here and wearing them and feeling very guilty.

Wal-Mart's new logo and theme right now, found in all of its advertising, is this:


Ouch. What they are really saying is, live better by making other people live worse. Or, let's make the gap between the rich and poor even greater. My guilt is not simply about my decision to support a bad, bad company. It is on a much broader scale, and it is likely that you share my sin:

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you. - James 5

Wal-Mart's new logo flaunts the sin of our two nations. We save money so that we can live in greater luxury and self-indulgence. How do we do that? By finding ways of producing goods more cheaply. How do Wal-Mart and many other retailers manage that? The cost of materials doesn't usually go down, so they reduce the cost of making the products. That is, the workers make less money. They live worse so we can live better.

Here's how it works: Wal-Mart finds vendors willing to negotiate a lower price to produce their brand. But their "clear policy" is that the price must decrease year after year, so the vendor has to find ways of producing it cheaper every year, or Wal-Mart drops them like a hot potato. That usually first means moving production to a third world country, where labour is less expensive. But then it means finding workers willing to earn less and less, in worse and worse conditions. It is like what Pharoah did to the Israelites when he forced them to produce the same number of bricks without supplying any more straw. In Canada, Wal-Mart has actually closed stores whose workers tried to unionize for fairer pay and more reasonable working conditions.

We're fattening ourselves for a day of slaughter.

Think of that next time you see a price roll-back.

So, what am I saying?

In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul provides some basic financial principles that cut across the grain of Western capitalism. He wants the church to understand the importance of giving to the fund he is collecting to help the church in Judea through a famine. His principles are the kind of thing that would make a socialist smile and the typical American nervous:

Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: "He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little."

Would he say the same thing to us? Maybe, but I know for sure that Wal-Mart's new logo would make him puke. His principle is pretty clear: Work toward economic equality and fairness.

It is sad that the church seems so far behind in the practice of fair trade (like we were with recycling, conservation and respect for copyright). Fair Trade should have been our campaign, because it is surely a vehicle for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Stores like Mountain Equipment Co-op - which is as secular as you can get - have been doing this for thirty years, while many Jesus-followers still have never considered why the deals are so good at their favorite stores.

The tough thing is knowing what to do about inequality and injustice in our world. It is so huge, and though perhaps some of you may one day do something huge in response to the problem, what the average individual might do can seem so insignificant. Kinda like voting in a federal (or provincial) election. Who is there to vote for? What difference will it make? Our difficulty is that none of the parties are so very bad, or so very good, to motivate us to vote. But what if there were just two parties, one clearly corrupt, and one just and fair. Would that motivate us to vote?

Every time we shop, we vote.

Every time we shop with a company that has corrupt principles, we "vote" for corrupt practices. Really, we probably could pay a little more and shop with a company that demonstrates greater integrity and fairness, and it would not take that much extra effort. By doing so, we would "vote" for fairer trade and support movements toward equality.

I am such a newbie when it comes to knowing where to shop ethically, and thus where to vote. I welcome all suggestions - provided that you can back up your claim with credible (not Wikipedia) references. And as always, I welcome your comments and helpful criticism.

What do you think about spending more money and letting someone else live better?

PS - For an interesting take on this issue, check out The Story of Stuff With Annie Leonard.

On Leaving and Following

Is there a difference between being a Christian and being a disciple of Jesus? I suppose it depends on who is using those terms. If a Christian is a word used to describe a person, or an organization, church, book, song or bobblehead, then I think there is a very great difference between a Christian and a disciple of Jesus. I have seen many such people and objects who describe themselves as Christian, what they do and what they stand for, and to me the evidence confirms that they have never been disciples of Jesus.

I have discussed before this curious word "Christian," first coined by the citizens of Antioch to give a name to these disciples of Jesus the Christ: "The suffix ('ianos' in Greek) was widely used as the termination of the name of a person belonging as a slave to the household of that name." Whether the crowds meant it kindly or not, neither Paul nor Jesus' own half-brother James were ashamed to call themselves slaves of the household of Christ. If that is what "Christian" means, the term is much closer to what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

A disciple, to put it most plainly, is a follower. The message of Jesus' Gospel was all about this: "Come, follow me."

Jesus' teaching about discipleship always contains two sides of a coin: On the one side, leave everything; on the other, come follow. You can't get away from it. "The time has come, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" Repenting has that same two-sided coin - you leave one path and take another, you sell all and follow, you leave everyone and pursue God. Even the concept of believing demands a change of loyalties, a change of thinking; in order to believe in Jesus there are many things in which you must stop believing. You cannot grasp the one without letting go of the other.

Perhaps that is why people who become followers of Jesus do so at their own pace. In Paul's story, it seems instantaneous: one moment he is killing believers and the next he is one. Others seem to take longer, as God patiently pries their fingers off the things that are killing them and fulfills their longings with the stuff of heaven.

Following isn't natural to most of us. The person ahead of you seldom goes exactly where you want to go. The driver simply will take that right-hand turn while you in the back seat know it should have been a left. This is a struggle for the human heart, which wants control. To follow means letting go of the indignant objection, the "but just a moment, I...," the deep-rooted desire to have our own way.

To follow Jesus requires faith. You don't know where he will take you, if it will be easy or hard or warm or cold or pleasant or painful. No guarantees on those quarters. As Mr Beaver said, "Safe? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the King, I tell you." To follow Jesus requires faith in him; not in what he might do, but in he himself. In his person, his character, his holiness, righteousness, purity, his love.

So you start to let go of your personal values - the list of things that are very important to you - and take up his. Wealth becomes meaningless; stewardship everything. Some, who love their family above all, have to leave their family to follow him; others must let go of their selfish ambitions and be restored to their family. Changing your values can be very disruptive, very confusing to those who knew you before. "They are surprised that you do not join them in their reckless, wild living, and they heap abuse on you." Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

So you find you no longer believe in the principles by which you once made every decision, and you put your full weight on his. Love your enemies, and do good to those who spitefully use you. Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. What God has joined together, let no one separate.

So you begin to give up trying to provide for yourself and you let him provide for you on this journey of following him. Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.

So you change inside so that you love what he loves, and hate what he hates. You feel his compassion, his anger, his indignation. You see your sin the way he sees it, not dressed up and Photoshopped the way the world does it. You think his thoughts after him. You simply let go of all that stuff that once mattered to you and chase after what matters to him, come what may. It is reckless abandon.

And somehow, in all that, you don't lose who you are. You maybe lose who you want to be, or what others want you to be, but not who you really, really are. If I leave all and fully follow Jesus, I become more me than I have ever been in all my fifty years, unique as a snowflake yet so much like the One I am following that I get embarrassingly mistaken for him. Which I am not, but I will be like him. Someday. Someday.

So I guess the question is whether "Christian" is something by which the world describes you, or if you are someone who describes who "Christ" is to the world. Seems to me that this is what it means to be his disciple.