Jotting #27 Poverty and Consumption

Prompt: How does a Christian ethicist approach problems of poverty and consumption?

My response: Injustices are an everyday part of life. Their commonplace causes a numbing to the fact that they are injustices. It is not necessarily that people are enjoy these injustices it is merely the fact that they don’t care enough to do anything about them. Unfortunately this reality is rampant throughout the United States. A famous quote by Edmund Burke warns of this indifference “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. Wallis, along with Gordon Brown recognize this as well. Brown eloquently states that it is no longer a lack of technology or information or expertise but a lock of “political will”.

Knowing that all I need to do is care more about something in order to affect change is a humbling fact. I am lacking nothing to begin bringing about change in the world. What is needed from me and my peers is an increased desire to cause that change. Wallis notes that what is needed may very well be a “moral imperative”. A moral imperative that convicts a generation to bring the issues of injustice to a tipping point.

There are many examples of people who, as Christian ethicists, are doing things to bring about change and justice to the world. Wallis goes through a couple of examples. One was of the Fair Trade movement, particularly in coffee. Chris Dearnley and John Sage the other is the 10000 villages shops started by Mennonites.

These may be extreme cases of people who have had extraordinary success at causing change on a big level. For some this may seem impossible to do. However, the changes will come when indifference is diminished, as Wallis puts it “it’s a matter of will”. Changes in politics don’t happen as a result of silence and indifference but from a large number of people speaking out. Reaching these numbers is possible and together we can “make possible . . . possible”.