It takes 510 pounds of corn to make 13 gallons of ethanol—that amount could "feed a child in Zambia or Mexico for a year," while it fuels your car only for a week! -Recent report from United Nations Special Investigator Jean Ziegler.
This is a piece of the misinformation that fuels the eco vs oil debate. I am sure if the issues surrounding "farming subsidies" were fully expounded, we would see a waste of not only corn and other goods but horrendous amounts of money. The inequality of the rich vs the poor is an issue that once you start pulling on the threads...you personally end up naked. Ignorance becomes safer, because if we dare see the truth, we all are going to be held accountable to the truth. The truth that millions of people died on our watch in the world.
We have become the people of James 5:1-6:
“Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure! Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabbath. You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and put to death the righteous man; he does not resist you.”
These verses are frightening in their prophetic accuracy. But most of us will not truly wrestle with how to repent after reading them. What really will we do? In the end we most often turn the page, overwhelmed by the amount of suffering in the world and our prosperity. We live in guilt or callousness. The digital age has made us too aware and in our awareness we find ourselves lame and paralyzed. We see in the mirror of God’s words and our world...a chronically, unsatisfied consumer. We are living luxuriously and wantonly, compared to the majority of the world....but “so what” we say.
We brush our teeth and leave the water running....water that some would kill for.
We scrape away whole portions of unused food....that could save lives.
We flush urine...that some people are forced to drink.
We wear clothes...made through the sweat of unjust labor practices.
We have closets full of unworn clothes....while others walk naked.
We are fat in our over-indulgences....while others are trying to hide their protruding bony bodies.
We sit in comfortable homes....while most are too cold, too hot, dangerously exposed or in hiding.
In the end....what will we say?
I really do not know.
Maybe that is why I hope so desperately on grace, because I know that I’m a pudgy, diamond-studded collar wearing, caviar nibbling, rust colored....goat, ready for slaughter.
(Photo by Christopher Martin, lifted from my dad's site)
2 comments:
This post should ring in all our ears. Certainly it rings in the ears and comes out of the mouths of the poets you have posted lately. There is outrage in this world and the deeper and farther you look the greater the horror. It is too much to take, even in small doses. But that can not be the end, it must be broken down to pieces small enough that we each can do, want to do, our part. If there is a message in the Bible, it is the message we are each to love in some practical way, reaching the masses or reaching but one. Regardless whether we have 10 talents or but one, the issue boils down to whether we have the driving desire to see injustice stopped, poverty eliminated, wars cease, oppression broken, those in despair comforted, the down trodden lifted up; in other words, do we love? If our love of Christ can be lived out in Bible studies, theological debates, scriptural accuracy, ushering and tithing, we may not have the true love of God in us. These things are a means to an end, not the whole. If we have our hearts pricked with pictures and we do not bleed, we may be following cunningly devised fables. There is a sickness in our world and Christ’s church is the remedy; we must be roused to some kind of action, some display of compassion or can the love of God truly be in us? All that we do will not be enough; so if we do nothing what will we say to Him who asks how our lamps lacked oil, when there was so much need of light?
Will angry poets cry louder than Christ’s church of love? May it never be.
Love Dad
i am watching the film the 11th hour right now...
i can't believe how much of a wasteful, greedy country we live in...
just sad.......
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