Today we took our little girl to a birthday party. Towards the end of the party I was watching the little kids as the host parents handed out the “loot bags”, which are little “take away” bags with small toys and snacks .
As parents we know there is ONE cardinal rule when it comes to receiving loot bags. For those of you who are parents to be, learn this rule well: DO NOT, under any circumstances, allow your child to see what’s in other kid’s loot bags. Grab it, say thank you, and head out to the car. Do not stop, do not linger, do not look back. (Look what happened to Lot’s wife!)
You see, here is the problem. The world will be very simple if the host parents simply hand out identical loot bags to every child. “One lollipop for you, one lollipop for you, one for you…” BUT in an effort to demonstrate that “personal touch”, parents these days often arrange for “personalized loot bags”. That’s fine, except that when the kids get to see and compare loot bags, human nature takes over:
“Why does he gets the cool Buzz Lightyear action figure when I only get a frisbee? I don’t like frisbees!”
“How come she gets the pink bag?”
“Awww…I want that one instead…”
I was thinking about this in church on Sunday. It occured to me that the same “why-can’t-I-have-what-he’s-got” question has some serious global implications. For so long, we have lived in world of extreme economic injustice. With the internet and global communications technologies, we can now see with our own eyes on the TV’s in our kitchens the devastation of poverty and hunger in the poor nations, where every second a child dies from hunger related illnesses.
Meanwhile half way around the world…
A father whose child is dying because he cannot get the most basic medical care looks on the TV in the hospital. He sees the abundance we enjoy in North America. And he asks, “why can’t my child have what they’ve got?”
I wonder…as a Christian, what should our voice be?
How do we justify the hundreds of millions we spend on ourselves in the form of church buildings, staff, facilities, programming, etc when children are starving to death?
We enjoy low priced products manufactured in countries with cheap labor costs. Most of us don’t even think about the labor practice of those countries until we start losing manufacturing jobs.
I wonder…when I hear Christians praying for “economic recovery”…what are we asking for? Are we really asking God to return us to a situation where we can continue to enjoy our own abundance built on the back of an economic system that is unjust and oppressive? A system where we can continue to enjoy the largest and best “loot bags”, while the children from the rest of the world look to us and ask “why can’t I have what they have?”
I wonder…why is it so difficult for us as Christians to develop a worldview that is global and holistic?
Just some thoughts from loot bagging….
Today I looked at the work of an award winning photographer who “specializes” in war photography. In one collection of images he captured the brutal execution of a government soldier in the midst of the conflict in Burma, home of the longest running civil war on the planet.
The man who carried out the execution was an 18 year old young man who had joined a guerrilla army that was waging war against the government. Listen to the way his (brief) life was described by the photographer:
“when he was 12 years old, Burmese government troops came into his village and killed his mother and father right in front of him… they then bashed him in the head with a rifle butt and left him for dead… the boy survived this ordeal, but suffered the loss of his right eye – and the loss of his childhood… by the time I photographed the executions, he was 18 and a member of a special commando unit… his superior officer told me that the young man often had to be restrained after an engagement with government troops, to keep him from sneaking back to the corpses and eating body parts… when he carried out the executions, it was unimaginably savage and shocking – much of the worst of it I did not capture on film… he was oblivious to the horror, lost in a haze of hate and revenge… each stab of the blade was a way to get back for the loss of his parents, his eye, his childhood… A few months later, this same young man – who had both endured and caused so much suffering, was dead at 18, killed in a clash with government troops…”
When I looked at the images, two thoughts came to mind: First, from a photographer’s eyes I felt as though the photographs gave voice to a person who had no voice, one whom the world had “left for dead”. It fueled my conviction that art is important, because it helps the world to see the unseen and hear the voices of the muted. Secondly, as a person of faith, I asked “Does the brand of “Christianity” we preach and practice make any sense in that dark corner of the world?” How do we take our favorite lenses of “Right” and “Wrong” and view what was going on in the images?
As Christians, we have been conditioned to shrug our shoulders and say “That’s a result of sin.” We have developed an eschatology that conveniently offloads our moral responsibilites in the present by saying, effectively, “God will fix everything one day“. We have built an entire religion on teaching people how to get to heaven one day in the future. But what about the present? What do we have to offer to the 18 year old commando, and others like him?
More and more, I have come to understand that the Bible looks at sin from a historical, generational, communal, macro and global perspective rather than simply as a list of thou-shalt-not-do’s. Again, from a photograher’s eyes, that means when I look at an image depicting the evils of the world, whether it is a brutal act of terrorism across the oceans or an episode of violence here on my streets, the question to ask is “Where is my hand in this?” I have learned that if we look carefully and thoughtfully enough, it’s always there. Perhaps that’s what Jesus meant when He said to those looking at the woman caught in sin: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
For those who are interested in seeing the work of the photographer mentioned, go to:
(Warning: some images contain graphic violence)
