It’s so much easier to focus on the speck in my brother’s eye. Especially when it’s a big one that hurts me, personally.
But what about the plank in my own?
My husband and I are currently, and have been for years, struggling financially. Now that my husband has said “enough is enough!” to working for little, and then no pay, we find ourselves stuck in limbo-land, between the past we have left behind, and the future we may not yet embrace. In this situation, it is all too easy to blame the other guy, to see ourselves as the victims.
But today, I wised up. Okay, so we haven’t been paid since the beginning of November. And we haven’t been paid enough to be comfortable for the past aeon, and not enough to pay our bills since July. So, things have gotten ugly between us and our creditors.
BUT! We still have over $400 in the bank to cover the automatic payments of January. Our mortgage, utilities and food are paid up. While our children may not be eating their favorite foods, and may be just plain tired of beans, they are eating a balanced, healthy (generally even organic) diet. They never go to bed hungry, unless they refuse to eat.
And today, my toddler was sick, so I stayed home from church with the “babies” of the family. And as I listened to my Bible DVD while I rocked them to sleep this morning.
I heard this:
“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:3-5
I looked around my comfortable house, and considered just how often I have compromised my “do not support slavery/worker abuse” stance with my purchases. Although most of our belongings HAVE been purchased with ethics in mind, not all have.
After all, I DO have 6 children that we raise on one income. And we do “need” stuff, right? But, do we?
How much do we really need? And if I refused to buy cheap products, produced by workers who are either starving children, themselves, or the parents of starving children, how would that really change my household?
You see, I’ve learned the last month that I can certainly “not” spend.
By necessity, I am learning to do without.
But, oh, what a hypocrite am I! Because when I have had the means to buy, I have not always made the ethical choice. And worse: I knew exactly what I was doing, and I did it anyway. And our seasons of “slavery” or “sweatshop” pay have been nothing compared to the woman who must listen to her babies cry themselves to sleep every night, as they slowly die of malnutrition. You know, the woman who assembled my daughter’s dresses? And as I turn away from the speck in my brother’s eye, of which he appears to be unaware, I am overwhelmed at the size of the plank in my own.
And so, in a year in which I had resolved not to resolve, I now must. 2009 will be the year that, no matter how “able” I am financially, I will not purchase anything without considering where, how and by whom it was made. I know that, in some cases, this will make my purchases more expensive. I know that there’s no way we could ever make enough money to make this an easy task. I no longer care. We will buy used; we will make for ourselves; we will do without; we will break down and buy the expensive thing. My children will grow up in a home where we live our convictions, not only when it’s easy, or convenient.
Having faced the situation for some years, now, I know what it’s like for people to work, and save and scrimp, and just keep falling more and more behind. How can I profit from another’s suffering?
We are free from the threat of slavery for us and our children. Will we also set our own slaves free? Rest assured, if a slave is making our garbage bags, clothes, food, etc., we are a slave-holders by proxy. In my mind, this is worse than traditional slavery, where we would have, at the least, known how our slaves were fed, and clothed, and housed. Slavery is alive and well, and more brutal than ever before. In so far as God enables me, I will no longer take part in it.
Subscribe
