Good news for the poor?
The third in a series of opinion pieces about issues facing rural communities and their churches
I wondered as I read Gus MacDonald’s article ‘Suspension of disbelief’ (Issue 45) whether there is a deeper issue to be explored about why we live the sorts of lives that we live. We are faced with choices all the time, and the more information we have, the more difficult it appears to be to make them. If there is any doubt that we should be changing our lifestyles, then I’m sure that most of us would want to hold on to that doubt.
What would Jesus have made of the nature of the debate about global warming? There were debates around in his day, not obviously about science, but debates which took people’s eye off the ball, so to speak. Debates which deflected attention away from the more fundamental issue: that of values. Jesus seemed to have the knack of asking questions of people which challenged their values. Jesus lived with the marginalised rather than the powerful. He challenged the powerful because their lives denied the marginalised access to their basic needs, and exposed their values as not matching up to the values of the Kingdom of God.
So the question for us then becomes: What would be Jesus’ challenge to us in our globalised world? What are the values which underpin the decisions we make about our lifestyle? The rich countries (and particularly, the rich within the rich countries) enjoy the lifestyles of the powerful. Even those of us who might consider ourselves not part of a rich jetset still enjoy lifestyles incomparable to the majority of those on the planet. And just as Jesus challenged the law-makers and their
structures which took land away from the poor, leaving them to day labouring and destitution, so I wonder if Jesus challenges our structures: food production systems which rely on immigrant labour and poor wages, yet which are a function of our demand for cheap food; social expectations of cheap clothing which create indebtedness amongst cotton farmers in Asia, and rely on cheap labour in sweat shops around the world.
Jesus also challenged individuals to ask
questions about how their lives contributed to bolstering those structures which bore down on the weak and the poor (“go sell your possessions, and give to the poor”; “you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God…”). Perhaps we need to ask searching questions of ourselves, and find out whether we are contributing to bad news for the poor because of our lifestyles.
The overwhelming evidence is that the reality of global warming principally affects the poorest on the planet. We can’t escape from the fact that Jesus wants us to be good news for the poor, and that God loves the whole cosmos. The two are interrelated. If we live lives that are good news for the poor, we will also be good news for the planet. But it will require sharing, and living within the limits of our need and not our greed.
Jo Rathbone
Co-ordinator of Eco-Congregation
www.eco-congregation.org
18
www.arthurrankcentre.org.uk
rural issues
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