How western culture has defined Christian love; or How we're greedy, selfish and loveless

This post is a confession.  It's also a challenge; to myself and to others.  If you're a Christian and you read this and you disagree with it then please tell me.

I have a bent toward social justice.  It started a few years ago and has been increasing as I've considered whether or not Jesus could possibly be pleased with the way I live in and view the world.  I've also become increasingly frustrated with churches I attend as they seem to operate blind to the needs of the poor in this world. 

A few weeks ago I spoke to the congregations of my church about purchasing Fair Trade chocolate easter eggs.  The idea was that my wife would order eggs for people to use as their easter eggs and we would have them delivered to is and pass them on to those who ordered. 
To say that the congregation's response to the offer was disappointing would be an understatement.  2 people took up the offer without me badgering them later.

The reason I care about the response to the easter eggs has nothing to do with the fact that people didn't buy easter eggs from me.  Some people just don't buy easter eggs and that's fine.  It's the people who do buy them and will just go to the shops at easter time and get whatever they want who bother me.  Their choice shows no discernment or forethought.
The fact of the matter is that much of the chocolate available today is farmed by boys who have been either kidnapped or sold into slavery to work in another country.  The are treated poorly, they are not paid a wage and they are denied access to their families, to education, to health care and the things that we would call basic human rights. It's impossible to know what chocolate is made from slave farmed cocoa, but we know that most companies deliberately know nothing about where their beans come from so that they can maintain plausible deniability.  Since the market price of cocoa is so low, the only farmers who survive to make a iving are those who are willing to use slave labour and pay very low wages to their other workers.  This means, then, that most chocolate farmed is farmed by means which, if we saw them happening in Australia, we would stop them.  Fair Trade is not a perfect system, but it seeks to apply measures of accountability to the farmers they buy from whilst paying them a price for the beans that means they can reasonably meet the expectations (no slave labour, reasonable wages, no forced overtime, regular days off of work, etc.)
That workers are being treated poorly in this industry isn't something that has just come to light; we've known about it for a long time.  The question is, then, should Christians care?  And if they do, does buying chocolate that we can reasonably assume is the product of slave labour make us culpable?  Obviously my opinion is yes, we should care, and yes, participation comes with culpability.

James 5:1-5 seems pertinent here:
Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

This passage should be written on the walls of every Australian Christian's house.  We are rich.  When we participate in a system that we know oppresses others, we become oppressors ourselves.  To say this displeases Jesus is putting it too weakly.  When James says woe to these rich oppressors, it's not a slap on the wrist, he's calling God's full wrath down on them.  When we participate in the purchase of chocolate, coffee, clothing, rugs, cotton, and whatever else comes at the cost of slaves and fair treatment of workers, and we have even the slightest inkling that the people who produced it may be being treated so, we ourselves become complicit in the act and we displease our God whose children are suffering for the sake of our wallets.


Another situation in my church recently also bothers me.  We have come into some money in our church and the Parish Council decided to put the money aside for a children's worker and a youth worker.  Some of it has also been given away to ministry to Aboriginal people in the Shoalhaven, which the Sydney diocese has seen fit not to fund any more.  Due to recent circumstances God has been gracious enough to provide us with people willing to oversee the children's ministry without being paid to do so.  We also already have faithful people working in these ministries to make sure that the kids in our community hear about and are invited to trust in Jesus.  So we don't need to continue looking for a children's worker.  So then, what do we do with the money that we had set aside for a worker?  We could use it for another worker to do something else, we could use it for building maintenance, we could save it, we could give it away, we could do any number of things with it.  Let's say, though, that the congregation decides to give it away (as unlikely as that is).  What should it go to?  What's best?  Here, in the culture of the Sydney Anglican Church, the answer seems obvious.  If you choose to give money away, you give it to the preaching of the gospel.  Any person's greatest need is to know Jesus, so until that need is met, all other needs are secondary.  This sounds good, and it's usually the option we go with.  It seems biblical to put eternal salvation ahead of worldly comfort, even if it means that some die sooner of preventable diseases.  And to an extent I agree.  Only I don't actually live like that.  No one does.  And it's not biblical.  So we have to stop reasoning like that.

The reason I say that none of us live like that is that in our own homes we don't give up the basic necessities of life for the sake of the gospel being preached.  Nor do we ask the rest of our families to, be they the family that lives in our house, or our extended family.  No, we provide for their needs first, and then far beyond their needs.  Then, usually, we take stock of what we have left and, maybe, give a little away.  But we have high expectations of that little we give away and don't want to see it wasted.  After all, it doesn't go that far.

Then, on a Sunday, we have the gall to call each other brothers and sisters in Christ.  We say that our Christan family is our most real family and the bond that binds us is stronger even than blood.   This is true, but we live as if it isn't.  We justify watching our brothers and sisters perish due to starvation by saying that the most important ministries are Word ministries and that the preaching of the gospel is paramount.  But this isn't how the early church operated.  They were so generous with each other that no one was in need.  Indeed, in the whole Roman empire the emperor Julian, wanting to eradicate Christianity spoke of the difficulty of doing so when Christians put everyone else to shame with their generosity by looking after their own poor and the Empire's poor.  When plagues ripped through Europe, it was regularly Christians who would say and care for the sick at great persona risk.  Sometimes bishops commanded their parishes to do so, and under strong, compassionate leadership they reduced the death toll considerably in some areas.  They didn't abandon the area so that more Christians could live to preach the gospel, they gave material aid at the cost of their lives and no one would dare say they did wrong.

Today about 30,000 people will die of starvation related illnesses.  None of them are in our blood families, and we are busy in church building new buildings, employing more people, sponsoring Christians to give up their jobs and go to preach in already Christian countries.  And yet lots of those suffering are in our family.  Our real, eternal family.  They share with us the same brother who gave up his life so that we might know him.  I know that I am part of the problem.  I'm greedy and selfish.  I give too little and keep too much.  I readily show that I love my wife and daughters and then I show that I am complacent toward my brothers and sisters in other countries who really need my help.

We need to understand that one day we have to meet Jesus face to face.  In Matthew 25 Jesus talks about the sorting of the sheep and the goats.  Those who lived compassionate lives are sheep and enter heaven.  Those who don't are goats and go to hell.  Either we believe Jesus that the mark of a true Christian is love, mercy and compassion, or we dismiss his words and call him a liar because we are saved by grace and we can do nothing to lose our assured position.

Then, after we've met Jesus we have to meet our brothers and sisters.  Our true brothers and sisters.  And I'd hate to think that I should have to embrace men and women as brothers and sisters who had suffered and died needlessly in this world and I had done nothing to help them.  We are the rich man in Lazarus and the rich man.  We have the word and we ignore it while Lazarus dies at our gate while we debate how to build better buildings, employ more people and facilitate more people giving up their jobs to go overseas and preach to the converted.

We can afford to give more.  Our churches can afford to give more.  I am extremely confident that of the money I put in the plate at church, not one cent of it goes to feeding the poor.  This is a travesty and it goes against everything that is suggested in the model of the early church.  This is a call, to myself above all, for communal generosity.  Our lord gave us everything he had.  He praised the woman who gave everything she had and saved nothing for herself.  We don't even get close to that, but want to be considered faithful.  We talk about God wanting us to enjoy good things as though the good things God's given us are money and stuff and not relationships and creation.  And when we say that we say that God doesn't want our poor brothers and sisters to enjoy good things, only us because we don't share what we get, we are too busy enjoying it.  We, as collective churches in Australia are greedy, selfish, loveless and faithless.

So what are we going to do about it?