Intentions vs functions: when a desire not to offend is insufficient and largely irrelevant

They say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Intentions matter for personal ethics, less so for social ethics. When we're considering a particular belief, act or behaviour pattern in an individual, then the conscious intentions held by the individual play a significant (though not exhaustive) role in the ethical evaluation of the belief, act or behaviour. If my six year old knocks her brother to the ground, the question of whether she accidentally struck him in the heat of a game or deliberately struck him in anger with a desire to hurt him is an important one.

But in the sphere of social ethics, where we are evaluating policies, cultural dynamics or systemic realities, then the beliefs, motives and intentions of particular agents fade into the distant background. Whether or not a policy was well-intentioned is largely irrelevant in comparison to how that policy actually functions. A slavery that the slavers conceive of as a form of enlightened benevolence is still slavery, and if the realities on the ground are no different, then it is no better or worse (for instance) than a slavery undertaken on the basis of explicit doctrines of racial subjugation (even if the two examples may lead to somewhat different strategies by emancipationists).

This distinction is crucial when it comes to social and political critique. When a policy or system is attacked, it will not do simply to point to the good nature of the policymakers, or the lack of enmity on the part of those in a privileged position. Such considerations may be important if the personal virtue of the individuals concerned is under discussion, but not for the policy, cultural dynamic or system.

President Obama may harbour no personal conscious anti-Muslim sentiment, but if the foreign policy of his administration includes support for dictators in Muslim-majority nations, the invasion of Muslim-majority nations, the extra-judicial killing of predominantly Muslims, the deliberate stoking of sectarian tensions to provoke intra-Muslim violence, and the upholding of an apartheid regime that oppresses mainly Muslims (for instance), then it may still be accurate to describe US foreign policy as significantly anti-Muslim in effect.

Tony Abbott may have a genuine concern for the plight of Australia's first peoples, but if his administration's policies included opposition to a treaty, the forced clearance of remote communities, the approval of mining licenses allowing for the destruction of sacred sites and degradation of indigenous land, the cutting of services to indigenous communities and the upholding of a colonialist narrative, then it may be still be accurate to describe the Abbott years as significantly anti-Aboriginal in effect. (And PM Turnbull may shed real tears as he speaks of the importance of upholding indigenous culture...)

The CEO of BP may have a genuine desire to see an orderly transition to a lower carbon economy in order to limit climate change in the most sensible low-cost way possible...

George Pell may have genuine compassion for the victims and survivors of institutional child abuse...
The CEO of Woolies may really want to see an end to problem gambling...

Premier Baird may lose sleep over the rates of domestic violence...

In short, the critique of bad policy needn't imply any criminal or otherwise deficient intent on the part of its crafters, nor is the upholding of their benevolence either necessary or particularly relevant in the evaluation of its effects. And this has implications not just for policymakers, but for all of us as we inhabit cultural spaces and social systems.

I may have strong commitment to fight racism, but if I am amongst the beneficiaries of a history of colonialism and white supremacy, I am not thereby immune from the need to check my privilege or at liberty to innocently assume race is irrelevant in my social interactions (nor do I get to put on blackface and claim that it's all good fun).

I may have a firm belief in the universality of human dignity and equality before God and an unswerving desire to honour women, but if I live in a society shot through with ongoing patriarchal logic, in which women are not in fact treated equally in all kinds of ways, then I do not get a free pass to (for instance) select an all-male discussion panel and hide behind a claim of meritocracy.

Wealthy capitalist philanthropists may have every good motive in wanting to alleviate poverty, but if their wealth accumulation was through a system that reduces labour and ecology to tradable value through the absolutising of instrumental reason and sacrifices lives and a liveable planet in pursuit of endless growth, then the people they may manage to save from capitalism's own ills do not thereby justify it.

In each case, the innocence of heart or otherwise of the agents is not what matters. What matters is the function of the system, policy or cultural norm in the lives of those affected by it. That is rarely straightforward. In each of the cases above, there are also positive functions. And so it is often a difficult responsibility to weigh the complex contributions of this or that cultural element, political agenda or economic model.

Indeed, part of the attraction of doing social or political evaluation through intentions is that we are all very familiar with the task of determining whether we believe an individual is trustworthy, a decent bloke/lady, a good egg, and so on. This is the attraction of working to put "good people in charge" and of all personality politics in which we obsess over the personal lives of elected representatives, and thus in which politicians are (generally) carefully stage managed to avoid perceived gaffes. But the temptation of such shortcuts must be resisted.

The good intentions behind bad policy make for might impressive pavement, but it's the destination that matters.

First World Problems

For the next time you're stuck with a First World Problem. H/T Matheson.

Confirmation bias: why I am suspicious of "good" news

The link between poverty and the dangers of our ecological predicament is an important one. Not only are those least responsible for causing the threat already (in general) suffering the early effects, they will (in general) be more vulnerable to worsening climate and ecological impacts. When we add in future generations and other species, then we have three groups who contribution is negligible or even zero but who are very likely to face the most severe effects. The temptation to motivated reasoning that justifies our present behaviours and cultural assumption needs to keep these groups firmly in mind if we are to assess our responsibilities honestly.

One important form of motivated reasoning in this context is confirmation bias, which is a well-established psychological pattern in which we evaluate new experiences and claims through our existing assumptions, preferences and convictions. We all tend to give greater weight to experiences and evidence that confirms what we already believe, rather than those things that disconfirm it, hence we all have a bias towards confirmation.

Particularly for those of us who are rich and comfortable (by global standards) or who hold a belief that we ought to be and/or can soon be, then we have a preference for things to stay as they are (more or less), or at least not to change too quickly. We don't want scientific results that imply doom and gloom to be true, particularly if they also imply our responsible for such outcomes and/or the possibility of mitigating the threat through modifying our habits and assumptions. We are likely to latch onto experiences and claims that help to confirm that preference and to pay less attention to experiences and claims that challenge it.

This is a moral temptation involving our perception of the world. If it is the case that gross injustices exist all around us, and that climate and ecological crises are very likely to contribute to exacerbating them in various ways, then we can be tempted to downplay the moral importance of this information. This might be by denying the science, by saying that we can't do anything about it, by saying that we should focus on a more narrowly defined set of moral concerns (e.g. purely national interest, or perhaps what is directly relevant for me and my family), by claiming that technology will rescue us from any bad consequences and so on. I would argue that part of Christian discipleship is learning to resist such temptations in order to keep having the horizon of our moral vision, to keep discovering that we are neighbours even to those who might not initially appear to be one of "us". The three groups I mentioned - the global poor, future generations and other species - each challenge us to expand the margins of our moral community, to discover neighbours we didn't realise we had. By focussing on what climate change and ecological degradation means and will mean for these groups, whose moral position is most devastatingly unfair, we can seek to foster a deeper and broader empathy and so nurture a richer moral imagination, capable of seeing more clearly the world through the eyes of others.

Asking "what's in it for me?" or "how am I threatened by climate change?" may, depending on one's ability and willingness to look carefully at the implications of the science, produce apathy, or fear and anxiety, or greed, opportunism and tokenism. But asking, "what are the implications for my neighbour, particularly those most vulnerable?" will lead in a very different direction, to a deep concern for others whose present and future flourishing is deeply dependent upon the choices we make yet whose ability to benefit us (at least in ways that generally enter into calculative reason of cost-benefit analyses) is severely limited.

In short, I believe that our climate and ecological crises are manifestations in the social and ecological realms of the visible and outward costs of the idolatry of consumerism and the hubris that sees humanity as exercising mastery over all things, rather than fulfilling the Genesis mandate in the pattern of Christ's rule: by being the servant of all. If this is true, then the temptation to read our predicament as something less than a spiritual crisis will be strong, since we don't like to confront evidence of our own moral failures. We want to believe that it is not as bad as all that, that the danger is still far off, that we are really helpless and bear no responsibility, that we'll find some techno-fix to ensure we don't need to look inside our hearts to see the pollution spreading within that is the root of the pollution without: the physical pollution we breathe and drink and eat and which is presently dissolving the bonds of the community of life.

Of course, it is possible that it is not as bad as all that, that the risk is less imminent than the science suggests, there we truly are impotent in the face of calamity, that a silver bullet (or silver buckshot) wonder technology (or suite of technologies and economic policies) will mean we can keep on going more or less as we are without challenging consumerism. But because we really *want* these things to be true, we ought to be especially suspicious of claims and experiences that encourage us to hold them, constantly testing whether we might be engaged in wishful thinking, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias. Instead, as Christians shaped by the knowledge that faithfulness means constant repentance (our daily bread is confession and reception of forgiveness as much as any wheat-based product), we ought to hold an epistemology that expects true knowledge of the world will frequently reveal us to be in the wrong and in need of repentance and forgiveness.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive account, and it is important to acknowledge that prior to fallenness comes divine blessing on human participation in naming and understanding a good world. I offer no council of epistemological despair or unending scepticism. The suspicion of which I speak serves a positive purpose in service of neighbour and represents a modulation of God's "yes" to the created order, not a displacement of it by a mistrustful "no".

Nonetheless, we walk in the path of one who warned that following him would mean denial of self and carrying a cross. Anything that suggests the path of faithfulness requires the defence of my material prosperity, ease and luxury needs to be double and triple checked. There is no route to resurrection that does not involve mortification.

I am therefore suspicious of pieces of "good news" that purport to minimise our responsibility or the gravity of our situation. Sometimes, they may well be true, but the good news is that following a crucified and risen Lord means being able to look at my and our failings honestly, confident in the knowledge that they are already forgiven, that I am already being empowered to walk a new path, one that is honest and life-giving.

Urban Farming

Some intriguing and inspiring footage from a group of twenty or so families deliberately moving to an area of social deprivation in order to rebuild community, dignity and hope. It also happens to be not far from where some our extended family live. You can find out more about their activities here or on Facebook.

One thought we had about considering such a model in, say, Sydney or Edinburgh, is that since property prices have not crashed in the same way (yet?), then finding a suitable package of affordable land might be considerably more difficult. This hasn't stopped one group trying to do something somewhat similar in the Sydney CBD.
H/T John.

Seven billion: too much of a good thing?

According to the best available estimates, the global human population reached seven billion individuals last Monday (give or take a few months) and continues to rise by about 10,000 each hour. We took all of human history to reach one billion around 1800. We then took a leisurely 120 odd years to reach two billion in about 1923. The third billion came in 1959 after 46 years; the fourth in 1974 after 15; the fifth in 1987 after 13 and the sixth in 1999 after 12. Since we've just taken another twelve to rise to seven billion, it may appear that human population is growing faster than ever before in history. In absolute terms, it is. The cause is not rising fertility but declining mortality. We are living longer and more are surviving childhood to raise children of their own. Yet in relative terms, we have passed our peak growth back in the 1970s. The annual rate of growth has been slowing since then as fertility rates are plummeting. Sixty years ago the average adult female gave birth to six children, now it is only two and a half. Yet sixty years ago the global average life expectancy was 48, now it is about 68, with infant mortality having declined by two thirds.

Longer, healthier lives; fewer tragic losses for parents; smaller families (largely reflecting more educated and affluent women, greater social security for the elderly and less manual labour): these are all good things. More human beings created in the image of God, more neighbours to love, more brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. This is a thing of wonder.

And yet, seven billion of us live on a single planet, with a single atmosphere, single ocean, and finite land area with limited supplies of fresh water, fertile soil and biodiverse ecosystem. Is it possible that we have too much of a good thing? For some people, this issue is "the elephant in the room" of ecological discussions (for some reason, this seems to nearly always be the phrase that is used). More mouths to feed means more food, means more land devoted to agriculture, means more forests cleared, more fertilisers disrupting the nitrogen cycle, more stress on water supplies, more trawlers scraping the bottom of the oceanic barrel, more rubbish, more carbon into the atmosphere and more demand on finite resources. We are invited to conduct a thought experiment in which every square metre of the surface of the planet contains a human: a ridiculous impossibility. So at what point do we reach too much of the wonderful thing known as homo sapiens? We love water, but too much is a destructive flood. Have we, in our enormously successful filling of the earth, now become a human inundation?

Such questions are always controversial, not least amongst Christians who (rightly) cherish children as gifts from a loving Father. But raising such questions in a simplistic manner can actually serve a dangerous hidden agenda. When you start crunching the numbers, the key figure in ecological degradation is not seven billion, since seven billion are not created equal (at least in terms of ecological impact). A single affluent Australian may have a total destructive impact on the planet that is more than one hundred or even a thousand times greater than a typical rural African. Taking carbon footprints as an example, the average US baby will be responsible for more carbon emissions in their first year of life than an average Ethiopian in their entire lifetime. The Bangladeshi with ten children may still have a far smaller drain on the planet's resources than a childless European businessman. And so, if we only look at population and ignore consumption, then the problem becomes Africa, where birth rates are highest.

Yet Africa contributes a relatively tiny share of the total demand on the earth's systems. In absolute terms and especially per capita, the developed world still bears the lion's share. Again, to pick a single statistic (which turns out to be reasonably representative of other metrics): globally, the wealthiest 11% contribute 50% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions while the poorest 50% contribute 11% (a surprising, but very memorable symmetry).

Therefore, the first issue is and must remain consumption, consumption, consumption, consumption, consumption. Or as Monbiot puts it, it's not sex, it's money. Too narrow a focus on population enables those of us who are wealthy to ignore the very real threat our lifestyles and economic system are to the planet and all its inhabitants. In some cases, a population obsession may even be a mask for xenophobic anti-immigration sentiments that have little to do with ecological concerns.

The much-feared "population bomb" is already being de-fused. As mentioned above, fertility rates have fallen rapidly across much of the globe to levels now only just above replacement (2.5 children per women; replacement is considered to be 2.1). While each billion has taken fewer years to add than the last, the rate of growth has been in decline for about four decades and the ongoing growth is largely the result of so many young people being born in the last few decades, giving the system a certain momentum. Where we end up is currently estimated to be around ten billion (give or take a billion or two, largely depending on how quickly African women receive access to adequate education and healthcare). As countries develop out of absolute poverty, first death rates decline, then birth rates, until population levels stabilise. This has been (or is currently) the experience of every nation thus far and is known as the "benign demographic transition". The demographic transition refers to the shift from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility. It is labelled benign because it means that human populations will not continue expanding exponentially like bacteria in a petri dish (another image much loved by certain demographic doomers).

What is less often noted is that the benign demographic transition assumes that the nations currently still experiencing high fertility rates will see them decline as their affluence increases. Thus, we avoid a population explosion though a consumption explosion. The benign demographic transition may not be so benign after all if the model of development used to bring it about assumes that everyone ought to be living like us.

I do think that "the more the merrier" is true, yet on a finite planet, I believe it most prudent to pursue this diachronically, not synchronically. That is, the way to welcome the most humans onto the planet is probably not to try to do so all at once, lest we exacerbate the damage we are presently doing to the globe's carrying capacity and so reduce the possibilities of future generations. In considering this damage, population is a secondary issue, yet it is an issue nonetheless. Since we still walk a path of high consumption and great inequality (and are likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future) then efforts to slow population growth sooner rather than later are one way of reducing the damage being done to the planetary conditions necessary for human flourishing. Of course, these efforts must remain subordinated to tackling over-consumption (which is the primary issue) and never be allowed to become an excuse to shift our own weighty responsibilities onto the poor.

Ultimately, it is possible to live a flourishing life not mired in stupid poverty without it costing the earth. A good life need not be a life of high consumption. The other alternatives are to abandon any notion of justice and expect the poor to stay poor, to institute draconian population controls or to abandon any attempt to pass on an earth anything like the present one to our children. Very significantly lower per capita consumption in the rich world is the only path that enables the simultaneous pursuit of both ecological responsibility and social justice for those living in absolute poverty in a world of seven billion and rising. Fortunately, it is also the path to greater joy.

God wants you to be healthy, wealthy and happy

How does God make our lives better? By calling us to poverty, persecution, fasting and the curiously patient "ineffectiveness" of prayer. How does God bring us joy? By teaching us to abandon false hopes, to mourn and groan and yearn for his kingdom. How does God bring us peace? By telling us to take up our cross. How does God give us life? By calling us to die.
I don't pretend this is a full account, simply a small counterweight to overly triumphalist baptisms of our present comfort.

What does development mean?

This is the best brief account of development I have heard. If you are at all concerned for global poverty and the role of faith communities in global development (whether from the perspective of personally belonging to one, or from the experience of being puzzled or suspicious about the place of religious groups in these matters), I commend these thirty-seven minutes to your attention.
H/T Jarrod.

The magic washing machine

The goal of development is not for the rest of the world to live a western consumerist lifestyle. Justice does not consist of every African having two flat-screen TVs, a mortgage on a five bedroom McMansion and access to coronary bypass surgery for their high cholesterol levels. The goal is for over-consumers to become grateful, thoughtful citizens and human beings in lives that joyfully embrace less while making use of all available means to tread more lightly on the earth, while those in stupid grinding poverty are enabled to live lives increasingly freed from exposure to the elements, preventable disease, pointless backbreaking labour, economic and political oppression and ignorance. In the terms of this talk, to get washing machines so they can read.

Ecological responsibility has nothing to do with denying the global poor the chance at a better life. Instead, it is (partially) motivated by concern for those with least, who suffer most from the degradation of their living conditions effected by industrial production that largely serves the whims and shallow fantasies of rich consumers. Indeed, this is half of the reason why it crucial for those of us who are rich to have our imaginations and critical faculties reoriented towards what a better life truly looks like. Acting as though we are demi-gods disconnected from the material realities of the food and water and energy that sustain our existence, we hide from ourselves the ecological (and so social) costs of our assumptions, and we present to the two-thirds world a distorted and destructive picture of the good life to which they increasingly aspire. The other half is that our obsessions with the latest toys also suffocates our soul, narrowing our vision of what it can mean to be truly alive.

Open source hardware

This seems like quite a simple and noble idea: the development and sharing of free, open source hardware designs that make use of local and recycled materials in order to construct cheap, functional versions of the most useful machines. Projects like this are a reminder that for-profit operations don't have a monopoly on innovation and social benefit and represent a broadening of our social and moral imagination.

The Age of Stupid

Today I went to a screening of The Age of Stupid, which was being shown as part of the Cineco Film Festival, a series of free ecological films showing around Edinburgh between September and November.


The Age of Stupid investigates the contradictions and myopia of our present age from the viewpoint of an archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) living in a remote Arctic refuge storing what could be salvaged of the world's cultural treasures, looking back from the year 2055 at decades of catastrophic climate change and using a glorified iPad to create a documentary warning for extraterrestrials. It doesn't sound like a format that will fly, and the film opens with apocalyptic images of London underwater, the Swiss Alps without snow, Las Vegas being covered by sand dunes and Sydney's CBD consumed in a towering inferno, further confirming my expectations that the film would consist largely of terrifying crystal ball gazing, showing an unfolding series of disasters that would lead to Postlethwaite's archivist on his lonely refuge. Instead, the 2055 viewpoint is a mere framing device to allow a pastiche of archival documentary and news footage from prior to 2009, along with original interviews following six or seven figures from around the world. The period between 2009 and 2055 is left largely blank and we are confronted directly with the stupidity of our own age.

The archivist narrator begins with this question:

"The amazing thing is we had a chance to avert this. The conditions we are experiencing now were actually caused by our behaviour in the period leading up to 2015. In other words, we could have saved ourselves. We could have saved ourselves, but we didn't. What state of mind were we in, to face extinction and simply shrug it off?"

And that is the focus of the film: the inability of our present society to join the dots between fighting climate change and wanting cheap flights, or hating wind farms. It is a moving and at times darkly amusing film, but the apocalyptic framing which grabs your attention also proves somewhat distracting, since the full devastating effects of climate change are left largely unstated. There is a brief discussion with Mark Lynas (author of the widely-read Six Degrees) and a couple of other hints (passing references to food riots, for instance), but the shape of the threat that could conceivably lead to the archivist's world is largely unspoken. Perhaps this was for the sake of time, or perhaps to avoid the charge of fear-mongering, though I think that a rational discussion of the genuine threats identified in the scientific literature is far more responsible (even if initially more terrifying) than a few apocalyptic images and a heavy dose of post-apocalyptic regret.

Once again, the film was stronger on the diagnosis of the problem than on offering plausible paths to how we might indeed "save ourselves", or (what might now be more realistic) offering healthy ways of salvaging what we can from a disaster that is now unavoidable, but whose effects can still be significantly reduced.

That said, I would still recommend the film as worth seeing. One particular highlight was the brief and clear explanation of contraction and convergence, which is a serious suggestion for how it is possible to slash global emissions while allowing developing nations to get out of stupid poverty. Of course, this means developing nations cutting their emissions even faster in order to leave some room for the global poor to meet their basic needs. This option is not politically viable, especially in the places where per capita emissions would need to fall the fastest (US, Australia, Canada and parts of the Middle East), but it is the most equitable of all the options on the table and has received support from a number of nations, including the UK.

Also coming up as part of the Cineco film festival are two more films that look very interesting. The first is called Our Daily Bread and consists almost purely of footage of contemporary industrial agricultural processes with commentary or soundtrack beyond environmental noises recorded with the footage, allowing the viewer to form her own opinions. It is screening at 6pm on the 12th November.

The second is called Dirt! and traces one of the major ecological challenges that doesn't receive much attention: the soil beneath our feet (and all too often, beneath our concrete too). In the last one hundred years, in different ways we have squandered about a third of all fertile topsoil on the planet. It is screening at 6pm on 17th November (Martin Hall, New College) and will include a panel discussion with local religious leaders. Here is the trailer.

The impossible dream: or how economists don't understand physics

"Economists and politicians can’t admit it, but the laws of physics apply, no matter what the latest polls tell us. The Earth has finite resources that will someday limit our economic growth. The Earth cannot forever support 7 billion people consuming as much as Americans consume. And yet we’ve staked our future — individually, nationally, and maybe even as a species — on that impossible dream."

- Rex Nuttington, "The economy can't grow forever".

The economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment. Until we get that into our heads, we are not in a position to begin reflecting upon the challenges of global poverty in the coming decades. There is no healthy response to the needs of the world's poor that does not consider the ecological consequences of our present trajectory and present poverty-reduction strategies. A trickle-down model that relies on continued growth of the whole system driven (largely) by western consumerism may have made some worthy progress (depending how you measure it) over the last six decades or so, but cannot be extended into the future without wishful thinking.

Yet if we are not simply going to ask the poorest to shoulder the largest burden, then it is the richest (i.e. us) who need to. If we are going to leave ecological space for the poorest to get out of stupid and absolute poverty, then the section of the world living at levels of consumption that cannot be shared with all cannot continue on our present path. There will be no healthy response to our ecological and resource crises that does not involve a lower level of consumption for the richest. Joyfully embracing less is not simply a matter of personal preference, nor of "saving the planet", but at its root is an expression of love and concern for justice.

How green are the parties?

In a comment on a recent post, I was asked "which party [do] you think people should vote for if they really care about environmental issues?"

You can read my response, or better, you can listen to one of Australia's oldest and largest environmental organisations. The Australian Conservation Foundation, a non-profit non-partisan non-government organisation founded in 1966 and with about 40,000 members, has put out a 2010 election scorecard comparing the three major parties across twenty four tests. The ranking may not be a surprise, but the gaps are larger than I expected. You can download the full scorecard (including a discussion of method) here, but the summary table looks like this:

	ALP	Coalition	Greens
Reduce pollution	37%	13%	90%
Clean energy	47%	27%	100%
Sustainable cities	67%	20%	80%
Healthy environment	55%	23%	88%
Overall	50%	20%	89%

Despite claims of some Christians that they all "support greater care of God's environment", the parties are far from equal on this front.

Many readers may also be interested to compare the parties' commitments to international poverty reduction. The Make Poverty History website has published a 2010 election scorecard (or as a pdf). The differences between the parties are again quite significant.

Or if you're concerned about social justice within Australia, UnitingCare has this scorecard (Anglicare's election contribution is here). Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) have also put together this scorecard comparing the parties on indigenous affairs, and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre have put out this one.

Of course, these are not the only issues, but they are a few of issues that are (to different degrees) quite likely to come up in the next parliament (and, in the case of Senate elections, the next two Parliaments), and which Christians may find particularly interesting, especially since they are not always adequately covered by the mainstream media.

Make wealth history

Two things I ask of you;
     do not deny them to me before I die:
Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
     give me neither poverty nor riches;
     feed me with the food that I need,
or I shall be full, and deny you,
     and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
or I shall be poor, and steal,
     and profane the name of my God.

- Proverbs 30.7-9

Poverty is no good thing. But wealth is decidedly dangerous: for one's soul and for the planet. If you are reading this, you are wealthy.

Earn less. Consume less. Be less productive. Live more.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Priorities

"It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases."

- Bono

The full story is, of course, more complex. But sometimes such blunt juxtaposotion throws new light on our assumptions and priorities.

UPDATE: Here's three.
UPDATE #2: And the other side of the equation is no longer looking like a given either.

Mary's melody: a revolutionary hope VII

Jesus' revolution starts now, but is not yet complete. We're a little like sleeper cells, waiting for the day the world is turned upside-down and living quietly subversive lives now. For instance, this meal we are about to share is not based on income, or status, or friendship. Such sharing is a subversive act in a world dominated by economics.

Jesus said, Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God (Luke 6.20). Mary’s song teaches us that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Once we realise our poverty, when we give away everything that we think is ours, once we share all the good things we don’t and can’t ever own, when we are poor, then God will open our eyes to see that we have everything in his kingdom. When we loosen our grip and let our treasures slip from our hands, then we will discover that it is only with open and empty hands that we can receive. Once we realise our helplessness, when we stop being impressed by our own abilities, or stop being envious of those around us, once we are weak, then God will give us strength to pick up our cross every day. Once we realise our finitude, our frailty, our emptiness, then God can begin to fill us with unspeakable beauty, undying love, untamable hope.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII.

Mary's melody: a revolutionary hope V

3. A revolutionary life
The humble lifted high, the proud brought down. This is what God is like. This is what his king Jesus is like. This is what his kingdom is like: many who are first will be last and many of the last will be first (Mark 10.31). God turns the world upside down to set it the right way up. This is God’s revolution.

And he invites us to join in. We are to be revolutionaries. We are to see the world upside down to see it the right way up.

Back in the first half of last century India was under British rule. The Anglican bishop William Temple, later archbishop of Canterbury, warned his missionaries to India not to read the Magnificat in public. He feared that it would be so inflammatory that it might start a revolution!

Martin Luther, the great 16thC reformer, said that Mary’s Magnificat “comforts the lowly and terrifies the rich.” The upside down God is a comfort to the distraught, the destitute, the downtrodden. But he’s no comfort to the comfortable. If Mary’s song is true, it “comforts the lowly and terrifies the rich.”

My question to us is: are we terrified? If not, perhaps we haven’t yet grasped the negative side of this divine inversion. We like to hear about the last being first, but remember: many of the first will also be last. We’re quick to see ourselves as victims, as the poor and needy, whether it be financially every time interest rates go up, or emotionally every time we are overlooked or our ego are bruised. But the reality is that most of us are far more rich than poor, more those with full bellies than hungry mouths, more those who benefit from the status quo than those who suffer from it. For all our gripes, even for those of us with left-wing sympathies, we’re more likely to be the ones up against the wall being shot than amongst those storming the palace.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
   he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
   but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
   but has sent the rich away empty.                   - Luke 1.51-53

I suspect we ought to be terrified. Will we be scattered? Brought down? Sent away empty? These are real possibilities if we are proud in our inmost thoughts, if we act as if we own the place, if we seek security in work of our hands. Are we secretly, or not secretly, full of ourselves? Am I too full to have room for others? Am I amongst the first, the top, the best, the most important, the most influential? Is this where I seek to live? Is this how I think of myself? Is it from the popular, the powerful, the attractive that I seek attention? Whose approval do I crave? Whose life do I envy? I suspect we ought to be terrified.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII.

Wave of sorrow

Originally written back in the 80's during the recording of Joshua Tree, this moving song about Bono's experience visiting Ethiopia in 1984 has finally been released. Make sure you don't miss Bono's rewriting of the beatitudes at the end. Here are the lyrics and Bono speaking of his experiences and explaining some of the references. H/T Rory.

"Wave of Sorrow" (Lyrics)
by U2

Heat haze rising
On hell's own hill

You wake up this morning
It took an act of will
You walk through the night
To get here today
To bring your children
To give them away

Oh... oh this cruel sun
Is daylight never done
Cruelty just begun
To make a shadow of everyone

And if the rain came
And if the rain came

Souls bent over without a breeze
Blankets on burning trees
I am sick without disease
Nobility on its knees

And if the rain came
And if the rain came... now
Would it wash us all away
On a wave of sorrow
Wave
On a wave of sorrow

Where now the holy cities?
Where the ancient holy scrolls?
Where now Emperor Menelek?
And the Queen of Sheba's gold

You're my bride, you wear her crown
And on your finger precious stones
As every good thing now been sold

Son, of shepherd boy, now king
What wisdom can you bring?
What lyric would you sing?
Where is the music of the Seraphim?

And if the rain came
And if the rain came... now
Would it wash us all away
On a wave of sorrow
Wave
A wave of sorrow
Wave.

Blessed are the meek who scratch in the dirt
For they shall inherit what's left of the earth
Blessed are the kings who've left their thrones
They are buried in this valley of dry bones

Blessed all of you with an empty heart
For you got nothing from which you cannot part
Blessed is the ego
It's all we got this hour

Blessed is the voice that speaks truth to power
Blessed is the sex worker who sold her body tonight
She used what she got
To save her children's life

Blessed are you, the deaf cannot hear a scream
Blessed are the stupid who can dream
Blessed are the tin canned cardboard slums
Blessed is the spirit that overcomes

Poverty report card

We've been hearing a lot about tax cuts and interest rates so far this election campaign. But if you also care what happens to other people's money and lives, you might like to check out this site from the Make Poverty History campaign. It's a poverty report card comparing at a glance the policies of five major parties on issues such as aid, debt relief and trade. H/T Nico.

Would Jesus vote green? VII

Anger
When we learn about how bad things now are, a third common response is anger. How can people be so stupid, so selfish, so short-sighted, so greedy? Up to a quarter of all the sea creatures caught in global fisheries are discarded - thrown back in to the sea dead or dying - because they are not the fishermen's intended target -fish, whales, dolphins, porpoises, fur seals, albatrosses and turtles. Hearing things like this makes me angry.

Like grief, there is something right about this response. Like grief, we get angry when something we love is under attack. Anger can be a protective response. If parents didn’t get angry when someone was deliberately hurting their children, you’d have to wonder if they really cared. Anger shows we care and want things to be different.

God too is saddened and angered by the abuse and destruction of his creation. This is not a random, capricious rage that unexpectedly explodes, but his deliberate, passionate opposition to all that damages and tears down his creation, all that poisons and contaminates his good world, all that fractures harmony, all that blasphemes his life-giving Spirit.

So it is right and proper to get angry. This is not the way things ought to be. There is a deep problem with the world.

But the danger with anger is that we can blind ourselves to the role that we ourselves play. It is possible to get angry at others, at what the greedy corporations are doing, at what the spineless governments are not doing, at what my neighbour thinks, and in so doing to conveniently avoid what I am doing, not doing, what my attitudes are. This is the danger of self-righteousness.

Things are not the way they ought to be. There is a deep problem with the world. But the line between good and evil does not run between the rich and the poor, or between the left and the right, or between the corporations and the people. It does not run between us and them. The line between good and evil cuts through every human heart – including yours and mine. The problem is not simply out there; it is also in here.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII.

Would Jesus vote green? VI

Sorrow
Once we move beyond systematic denial of environmental destruction, we reach the second common response: sorrow.

Upon coming to accept (at least some of) these claims as true, we are filled with sadness. It is sad that human action (and inaction) continue to cause so much destruction and senseless waste. This is a natural and right response, since we’re really losing things of that are of great value. In particular, I find the rate of extinction very sad, because while most other forms of environmental damage are reversible, (sometimes only in the very long term), with the extinction of a species, once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

It is not only the animals and plants that suffer from our environmental irresponsibility. Humans suffer too, especially those too poor to move and too marginalised to have a significant political voice. Poisoned rivers, degraded soil, more frequent and more severe extreme weather patterns – these and more cause incalculable human suffering too. This is far more serious than not being able to water your garden or having to pay a little more for electricity.

Sorrow at what is lost and sorrow at what it costs those least able to afford it – this response resonates with a deeply Christian way of viewing the world. We only grieve the loss of what is valuable. Fundamental to Christianity’s take on the environment is that the world God made was good, very good. Grief is the natural correlate of love, when the object of love is harmed or threatened.

And our sadness also accords with a second basic Christian belief: there is something deeply wrong with God’s world. The beauty is marred. There are cracks in the abundant diversity. The health of the planet is threatened by a global disease.

The Apostle Paul teaches that to follow Christ, to be filled with his Spirit, is to grieve over the plight of creation, to groan in shared pain, to be discontent with the fractures in the world. Following Christ is not a recipe for a mindlessly happy escapism; we follow the one called the man of sorrows.

Yet grief alone is insufficient, not least because despite our best – or perhaps our worst, or simply our mediocre – efforts, despite pollution, soil degradation, climate change, the squandering of finite resources, mass extinction, despite all this, the world remains a good gift from God, filled with delight and things worth celebrating. Unless we take the time to stop, notice, enjoy and give thanks for all that surrounds us, we lose the very reason to grieve because we lose sight of the goodness of this gift.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII.