Micah 6:8

Meat and Charity

For a long time I've known that regular meat consumption in our western diets causes inflation of world grain prices. Each pound of meat that we eat requires several pounds of grain to be put into the feeding of that animal. Consequently this puts a huge demand on the demand for grain in the world market causing prices to rise leaving the poorest people without access to necessary staples. While I don't know how much good having our family minimize our meat consumption that is what we have done in order to be an example and to stand out apart from our culture of waste.

Recently I read an article written by an alert-net blogger, Tim Large, on how meat production also takes many times more water then agricultural production. I hadn't thought about that before. For me I don't think that it's such a big deal since water is in abundance over here on the wet coast of Canada and is not very practical to ship to where it is needed. For other people who live where water is more scarce this should cause some thought. If we truly care about our fellow brothers and sisters around us shouldn't we be willing to sacrifice a little meat on their behalf? If you live in a wet climate please consider cutting back significantly on meat in order to do your part in lower world grain prices for the poor. Also consider fasting for awhile in solidarity with the world poor.

While Jesus' call was primarily evangelistic our transformation into godliness should make us more compassionate towards the poor and marginalized. True holiness is inseparable from active love and generosity on behalf of those that are suffering. Too often the western church turns a blind eye on poverty and gives a pittance if anything towards charity. Here is what God has to say: "Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world." (James 1:27 NET) Let us commit to do better.

Noteworthy sites

World Mapper is a cool site that takes different data about the world and distorts maps based on the figures to give you a visual image of the state of the world. You can choose from many different sets of statistics to get a view of the disparity that exists in the world between the rich and the poor countries.

Gap Minder is a google tool that shows statistical trends with moving circles on a graph. It's a bit difficult to explain but is pretty straight forward to understand when you play around with it a little.

Slavery

Ahmit (L) and Rahul (R) worked in sweat-shops producing zaris

When it is mentioned we tend to think of people, almost always black people; degraded, abused and bound in chains, and we tend to think of such images, and the word slavery itself, as belonging to another era.

We do not see slavery as belonging to our world, not as something which is still happening today.

Yet the truth is that if William Wilberforce were alive today and he travelled to different parts of the world - not just in Africa, but also in large parts of Asia, the Middle East, South America and even parts of Europe - he would find children living in conditions and circumstances which Wilberforce would understand and which I am sure he would describe as slavery.

It is believed there are nearly nine million children around the world today who are enslaved.

BBC news is currently doing a series on the present state of slavery in the world. The quote above is from the first article that that I linked to below. Please try to read some of these article and let your heart go out to these people and to pray to God that he would come soon and bring justice to this world. Please also consider giving to organizations that are working to relieve the suffering of slaves and speaking up in advocacy. Below are links to several articles about child slavery which I find particularly grievous.

The world of modern child slavery
The child slaves of Saudi Arabia
My life as a child prostitute
Haiti's hidden 'child slaves'
Slave Children with Rageh Omaar
The magnitude of the problem
Sex slavery widespread in England

Fair Trade

Here's a neat article about how fair trade products are leaving the niche market in England and are becoming more mainstream. I think that the take home message is that we can make a difference if we take a stand and encourage others to do so as well.

International Adoption

Here is an interesting AlertNet blog entry on some of the ethical dilemmas surrounding international adoption. Joel and I have wanted to adopt needy children for several years now. A couple of years back we seriously looked into adopting a child from Liberia. We ended up giving up on the idea after we ran into quite a few moral considerations that we had not thought of before. Our main problem was that we realized that because of the way adoption is done there is always going to be uncertainty that you are actually doing the best thing for the child that you are adopting. Depending on the country that you adopt from there is either an expected donation for the orphanage our a fee that goes to the orphanage above and beyond the cost of the adoption. We realized that while the orphanage managers may really care about their children, when they receive money for the orphanage from the adoption they may over look local options for the care of the child that is placed for adoption. They may even have pure motives. They may just be realizing that if they don't encourage extended family to take in the child and they just give up the child for adoption then they will receive money that can be used for the care of other children in the orphanage. Unfortunately in international adoption you can't generally guarantee the situation is as they say it is. Even if you trust the foreign agency it's very difficult to trust that they will make wise decisions about which children should be given up for adoption. We just couldn't tolerate the thought of adopting a child and by doing so cut off all possibility for reconciliation with their biological family. I think that these issues should be given closer examination by Christians that want to help children.

Isn't This Special

I got a good laugh today when I read saw this blog post on Ochuk's blog. The pictures remind me of feminine hygiene commercials. The comments are even better the pictures. Why are so many woman sucked into this stuff? I know that it not just in the marketing world because I often find woman's websites to be just as gaggy.

The internet monk, Michael Spencer, has some good comments on the role that woman end up with in the evangelical world. He correctly points out that most evangelical discussion seems to be by men and for men. There seems to be little consideration for the fact that woman may be significant contributers as well and not afraid of tackling difficult topics. I’ve thought of using a gender neutral pseudonym when making blog posts on my favorite blogs so that I might be taken more seriously. I definitely have seen that there are different interests between men and woman but they are complimentary and necessary. There are serious woman and serious men just as there are flaky woman and there are flaky men. We might pick different serious topics to discuss or maybe we won’t. We also don’t all cry at the first sign of conflict. Some of us thrive on it. This is definitely something that should be mulled over more.

Missionaries and Evangelism

I found an interesting blog today. I absolutely love missionary blogs especially ones like this one from missionaries that have gained a real perspective on what Christianity is really about. They give me such encouragement. One day we hope to end up in the developing world as long term medical missionaries, hopefully healing the body and soul. In the meantime I'll have to get my fill from blogging missionaries. If you know of any good ones please let me know.

One particularly interesting blog post on Kevin from South America's blog, entitled, "On Being Light" was quite challenging to me. My heart longs to go out into the streets here and spread the light like Kevin did in a slum of a mega-city in South America. I know that what he did there could just as easily be done here. I don't need to go overseas to share the gospel. Honestly, I'm afraid. I don't know how to approach people and start conversations. I'm bursting at the seems to share the wonderful gospel with people but I don't know how to start. Do any of you have experience with this sort of evangelism?

Great post on the vice of materialism

Michael Spencer, aka the Internet Monk, has a great post on his blog about the trap of materialism and how it's often ignored in our culture. He follows up with some challenging question that are worth asking yourself. Here is a preview of what he has to say.

What interests me is how Americans Christians have largely exempted an equally corrupting common set of sins from these same kinds of evangelical efforts at mutual sanctification. Where are the vows and communities aimed at helping us live free from the corrosion of materialism? Where is the peer pressure for what Piper calls “wartime living and giving?” Where is the recognition that Jesus taught many explicit and unmistakable things about possessions, money and materialism?