Well I guess this is evidence of me succumbing to overwhelming world pressure to start a blog. The final straw was last night when I had an urge to share a load of thoughts and thought: I should really blog this. So I might as well start right away!
I’m reading ‘A Call to Conscience’ which is a collection of Martin Luther King’s landmark speeches with commentary from people involved, such as Rosa Parks. As I read his address to the first Montgomery improvement association a number of things struck me as important. The first was his call for the oppressed to rise up against their oppressors – people tired of being trampled under the iron feet of oppression, of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing in the piercing chill of an Alpine November. The thought that came to me, sinking as an uncomfortable stone into the pit of my stomach, was that we are the oppressors. These are the experiences of the majority of the world’s population, but not mine, not ours. And so to the next bit…
Martin Luther King’s response to the oppression and pain suffered by the black community was to love, “one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith.” And love equals justice, which is “love correcting that which revolts against love.” If we truly love we must be revolted by the injustice in the world.
As I read this my thoughts were largely on fair/unfair trade and a conversation I’d had with Emma considering making unfair trade illegal. It’s easy to diminish the importance of fair-trade because of the relative ease, as an individual, to do something about it. Yet it is not enough. As it was not enough for Wilberforce to not own a slave. In his speech Martin Luther King’s final comments were on the need for a change in legislation, not merely education. So how do we change the world? The practicality of this needs to be thought about but the essentials are simple; with love and with “God in the forefront.”
4 Comments
January 24, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Welcome to the blogosphere! Link didn’t work but i found you!
January 25, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I found you too
January 28, 2008 at 12:17 pm
ah!
January 28, 2008 at 4:14 pm
We change it by being the change ourselves, by giving ourselves to the God of change, by giving of ourselves and giving to other people… everything we have is a gift and should be given back and spent on behalf of those who do not have.
Making unfair trade illegal starts with me refusing to buy unfairly traded goods. Then it moves to me influencing others around me to not buy them. Then it moves to churches, to political spheres, to nations… and someday we will no longer have to ask for Fairtrade coffee specially because there will be no Fairtrade, because there will be no unfair trade.
This will come to pass… because we will make it happen.
We must be the change.