It's had to avoid being a consumer in America. It's sort of what we do. We are not the great manufacturing giant we were 100 years ago. Our economy is built on our consumption. Purchasing and using goods... until we have used them up, don't want them any more, or something better comes along. The more charitable among us will pass our used stuff along to others more "needy". But do we give a thought to where our stuff comes from? How it is produced? Who makes a profit? And who doesn't?
As a follower of Christ, I am haunted by these questions. As a middle-class American living in a small town in the mid-west, sometimes these questions pester me like mosquitoes at a backyard barbeque in July. But when I go back to the scriptures and when I talk to young adults less bound to their mortgages and utility bills, I am reminded that these things matter. Where our stuff comes from and how it is made and who makes it matters.
I am going to commit the next series of posts to probing these questions. I may not provide many answers. Maybe only more questions. But I will take some time to think about "whatever I do to the least of these" especially if the least of these made my shirt, or picked my coffee, or mined the metal in my cell phone.
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