{"id":1991,"date":"2011-03-24T12:30:42","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T17:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/hungerrumblings\/?p=1991"},"modified":"2011-03-24T12:30:42","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T17:30:42","slug":"only-connect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/only-connect\/","title":{"rendered":"Only connect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Throwing my two cents into the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/hungerrumblings\/post\/ahhhh-the-joys-of-lent-16032011\/\">David-Erin-Bob\/Uncle Billy discussion<\/a>, I\u2019d like to post these musings:<\/p>\n<p>When we buy a car, we carefully research everything except our basic assumption: that we need one. Is there another way to move around the world that might be less damaging, like keeping the car we have and biking more and taking public transit, or sharing a car with a neighbor, or carpooling, or walking?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, as \u201cconsumers\u201d we are rewarded for making our personal buying decisions our most pressing concerns. How about we just stop calling ourselves consumers? Let\u2019s not even be <em>Christian<\/em> consumers. Let\u2019s be Christian citizens. Christian community members. Anything that helps lift the spell that traps us in \u201ctake-make-waste\u201d so we can start discerning needs from wants, asking where our stuff comes from and who or what was harmed in its production, and understanding how our greed is connected to\u2014or may even cause\u2014other people\u2019s need.<\/p>\n<p>This is where charity becomes justice. That old saying about giving a man a fish? Sure, teach a man to fish\u2014but don\u2019t forget to ask who owns the pond. The world is full of competent people who know how to fish and farm but can\u2019t access land or water\u2014or whose land and water has been fouled by a multinational factory farm, mining operation, or Coca-Cola plant whose products are shipped to \u2026 Christian consumers.<\/p>\n<p>The due diligence we need to be doing about hunger is about our own system. I say, start asking <em>why<\/em>. Why do I need this? Why was this product produced so cheaply? What hidden environmental or social costs are being paid by the people who made it? How\u2019s <em>their<\/em> garden?\u00a0 Unlike buying a car, the goal of questions like these isn\u2019t to make us feel good about our own purchases. These questions lead us from consumerism to collective advocacy, because when a small <em>why <\/em>is amplified by other individuals, groups, or law-making bodies, it can change a system.<\/p>\n<p>The bottom line <em>why<\/em> for Christians is: Why does so much of our \u201cgood life\u201d come at the cost of other people\u2019s welfare? Our system blinds us to these consequences. It\u2019s time to ask our way out of this trance, to let the power of <em>why <\/em>open our eyes and start drawing the lines to world hunger that begin in our own backyards.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Anne Basye,<\/strong> <em><strong>Sustaining Simplicity <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Throwing my two cents into the David-Erin-Bob\/Uncle Billy discussion, I\u2019d like to post these musings: When we buy a car, we carefully research everything except our basic assumption: that we need one. Is there another way to move around the world that might be less damaging, like keeping the car we have and biking more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[114,109,58,108],"class_list":["post-1991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post","tag-causes-of-world-hunger","tag-consumption","tag-hunger","tag-lifestyle-stewardship"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Only connect - ELCA World Hunger<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/only-connect\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Only connect - ELCA World Hunger\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Throwing my two cents into the David-Erin-Bob\/Uncle Billy discussion, I\u2019d like to post these musings: When we buy a car, we carefully research everything except our basic assumption: that we need one. 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