The previous post outlined the problems Christians face when trying to shop ethically, and bear witness to the love of God in Christ. What is the source of the sadness we feel when faced with a situation we are unhappy about but unsure how to bring about change? Is that sadness a sign of resignation? Or does it signal a mind, conscience and will refusing to shrug the shoulders and just accept it's the way the world is?
And so we come to the unholy trinity of Sainsbury's, Nectar and the Daily Mail. Nectar is a loyalty points system, in reality a form of low grade bribery aimed at retaining customers and encouraging spending. But what happens when my higher loyalty as a Christian leads me to believe certain things about the world, human beings and how we are to live in a community of neighbours?
The command "Love your neighbour as yourself" is not an add on, a menu option on the "What kind of disciple do you want to be?" choice list. There is only one kind of disciple and there is only one menu choice, "Do I follow Jesus or not?" You answer Yes not by placing your cross, but by picking it up and following Jesus. That ultimate loyalty renders all other future options, choices and loyalties penultimate.
So, what to do about being a Sainsbury customer, a Nectar card holder, and a person committed to a life of loyalty to the God revealed in Jesus, who discovers that my customer loyalty is contributing to the commercial viability of a tabloid newspaper virulently and scathingly dismissive of the very concept of loving our neighbours as ourselves? My friend talks of a grey area, and she is not wrong. Should I just stop shopping at Sanisbury's till they change this promotional link? But then, why penalise local employees of Sainsbury's, who are my near neighbours, at least relative to a globalised world of distances that are geographical, cultural and economic? They didn't choose, weren't consulted, took no part in the decision to make the link with the Daily Mail. Protesting by witholding our custom if it were widespread and effective in reducing footfall and turnover might force a change of mind; or it may not. But if it did, it might have the unintended consequence of putting at risk the jobs and liveliehoods of the ordinary folk who work for the big guys.
The intricacies and inter-connections of business with business, company with company, combined with multi-faceted corporate combinations, complex financial linkages, and densely concentrated centres of decision-making, creates a problem of identifying just who it is we are unhappy with, and what we can do about it anyway. That convoluted sentence is infant level simple, compared to the fankled spaghetti interweave of a globalised economy run by mazes of corporate alliances.
So what to do with this sadness that the world is sometimes too complicated to fix, and and how to resolve ethical dilemmas too complex for there to be an easy protest, or effective pressure. I can ask to speak with the manager of the local store and try to explain. I could take my Nectar card elsewhere. I could stop using it altogether. But how do I know anyway what morally dubious partnerships lurk behind all the other companies I would then buy from and deal with. I studied Jean Paul Sartre's play Les Mains Sales (Dirty Hands) at university 45 years ago. Its central premise is the impossibility of ever being sure we act with pure motives, or act with clean hands. Our best actions are inevitably soiled by mixed motive, marred by unintended consequences, distorted by lurking selfishness, infected by unacknowledged jealousies, malice or mere complacency.
In Christian theology such moral complicity in the wrongness of the world requires a robust doctrine of sin. The reality of structural sin, damaging fault lines of ruthless self interest, powerful dehumanising systems and processes built into our institutions and ways of trading; personal sinfulness which we acknowledge every time we feel shame, guilt and remorse, but which is a recurring reality of frustrated intentions and hopes; and in both our social structures and our inner climate, always the pervasive bias in human experience towards the self, the inescapable first person I, me, my and mine, out of which come those tragic choices and harmful decisions that frustrate the intention to love God and neighbour.
Sounds as if I've argued myself into a corner. If the world is such an intractable mess, we can't help it. Is that it? If sin is a built in component of everything we touch and build and cherish as human beings, how can we ever be sure any of our actions are just and right, and make for peace and are born of love and mercy? Recall the prayer embedded in Fosdick's great hymn:
Save us from weak resignation
To the evils we deplore
Let the search for Thy salvation
Be our glory ever more
Grant us wisdom
Grant us courage
Serving Thee whom we adore
Which brings us back to the deeper reality of Jesus, and his call that we "take up our cross daily". That call, and the grace that enables and empowers it, is much more real than sin, much more vital than all our self-destructive tendencies.So I want to finish these reflections, not with mere practical proposals so that I can feel good about having done something, as if gestures were enough, or all that can be done. Not that gestures, especially redemptive gestures are unimportant.
Instead, in the final part of these reflections I will share several "Considerations" for those of us who are trying to faithfully follow after Jesus. These Considerations are not answers, practical fixes, or even redemptive gestures. They are an alternative way of looking at a world in which as a Christian I believe certain things to be true about God, the world, human life and community, and what funds and resources hope, neighbourliness and human flourishing.
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