Our Responsibility...

This began as a reply to a friend's post, but I decided I was going to make my own statement about it, so here you go:

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The frustrating thing is that, at least in America, if we choose to live an "alternative" lifestyle than the consumerism we live in, it's hard to survive. Even if we go off and start a cooperative, grow our own food etc, we would still probably have property taxes, utilities (unless you use solar power or something, but that would be expensive to start with). And so on and so forth. Even then, not everything could be produced on our own.

To actually go against the culture takes a lot of effort, and probably need to be around other people who share the same values. Sure, it's possible, but how many people are actually going to do it, since its so much easier to stay where we are. Not to mention, to be realistic it would take a certain level of money to start out on your own.

And even when you make that decision, thousands of others don't care or don't want to put in that effort, and thus those who are in power and have money continue to abuse the environment and people and whatever else. It seems like little else but an all out revolution will change anything, but then new people get power and they can become just as bad.

Some of us might be called to educate (whether its college or in a community or church), some to go into politics to try and change things, others can work at organizations. But it is an uphill battle, and it's easy to get discouraged.

What I've realized that at least for those of us who call ourselves Christian, we can look forward to the Kingdom of God returning. I don't mean this in the sense that we have an excuse to give up since God is going to eventually come and restore things anyway. Instead, even though we may not see progress, we can be confident that God is working all things for good.

I think the best thing we can do is to keep ourselves aware of these things in our society that are wrong. Go outside more, actually feel the ground under your feet (and if it isn't snowing, perhaps even take off those shoes!), feel the wind, the sunshine. Talk to people around us, and most definetly pray.

Even if the things we can do are small, like use the car less, buy more local products, go to a farmers market, start a small garden, use less electricity, don't support companies that are unethical, recycle, bring your own bags to the grocery store, buy fair trade and sweatshop-free products, or anything else you can think of. They are small things, but they are important.

For us Christians, its easy to get focued on the making disciples part of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth, but I think protecting our environment and fighting against all sorts of injustice are just as important (Try reading Amos). Just as sharing God with people is a frustrating process, with small steps, so is changing the larger things in our world. None of it is easy but we are still called to do it, and God is going to be with us.