One day we decided: No more of our money is going to be spent at Wal-mart.
The decision didn't come on in one blinding moment of insight. It evolved really.
When we first started getting serious about budgeting we tried to squeeze every dime out of our grocery budget. In order to stretch our precious dollars we shopped almost exclusively at big-box stores which promised to have the lowest prices. We bought into the mindset the cheaper was better. Because of course cheaper was better for us.
But then we started to notice things.
The arrival of a Wal-mart in our town caused the closure of the small mom-and-pop run stores on our quaint main street and square. Traffic and business was sucked from the center of town to the outskirts where new and ugly little strip malls were quickly built (and now stand mostly empty thanks the the "economic downturn"). When at Wal-mart I regularly got frustrated. They had few selection options and were usually out of at least one item on my list. The employees were generally not helpful. I started dreading going to Wal-mart. It was always a stressful experience.
Then we started to get educated about certain things.
I read The Story of Stuff. I learned about consumption and how our nation's drive to consume developed. I learned about how our corporate and individual consumption effects not only the environment but people too.
We watched The Future of Food, Food Inc., and Food Matters and learned about the change in agriculture in the past generation and how this is effecting not only our individual health but our global health. We learned about genetically modified foods and how the large food distributors are forcing small farmers out of business. We learned about pesticides and herbicides and the patenting of seeds. We learned about how we really and truly are what we eat. And the premise of the book In Defense of Food, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." started to make sense to us.
I stumbled across information on chocolate. How a very large percentage of commercial chocolate comes from cocoa harvested by child slaves in West Africa. And no government seems to want to do anything about it.
We learned about jewels that come from conflict zones. People are dying so that the wealthy can wear shiny rocks on their fingers. How diamonds are actually not rare jewels but part of one of the most effective marketing schemes ever in which society bought into the fact that "a diamond is forever" and that a large diamond is a measure of love and a symbol of social status.
Finally, we watched Wal-mart: The High Cost of Low Price which opened our eyes to poor working conditions in other countries, low wages and lack of benefits to workers here in our country, the impact of Wal-mart (and consumption) on community, and the unethical business practices of Wal-mart executives in the name of capitalism.
Through all of this awakening to new information, God was working in our hearts. We began to read the verses about justice differently. We began to feel that God was not only concerned with how well we budgeted our money but how and where and on what we spent that money. Maybe the way we spent our resources was a direct way of furthering social, economic, and environmental justice?
We started to become convicted that we didn't want to just be cogs in the commercial, materialistic, consumer driven machine. If our desire for cheap chocolate, or clothing, or food is going to put someone else into slavery or strip the earth of it's resources or line the pockets of already wealthy executives while taking away the living of hard working farmers and small business owners, then we don't want to be a part of it.
Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered. -Proverbs 21:13
The truth is that we are rich. We may gripe and complain and wish we had more. But we are fabulously, gloriously wealthy compared to 90% of the rest of the world. And the Bible tells us that the way we use our resources is a direct reflection of our faith.
This process is tense, uncomfortable, and inconvenient most of the time. We are mostly bumbling along asking lots of questions and doing nothing perfectly. The war between our flesh (which desires more stuff and comfort) and the Spirit (who calls us to give without thought to the cost) is fierce and sometimes, honestly, it's exhausting. It's also encouraging. I get a small thrill when I stand in the aisle of a grocery store and choose to advance justice by making the small choice to buy "organic" or "fair trade" chocolate.
That is the beginning of our journey. I hope to share with you in later posts about some of the specific issues we are learning about and how we are changing some things in our lives. I also want to share resources that we are finding, because for me one of the hardest parts of this process is finding good and helpful information so that I can make informed choices.
Is anyone else experiencing anything like this?
The decision didn't come on in one blinding moment of insight. It evolved really.
When we first started getting serious about budgeting we tried to squeeze every dime out of our grocery budget. In order to stretch our precious dollars we shopped almost exclusively at big-box stores which promised to have the lowest prices. We bought into the mindset the cheaper was better. Because of course cheaper was better for us.
But then we started to notice things.
The arrival of a Wal-mart in our town caused the closure of the small mom-and-pop run stores on our quaint main street and square. Traffic and business was sucked from the center of town to the outskirts where new and ugly little strip malls were quickly built (and now stand mostly empty thanks the the "economic downturn"). When at Wal-mart I regularly got frustrated. They had few selection options and were usually out of at least one item on my list. The employees were generally not helpful. I started dreading going to Wal-mart. It was always a stressful experience.
Then we started to get educated about certain things.
I read The Story of Stuff. I learned about consumption and how our nation's drive to consume developed. I learned about how our corporate and individual consumption effects not only the environment but people too.
We watched The Future of Food, Food Inc., and Food Matters and learned about the change in agriculture in the past generation and how this is effecting not only our individual health but our global health. We learned about genetically modified foods and how the large food distributors are forcing small farmers out of business. We learned about pesticides and herbicides and the patenting of seeds. We learned about how we really and truly are what we eat. And the premise of the book In Defense of Food, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." started to make sense to us.
I stumbled across information on chocolate. How a very large percentage of commercial chocolate comes from cocoa harvested by child slaves in West Africa. And no government seems to want to do anything about it.
We learned about jewels that come from conflict zones. People are dying so that the wealthy can wear shiny rocks on their fingers. How diamonds are actually not rare jewels but part of one of the most effective marketing schemes ever in which society bought into the fact that "a diamond is forever" and that a large diamond is a measure of love and a symbol of social status.
Finally, we watched Wal-mart: The High Cost of Low Price which opened our eyes to poor working conditions in other countries, low wages and lack of benefits to workers here in our country, the impact of Wal-mart (and consumption) on community, and the unethical business practices of Wal-mart executives in the name of capitalism.
Through all of this awakening to new information, God was working in our hearts. We began to read the verses about justice differently. We began to feel that God was not only concerned with how well we budgeted our money but how and where and on what we spent that money. Maybe the way we spent our resources was a direct way of furthering social, economic, and environmental justice?
We started to become convicted that we didn't want to just be cogs in the commercial, materialistic, consumer driven machine. If our desire for cheap chocolate, or clothing, or food is going to put someone else into slavery or strip the earth of it's resources or line the pockets of already wealthy executives while taking away the living of hard working farmers and small business owners, then we don't want to be a part of it.
Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered. -Proverbs 21:13
The truth is that we are rich. We may gripe and complain and wish we had more. But we are fabulously, gloriously wealthy compared to 90% of the rest of the world. And the Bible tells us that the way we use our resources is a direct reflection of our faith.
This process is tense, uncomfortable, and inconvenient most of the time. We are mostly bumbling along asking lots of questions and doing nothing perfectly. The war between our flesh (which desires more stuff and comfort) and the Spirit (who calls us to give without thought to the cost) is fierce and sometimes, honestly, it's exhausting. It's also encouraging. I get a small thrill when I stand in the aisle of a grocery store and choose to advance justice by making the small choice to buy "organic" or "fair trade" chocolate.
That is the beginning of our journey. I hope to share with you in later posts about some of the specific issues we are learning about and how we are changing some things in our lives. I also want to share resources that we are finding, because for me one of the hardest parts of this process is finding good and helpful information so that I can make informed choices.
Is anyone else experiencing anything like this?
1 comment:
We're not experiencing the same thing (although we are gradually changing our spending habits to include more local items and trying to make/grow more of what we eat). We don't really shop at Walmart, but it's not a hard and fast ThouShaltNot. I really appreciate that Walmart gives jobs to the disadvantaged, something that I don't see any other major retailer doing. But I appreciate your arguments, and I don't shop there much at all for some of the same reasons you mention.
At the moment, our journey is figuring out how to increase our percentage of giving and how and where to give wisely. Being blessed financially this year means that we have a real opportunity to be activist from the OTHER end, figuring out which organizations will make a real difference in the areas that our family cares about (adoption and crisis pregnancy, economic development and poverty, the spread of the gospel, and the arts)(in our city, in our country, and in our world)... do that math and it's potentially 12 organizations that we would support... but figuring out how to do that and who the reputable ones are and finding causes we are passionate about is a challenge! a happy challenge!
jess
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