Saturday, January 5, 2008
Here We Go...
Welcome to A Conversing Community. This blog was born out of a desire to converse with my friends about what community is...what God's Kingdom is... How we can live in it. How we can be a part of it. What it looks like, now. What it has looked like throughout HIStory. What His heart beats for. How we can feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and parent the fatherless. How we can love God and love others. Come along. Here we go...
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2 comments:
I was just looking at the emergent village blog. These are just my thoughts today, the first lines in the conversation, not the end of it. I think the concept is great, for a certain group of people who have been inside a certain culture that has approached solving a particular problem in a certain way that wasn't really working. I would summarize that certain way as this: we were trying to save the individuals and have come to realize that saving the individuals is not the end of the matter. I agree with that totally. Salvation is not only about the individual but about the community. Save a bunch of individuals and it should bring positive change not only to their lives but to the communities they live in. Now, I'd say that actually has been happening always, over time, but not wholistically 'and not enough. Communities of believers have protested against moral filth and such (what is taught in schools, shown on movie screens) but *some of those communities of believers* have not protested against hunger, poverty, pollution, etc. Other communties have.
About solving those problems, here's the struggle I have: many have attempted over time to 'solve' these problems; from the hippies of the 60s to Catholic nuns, i.e. Mother Teresa. So why does this kind of change not spread, take over and last? It makes me wonder.
Are they trying to make change from the outside in, instead of from the inside out? When I talk to Beck Blazer about trying to get people to recycle, I tell her that only a small proportion of society will ever be motivated by 'doing good' for others. She recycles b/c it is good to do so but she'll never get 90-100% of the population to be motivated by doing good for others. But if she can get them to see how they are doing good for themselves, then more people will participate. Companies in Chicago buy solar panels and sell the energy back to the grid not becuase it helps the environment but becuase it helps their bottom line.
From a poverty perspective, for example: when some people hear about 90% of the world's wealth being in the hands of 10%, and they are in that 10%, what is the average person's gut reaction? Relief that they are in the prosperous 10%, and fear that they'll somehow end up in the poor 90%. But if bringing the 90% into wealth just involves more opportunity for the 10% to sell their goods to the 90%, to expand their businesses, to have more and better 'human' resources to participate in their businesses....that is appealing.
It seems like some of the attempts to solve the worlds problems always set themselves up against the people in power to tell them that they are wrong. And you know what, they are wrong, but they have also done some things right, which is proven because they are successful. Big Business is not bad; big business without a conscience is bad. Wealth is not bad; wealth at the expense of others is bad. Talented people with a conscience who are within those powerful organizations of wealth, security, etc. are the prime people who can implement sustainable change. Big Business, Government, the military; we need people who understand what makes those powerful organizations tick to tell us how to make positive change from within the bastions of power.
What kinds of philanthropy does Bill Gates do? Warren Buffet? They do plenty, but what kinds? How can we channel the brilliant minds of those people to solve the world's problems? How can we get folks like them to bring others along?
I think it is human nature to want to rebel against establishent, rather than to take existing establishment and improve it. Martin Luther wanted to fix the Catholic establishment, not rebel against it, but look how it exploded into the ultimate rebellion in the Protestant Reformation (which, in all truth, had and has both good and bad aspects). If only we could find a way to strip out what is rotten without killing what is good, maybe we wouldn't always be 'starting over' and repeating these same cycles. Now it is Bono and Angelina Jolie; in the 80s it was We Are the World and FarmAid, in the 70s it was something else.....why do these things drop off and get picked up again later as if they are new?
I love that you and Marrty are so passionate about these issues. I love that your journey has brought you to these places and that you are looking for things you can do on a small scale and on a large scale. I'm thrilled to know you and to get to call you my close friends. I love the way you challenge me to think more deeply and turn things every which way. I love the way that you want to bring others along with you.
Ok, I'm stopping now. What are your thoughts?
I'm reading Tom Brokaw's book about the 60s, 'Boom', and he talks about how aid to blacks in the 50s-60s undermined the black family structure. It removed the historical 'grandma' structure by saying mothers couldn't get aid if they were living at home with their moms. How can we avoid undermining traditional Ethopian family structures while providing aid to them? I read lots of TINMWY over the weekend and read again and again about aunts, grandmas, dropping off babies at the orphanages b/c they couldn't afford to care for them, or because they didn't want them out of fear of aids. How can we keep those babies at home with their relatives and encourage the families to raise them?
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