The beginning of James 5 is a harsh passage. “Weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you?” Your stuff will corrode “and eat your flesh like fire?” Ok. But this passage becomes infinitely easier to breeze past when we believe that it is not about us. DJT? Henry Kissinger? Billionaires investing in war or mistreating and underpaying their workers, sure, I guess they can rot for their crimes against humanity. But me? When was the last time I failed to pay the wages to “the workers who mow my fields”? Brah, I haven’t even lived in a house in the past 8 years, let alone owned property that I could pay workers to go mow. I’ve never “condemned and murdered the Innocent one!”
This type of thinking is super easy to fall into due to
- “Disney princess theology” and
- “The “myth of the impeccable individual”
Let’s start with number 1. Now the line, “Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty” (5:4) sounds awfully familiar to God’s speech to Moses in Exodus 3:7, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.” As a result of the enslavement and mistreatment of his people, God was about to intervene and was sending Moses to go, in the words of every alarmingly dumbed down VBS skit, tell Pharaoh to “let my people go!”
When we read stories like this, we have the charming habit of always imagining ourselves as the God’s-chosen-people group, regardless of how incredibly unrealistic this may be. Ob-vi-ous-ly we are the Israelites in this story. Somehow, it never crosses our minds that we are probably way closer to the Egyptians, oppressing the shit out of God’s people?
In the Dark Knight Rises, Selina Kyle (a.k.a Catwoman) tells Bruce that soon, “you’re all going to wonder how you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”
But thanks to the vast layers of circuitous systems that separate us from the vast majority of the supply chains that support our lives, it is easy to believe that we are the Selina Kyles, not Bruce and his billionaire friends, that we are the chosen-people Israelites, not the oppressive Egyptians.
So let’s break down point 2, “the myth of the impeccable individual.” When you buy a taco, which is a regular occurrence for me as a Texan, I see my taco, I see the person ringing up my order, and sometimes I can see the line cooks in the background, slicing and sautéing and smashing up avocados. Are they paid living wages? Do they have access to healthcare? Are they having to hold down other jobs in addition to that one, in order to provide for their families? Most of the time I don’t even think through it that far, I just say “thanks” and eat my taco and leave, but if I wanted to, I could pull out my phone and check out the company to see what kind of pay and benefits they provide. But honestly I don’t think I’ve ever done that, unless I myself was planning on applying to that job. But of course that scene in front of me is just the end of the chain- the moment that my finished taco arrives in my hands. What happened before that? Where did the ingredients come from? Who grow them? Who harvested them? How did they get there? Recently I saw an article about how the U.S.’s rampant demand for avocados was leading farmers in Mexico to uproot their other crop fields and replant them with avocados in order to maximize profits. But this ultimately leads to long-term damage and soil degradation. The farmers can’t afford to not sell what is in demand right now, but they will ultimately pay the price for planting against the will of nature– not us. We will not suffer any consequences for eating more than our share of avocados.
It’s the same with investments (oh hey Vanguard, casually investing in genocide…), with clothing (watch the True Cost documentary), with everything. Just because it’s not right in front us doesn’t mean we’re not participating in it. There is no such thing as an “impeccable,” blameless individual.
So what does this mean for us in James 5? Tune in later for more of the deets.
Click for more on:
The myth of the impeccable individual
^heard that term from this bomb sermon on the book of Amos (4/8/18)
emily, unfiltered 