You shall not
withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or
aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. You shall pay them
their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood
depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against
you, and you would incur guilt.
--Deuteronomy
24:14-15 NRSV
Black and brown friends of mine
are quick to roll their eyes at my white guilt. I’ve learned enough about
white privilege and class privilege to understand that I may not feel
privileged, but I was born on at least first or second base just because of my
skin color and my parents being middle class. Yet, feeling guilty about
that accomplishes nothing. Don’t get me wrong, awareness of one’s
privilege is a good thing, but it’s what you do about it that
matters.
The current pandemic has made
many of us aware of all kinds of “essential” workers in grocery stores and
Amazon warehouses whom we depend upon. Often those workers are black- and brown-skinned people or lower economic class whites who must risk their
health and the health of loved ones to pay their bills.
But what do we do with that
knowledge?
Similarly the pandemic has
revealed the disparities of health conditions between rich and poor as well aswhite and black,/brown. One’s zip code should not determine one’s life expectancy,
yet in the KC metro where you live may determine how long you live.
But what do we do with those
statistics?
The answer, I think, to
questions of “what do we do?” doesn’t involve wasting energy on guilt.
Instead, we can begin to make the awareness of our culture’s injustices a part
of our spirituality.
1. We
can pray for those we depend upon to provide us our food and products.
Each night at dinner, my family and I make a point of praying for all the
people who had a part in getting our food to us, from the farmer who grew the
food to the driver who transported it, to the store employees who put it on the
shelf. When you drink your morning coffee or tea, take a moment to pray
for the people who picked the beans or leaves to make your morning drink.
2. Spend
time in scripture learning what God expects from a society in terms of its
workers. The passage above from Deuteronomy is a nice place to start, as
are the parables of Jesus, the letter of James, etc.
3. Take
time to be grateful for what you do have—and so many people don’t have—instead
of filling emotional or spiritual holes with more “stuff.”
4. Ask
God, what you could do differently to help some of them? What could our
church do? What could you do differently, even in small ways, to make
things better, such as shopping at stores that treat their employees well and
pay them justly?
5. Ask
God to change your mind and search out places of prejudice or ways you look
down on others with less than you. We all do it to some extent. Let
God expose those thoughts and free you from them.
6. Give
generously. Donate to organizations and causes that help those with less
than you. Tip well. I try to tip well even to servers or delivery
people who don’t do a great job, because everybody can have a bad day or a bad
few minutes, and since they depend upon my tip, I’d rather be generous than
judge.
7. This is an election year, so ask God to help
you discover which candidates for all levels of public office really do help
those who have the least.
Remember, don’t be
like me, and waste your energy on white guilt. Instead, put your energy
into seeing the image of Christ in everyone who doesn’t have whatever
privileges you enjoy.
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