Then, a few hundred years ago, somehow the entire world decided one particular group made the ideal slaves. These people were dehumanized, abused, and oppressed for hundreds of years. And the church said nothing about it. When some Christians finally did come to their senses and recognize the horror of this state of affairs, other Christians opposed them, using the word of God to defend grinding these human beings under their heels. Otherwise godly and wise people were somehow completely blind to their sin. They simply couldn’t see it.
The question that haunts me today is, what are we not seeing? Is there something I accept that will cause my grandchildren’s grandchildren to view me with shame? Will future generations look back on our lives and ask, “How could you permit that?”
We can’t just say no. The problem is that fish don’t know they’re wet. When you’ve been raised around slave labor, it takes a special kind of awareness to see how wrong it is. When you’ve been taught since childhood that some people are a little less of a person than you, it’s hard to question that. Is there a sea of sin in which we swim that makes us blind to our generation’s worst offenses?
As I considered the question, the phrase “conspicuous consumption” popped into my head. According to Wikipedia, “conspicuous consumption describes and explains the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality, price, or in greater quantity than practical.” I can see how people could do that, but that’s not really what our society does, is it? We don’t buy and use goods of a higher quality or price than is practical. We do the opposite — we’ll suffer just about anything to save a few bucks. Moreover, we’ll allow other people to suffer just about anything to save us a few bucks. We turn a blind eye to the fact that our phones, clothes, and chocolate are made by slave labor because it makes them a tiny bit cheaper. We don’t have to feel bad about it because everybody does it. Where would we even get non-slave chocolate? Best to not worry about it.
Maybe our descendants will give us a pass on the slave labor. They would be fair to ask why, in the 21st century, children still died from drinking dirty water. We in the West live quite comfortably. Unless you’re the poorest of the poor, you’ve got a car, a smartphone, air conditioning, a couple of TVs with a couple of streaming services, and more clothes than you actually wear. We throw away more food than some people have to eat. “Why,” our descendants may ask, “could you not use some of that money to help the poorest in the world?” They might point out that if 300,000,000 Americans gave a mere $10, that would equal $3 billion, which could certainly help a lot of people. What’s our excuse? That those people are out-of-sight-out-of-mind? That everyone around us lives like this, so we don’t think about it? Do either of those really sound any better than “I’m comfortable so I don’t care”?
Obviously we’re at least a little aware of these things, because I can link to articles on the topics. Is there something we’re completely missing? How would we know? The only way to find out will be to search the scriptures as honestly, humbly, and carefully as we can and compare our lives and our society against God’s standards. How does our Maker expect us to treat our neighbor? The Old Covenant might be the best place to dig. It may not be necessary for us to put a parapet around our roofs anymore, but that degree of concern for our neighbor is instructive.
The hard part, of course, is making a change. People can spend their entire lives trying to get a society to right a wrong, all while the majority of their neighbors are swimming blindly in their sin. May God grant us insight into our generation. And may he and our children show us mercy.
Do you have a cadidate for our generation's great blindspot? Please drop it in the comments.
Image via Unsplash
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