Earlier this year, the students working in my office had agreat conversation after a “spoken word” event.  This student, Bethany, brought to light what many of herpeers had been talking about:  It’s very “in” right now to like social justice.  This term is thrown around so much we have lost it’s very meaning.  It is the new “sexy.”  A person can easily go out in their Tom’s shoes, carrying their Whole Foods reusable bags, and buy organic fair trade coffee.  They might even jump back into their hybrid car and go home to their eco-friendly appliances and watch a documentary on what is happening with the AIDS in Africa and then donate money to that cause.  Those are great starts and definitely good things!

This past week Mia Farrow went on the Larry King show to talk about her “hunger strike” for 40 days to bring attention to the Sudan crisis.

  Mind you, I have been on a media fast this week, so I didn’t watch it, I just read the article quickly before I left for the mountains (that’s another blog), but something oozed in while I read the article and I haven’t been able to express it until now.  Mia Farrow’s intentions are good, but is this what is needed right now? Women do not need to see more women starving themselves to bring an issue into the light. It takes a person of great privilege to “give up food for 40 days.”  In the end we learn more about how much we can take rather than the person or people we were supposed to be fasting for. 

In today’s day and age, giving up food is something of an accomplishment.  Women who ate too much at lunch are lauded when they are too full to eat dinner.  It is called discipline to some, bingeing to others.  A woman who is seen as giving up chocolate or coffee or trying a new diet is easy to come by.  A woman diving into her passions is another thing entirely.  I love what all of these things stands for – Tom’s shoes, reusable bags, eco-friendly things -- but they are just that: things. We’re still not connected to people or to the cause if we are just collecting things or giving up food because we feel like that is what’s best.  I’m sure if people in Africa heard we were giving up food for 40 days they would think we were nuts. 

Social justice is not justice when people still do not have food or the disabled homeless person on the corner is walked right by as if they don’t exist.  The real work of social justice is not sexy.  It means moving into a neighborhood where all of the people don’t look and act like you.  It means joining collaborative partnerships where you can learn from and help the poor because they really are people with great ideas too, sometimes they just haven’t had a chance.  It means sharing your time with a kid or elderly person to learn their story and build a relationship.  But you see, all of this takes a commitment, it takes time… and the shoes and the car and the bags well, they fit so nicely into the lives we’ve already created. We just substitute out the “other” instead of really changing ourlifestyle. 

God calls us to be in the world and not of the world and as more and more RED shirts are sold and “paper or plastic” becomes a thing of thepast, I wonder if we really know what this means. As I look at Mia Farrow giving up food for 40 days, I wonder what would happen if we all gave up Facebook for 40 days or our ipods… I think that is the real sacrifice these days.  Then we would have time to commit to other things… to justice issues, to people.  Because social justice stops being sexy when there is a face and story behind the matter.