an open letter to food dye on food dye's most favoritist day

Here we are. October 31 - Halloween.  

This is the day each year that I turn to my dear husband and say, "We are so lucky to live far away from Target, Walmart, and all that flippin candy."  

Five young children ALL hopped-up on sugar and dye VS. two tired parents, that right there is an ugly equation. It is like David and Goliath if David drank ten Red-Bulls and had a Skittles IV running into his veins before he picked up the sling and Goliath was no strapping giant but rather an average sized, weary and overweight, pack-a-day smoking forty year old.

Sadly or joyfully, depending on whom you ask, we find ourselves smack in the middle of Halloween Central this year. 

Open letters seem to be the way people get things done on the Interweb. Ahem.
That said, here is mine.

~     ~      ~

Dear Food Dye,  (that's you, Blue 1, Red 40, Yellow 5 & 6)

I suppose you are happy. How could you not be? Today is your day to reign supreme. 

Thousands of otherwise pleasant children will be yours today. You must feel so smug. 

Skittles, M&Ms, Dots, Licorice, and more ... Little brains will valiantly attempt to process your petroleum base. Many will fail.  My daughter will be among them.

My child, the one that is joyful, loving, kind and concerned about others, will be utterly enraged today. 

My child, the one that likes to encourage me with sweet words and strong hugs will turn instantly into an angry and unrecognizable being that screams loudly about how much she hates everything, and how she wishes she was not in our family.  

That is what you do to her, food dye.

I need no further evidence of your evils, but for those that do, the evidence is out there. Many children that react in anger easily are doing so because their brains are sensitive to all your synthetic colors.  

Somehow you have managed to finagle your way into all sorts of foods. We cannot even buy ice cream or yogurt without checking for you. We abhor the ways you have found to hurt our girl.

Today, your day, makes ten months of knowing what you do to our daughter.  For ten months we have avoided much pain and drama by watching to make sure our daughter doesn't ingest you.  

Last December when we first tried a dye-free diet - and within a week we saw huge changes in our child, and we literally cried in relief.  Our daughter wasn't terrible, unreasonable, or out of control after all.  It was all your fault. 

Go ahead and find your way into people's homes. Do your damage tonight.  But for all my friends that tell me they don't understand why their sons and daughters are so irritable and angry, I plan to tell tell them about you.  

In protest,

Tara Livesay

~   ~   ~

Source: Wikipedia 

Current seven[edit]

In the US, the following seven artificial colorings are permitted in food (the most common in bold) as of 2007:

• FD&C Blue No. 1 – Brilliant Blue FCF, E133 (blue shade)
• FD&C Blue No. 2 – Indigotine, E132 (indigo shade)
• FD&C Green No. 3 – Fast Green FCF, E143 (turquoise shade)
• FD&C Red No. 40 – Allura Red AC, E129 (red shade)
• FD&C Red No. 3 – Erythrosine, E127 (pink shade, commonly used in glacé cherries)^[11]
• FD&C Yellow No. 5 – Tartrazine, E102 (yellow shade)
• FD&C Yellow No. 6 – Sunset Yellow FCF, E110 (orange shade)

See this current article by the Executive Director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest - read it in its entirety here.

See this website that helped us with our child's food dye sensitivity. 

~   ~    ~

While this adorable girl is clearly dressing up this year as a peace loving hippie-child, the jury is out until after this wretched holiday filled with artificially colorful candy is finished.  

We cannot be so sure she will give peace a chance. 

(In reality, high level negotiations regarding the candy are underway. All parties are meeting peaceably and plans are being made. Colorful candy will be traded for chocolate or dye-free treats, or carrots.) 

eleven years of adventure = joy that cannot be quantifed

2002

2013 ~ 11 year adoption anniversary

Joy Joy Joy.  Sometimes I let life circumstances suck it out of me. I get heavy-hearted and cynical and just.so.down.on.the.world.   

I can unequivocally say that the number one remedy for my waning joy is these kids. 

Last Wednesday when I went to the museum with them, it was because I KNEW I needed to step away from a troubling situation we've been facing.  I knew that I needed to experience child-like joy. Watching them play Prairie people in that museum was just what the doctor ordered.  I wish I could chuck everything, and spend my whole life watching them play pretend in a museum. Forever happy. The end.  (And, to quote my grandfather, "You may as well wish in one hand and #*$% in the other for all the good wishing will do you.) 

Today, I'm feeling that weight again, feeling that joy-suck. Therefore, I am choosing to focus a few minutes on the special occasion we mark this week, the anniversary of Isaac and Hope's adoption. May it bring me (and maybe you) some joy.

~           ~           ~

Eleven years ago today we landed at the Minneapolis/St.Paul airport with Isaac and Hope in our arms. The flight from Miami, Florida to MSP seemed endless. It was as if we were suspended in air, sucked into a time-warp, in a slow-motion movie.  Never has a three hour flight taken that long. (The explosive diarrhea diapers and changing them in an airplane bathroom certainly played a role in the horrible turtle-paced ride in the sky.)

It reminds me of what Lydia says lately.  We tell her, "Lydia, we are only going to be gone three hours."  She replies, "Three hours?!?! That will take like 200 days."  (Everything is 200 days to her.) Yes. The flight on October 30th, 2002, was a three hour and 200 day flight.

Landing in Minnesota with them in our arms, going down that escalator to the baggage claim area, seeing my parents faces, Britt and Paige, my sister, our friends, my cousin and aunt, Troy's family ... Every step of that afternoon is etched into my memory, which is saying something because my memory is truly sucktacular.   

We had arrived in Florida with these two wonderful babies the day before. They were legally our son and daughter and granted citizenship upon arrival that afternoon of October 29th. We went to Wyndham Gardens Hotel in Miami and gave them warm baths and stared at them in awe until morning when we took them to MSP in their American flag T-shirts to meet their adoring extended family. 

Their adoption has become the point at which our entire lives took a new direction.  It is a pivotal moment in our marriage and our family.  The wild journey we couldn't have planned or predicted began with this adoption. 

Mesi Senye pou Ayiti ak timoun sa yo. (Thank you Lord for Haiti and these children. Amen.)

We are especially humbled by the growing relationships we have with Isaac and Hope & Phoebe's first families.  Only a God of amazing and creative love and a God of restoration and healing could ever have provided us such a unique opportunity to know and love Isaac and Hope's first families.  

I did not take what took place in 2002 for granted. I still don't. I never will.  Our lives changed dramatically because of these two Haitian children and we are so grateful. 

Guest Post by Midwife, Roxanne

From the day I heard the word “midwife” spoken, I knew that was what I wanted to be.  Before I knew anything about labor, or birth, or life itself, somehow I knew that was my destiny, what I was created for.

I began attending births as an apprentice at the tender age of 18.  I was at my sixth delivery at Family Birth Services, that hot July of 1988, when I realized why my DNA had called out for this job.

We were attending a reserved Muslim woman of Arab decent, age 32, having her first child.  She had dilated efficiently enough, but then, because the baby was posterior, had trouble pushing her daughter out.  As the midwives did what midwives do- repositioning, encouraging, coaching, maneuvering, consulting, trying new positions- I ended up doing what the apprentices often naturally did at that time- taking the role of support person and doula. I ended up on the bed next to her along with her concerned husband, providing not just emotional support, but physical, as we got her into a variety of positions together in an attempt to bring her baby under the pubic bone.

As she pushed, she became less and less inhibited, and more and more desperate.  With her arms around my neck, her hand in a vise grip around my hand, and her sweat mingled with mine, she bore down in response to her midwife’s directions. I felt the pain and the anguish and the desperate desire for the baby to come right along with her.

When at last she triumphantly delivered her first born daughter after three hours of pushing, she and I together explosively burst into tears of mutual joy and relief.  As she grabbed my face and kissed me passionately in gratitude, my life’s calling fell into place.

I wasn’t able to define it at the time, but I can now.  Under what other circumstances would I been seeing, much less sharing the agony and joy of this woman?  She and I, and her husband, and the midwives, in that brief eternal three hours went beyond the veil of social, cultural, racial and religious boundaries that would have normally separated us, dropped all our inhibitions together, and brought her child forth.

The more I attended women, the more I noticed the uniqueness of that day or night when the outside world ceases to exist, creating a bubble of time within which a woman labors.  Inside this bubble, the rules change. Under what other circumstances does a woman lay aside her coverings- both literal and emotional and become so utterly without reserve, pretense or hypocrisy?

That’s why I love most about being a part of this special time of labor and birth.  You can’t pretend during natural childbirth.  You can’t act like you have it all together.  You can’t bluff your way through and act like it isn’t hard.  You can’t act at all. 

You have to be real.  And those who are with you when you birth share that moment of realness. Because un-medicated childbirth is as real and raw and honest as it gets in this life.

Now that I’m more than twice the age I was on that pivotal July afternoon, I’ve come to value honesty and transparency even more than I did then. I’ve learned that people have many motives for the things they do and say that aren’t fully honest, and many ways they act that are misleading.  I’ve come to despise insincerity above almost everything else short of a full lie. And I’ve been told plenty of those too.

But when I go into the birthing room, I leave the insincerity and lies behind, and go to a place of ultimate realness.  This is the place I am most at peace, where I find the antidote for the superficiality that inundates most of the human experience.

The blue light of early morning slips in between the blinds of the same birthing room where I was sweating twenty-five years ago. Today I calmly sit in front of a woman from Nigeria pushing on the birthing stool.  My hands hold the head of her crowning child, and my eyes hold her eyes.  She tells me she can’t.  I tell her she can.

And her baby slips out into my hands.

**Read Roxanne's Blog HERE. **

~       ~       ~   

The incredible Haitian women that pass through the Heartline Maternity Center are with us weekly for 7 or 8 months of their pregnancy and for the first 6 months of their baby's life. We have that small window into their lives. That window is a gift. I cannot say it better than Roxanne. During this time we are given a beautiful chance to get beyond a lot of the social constructs and barriers that divide us.

"I wasn’t able to define it at the time, but I can now.  Under what other circumstances would I been seeing, much less sharing the agony and joy of this woman?  She and I, and her husband, and the midwives, in that brief eternal three hours went beyond the veil of social, cultural, racial and religious boundaries that would have normally separated us, dropped all our inhibitions together, and brought her child forth." 

I want more than anything to honor the women that I am privileged to work with in Haiti. I am so grateful to the experienced midwives that have taken time to patiently teach and train and walk with me and who are continuing to do that right now. I'm scared and I'm excited and someday I hope to be as gifted and knowledgeable at this work as these wonderful (REAL) women I've been so blessed to train under in Texas, Minnesota, and Haiti.

Field Trip

Noah and a whale head

not bound for careers in weather

Noah begged to take this home.  Why take a stuffed dead Armadillo? #becauseTexas

Haiti and a Haitian girl

We spent the entire day at a mainly empty museum and had about as much fun as can be imagined. By far my favorite part of the day was the time spent in the "prairie room" where the kids went into character.  They had the room all to themselves for more than an hour and listening to their take on prairie life was truly beautiful and hilarious entertainment for my soul.  I took a few notes on the funniest things ... 

Noah was a late joiner to playing pretend. He's at that too cool age (the one Isaac will never reach). When he finally joined - he was all in. He had a southern drawl and he said, "My name is Uncle Jimmy and I done lost my wife. I carry that pain everywhere."  I was being as quiet as I could because the pure entertainment value couldn't be beat.  Hope (aka Audrey - the boss of everyone on the Prairie, except maybe Lydia, who has no boss) said, "Jimmy, I am so sorry to learn of your wife's passing. How did she die?" 

Noah/Uncle Jimmy said, with the straightest face ever, "It was a Bison stampede. They trampled my woman, those Bison."  

Lydia (Julianna) "worked with animals" therefore anybody else trying to milk Abigail the cow got a very quick and stern verbal beat-down as Julianna informed them "I work with the animals on this Prairie." She wore a vest and hat and gloves while milking the cow, but put her apron and bonnet on once she got home. If anyone got near her cow, off went the apron and out came the vest. Phoebe (Sarah) carried pots and pans everywhere and incorrectly named all the vegetables growing in the garden. She stirred and cooked and filled buckets with water. 

Isaac (Obadiah) was the husband of Audrey and pretty much got bossed around about what needed fixing. Always thinking, he wondered aloud if this wasn't possibly a time of slavery in the United States, to which Audrey/Hope quickly stated "We don't participate in that nonsense. We are against anyone that does." That was that with the slavery discussion and the little family on the Prairie had a perfect afternoon of cooking over the fire and taking their horse and buggy to town over and over and over again. The only trouble came when Obadiah went to town with Uncle Jimmy for three days and Audrey was none too pleased with his poor communication and the fact that the women-folk had been left to deal with the men's chores. Obadiah said, "You know we don't even know what cell phones are on this here prairie so how was I supposed to tell you when I got stuck in town?" 

First we form habits, and then they form us.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about how we respond to injustice. I'm not thinking only about giant systematic injustice; you know, those things that feel impossible. I am also considering the things that are unjust on a smaller scale too, the things we see in our everyday lives. 

I'm thinking about it in broad terms and I'm thinking about it in very specific terms. I'm thinking about it in terms of my own responsibility. 

I've been noticing that sometimes when you take a stand against unethical or immoral behavior, it is fairly common to have a handful of Christians telling you that you are wrong to talk about it. You should have stayed quiet, why didn't you follow Matthew 18 and lots of other things along those lines. (Typically private confrontation was tried and failed, but those that hate public discord or confrontation cannot necessarily be bothered with those facts.) 

More than two decades ago the church I grew up in went through a giant scandal when I was a teenager. Multiple victims surfaced to say that they had been sexually abused by the 20-year pastor of our congregation. It was a horrible shock and not surprisingly it destroyed many relationships when the news broke. Some people tried to find ways to try to keep it quiet and in so doing they said to the victims, "Our church reputation matters more to us than you." Other people worked very hard to get to the truth, to expose everything, no matter how embarrassing and horrifying it was. (the second group - those are my people)

In the spirit of transparency, that entire saga at my former church very much shaped me and my responses to injustice, whether the perpetrator professes to be a Christian or not. I always feel fierce anger at dishonesty and cover-ups of bad behavior and injustice.

I had planned to write a lot of my own thoughts about the topic, but I recognize that I'm angry at some specific things right now and it comes across in my communication. That to say, I should write less.  All of these thoughts led me to pose this question on Facebook last week, the responses are thought provoking and interesting.

"Agree or disagree? "Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose the ability to defend ourselves and those we love." Do you think there is truth to this?" 

• Some of the REPLIES - Names removed from each reply...
• Mm. I agree with the first part, but I'm not sure if we LOSE the ability to defend ourselves. I feel like anyone, even someone who is completely passive, can come back from it and fight injustices in the world. We might completely lose the desire to fight injustice though.

  October 15 at 10:49am · Like · 1
• I'm not sure the context around the quote. Is it meant to imply that we must always resist or oppose or fight back? Is that what 'action' we are supposed to take? If so, I would disagree due to my scriptural views.
  
  Jesus said we should respond by turning the other cheek, praying for our enemies, etc. So to me when people act unjustly towards me, what might appear as "inaction" is really an appeal to God's sovereignty and handing things over to Him. Not responding is a way of giving room to allow God to respond. 
  
  That quote is awful absolute, and seems to be situated firmly on one end of the spectrum. But could inaction be a way of training ourselves to submit to God, training ourselves to give him room to speak/act/move? Who is to say that never ever takes place? God told Moses to stand and be still, to give him a chance to fight for his people. Moses lost the ability to defend himself, but gained the ability to know God as his deliverer. 
  
  Either way, whether this is coming from a Christian view or not, you have to allow room for God and his action, his plan in your equation of justice.

  October 15 at 10:58am · Edited · Like · 2
• I think it's harder and harder in the age if social networking and constant information because we hear about far more injustices, loss, pain, etc than we could ever affect, correct, or invest in. Or maybe this is what I tell myself to feel better?

  October 15 at 10:51am via mobile · Like
• Not sure what you mean by "lose the ability to defend ourselves". Do you mean we become so numb to it (injustice) that we accept it (without a fight) when acted out on us (fatalism)?

  October 15 at 10:55am · Unlike · 1
• 

  Tara Livesay To clarify ... I come at this from a Christian worldview but that doesn't mean that other Christians need to agree with me. I am basically wondering if continually stepping away from confronting injustice in the world (avoiding conflict for whatever reason) has caused us to be passive people? I agree Jesus says turn the other cheek but there are also places where we are commanded to fight for those that are powerless and at times that means standing up to injustice. Yes, I mean we become numb to it and that we are sort of used to shrugging at what we see as injustices and thinking "not my problem." We accept it as normal and not something we need to confront. It is a super general question, I know ... but I am happy to read many takes on this and use it as totally informal research. 

  October 15 at 10:56am · Like
• I do agree!

  October 15 at 10:57am · Like
• Confronting evil is always good.

  October 15 at 10:58am via mobile · Like
• Agree!

  October 15 at 10:58am · Like
• Tara I agree with the general sentiment of the quote, and would readily agree that our increasing ability to detach ourselves from the realities of injustice and insulate ourselves is making us more passive people.
  
  I am just, in general, hesitant to get on board with any absolute stance "always", "never", "every", etc. Ecclesiastes 7:18 says, "It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes."
  
  I agree we need to be more assertive and less passive towards injustice. I absolutely disagree that relenting from action can only ever be detrimental to the soul. Scripture shows us examples of how inaction is sometimes beneficial, sometimes not, and how taking action is sometimes beneficial and sometimes not.

  October 15 at 11:03am · Edited · Unlike · 3
• No. I've learned, with age i guess, that sometimes to go into Neutral, first, before i act, gives me a better perspective. a better place to decide to act from.

  October 15 at 11:01am · Like · 1
• I think there is a tendency, when feeling scarcity or fear, for many people to batten down the hatches and narrow the scope of what injustice is. With nurtured empathy and great courage are people able to see and act against injustice that does not touch their own lives directly.

  October 15 at 11:01am · Like
• 
  

  "Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby *eventually* lose the ability to defend ourselves and those we love." I agree with this statement but don't think its because people think its "not my problem"but are afraid of what to do or how to handle a situation. in the end I think fear holds us back.

  October 15 at 11:03am · Like
• We were talking about this the other night at small group. So much corruption going on in our small little world and how do we confront it. I think it takes a great deal of discernment and timing AND boldness when God tells us to do something. I am afraid that most of us are AFRAID of what can happen to us when we get involved. For example, there is a guy with a really shady orphanage in our hood. We want to report him and get those kids out of that situation, but doing so can bring a ton of danger to our family and ministry. How we go about it is not a joke. We need God's help. Also, here in Haiti we see so much injustice that it's overwhelming. How do we remain compassionate and tender to those who need our strength and not become numb/apathetic (like them)? I don't know if I have all the answers to this. Have you read the book "Good News about Injustice"? It really helped me work through so much of these thoughts. 

  October 15 at 11:05am · Like · 1
• Yes I do think there is truth to that. It's just difficult in today's society to speak up because you almost have to be in fear of your life. Sometimes the safe thing seems to be to mind your own business....

  October 15 at 11:08am via mobile · Like · 1
• I think more often than not we are called to fight evil with love which is very hard to do. Jesus often dealt with people with love and kindness and that is how he brought them to repentance. He did not judge them but taught them. Here is a list of bible verses about dealing with evil. I have seen and felt great hurts from people and have caused some unknowingly by dealing with matters the wrong way. I have learned a lot by asking God to change my heart...that change came through feeling great judgment and persecution from loved ones. I then knew what it was like to be judged. I think if we truly trust God, we have to trust what He says about how to handle these matters.

  October 15 at 11:12am · Like ·
• I just read Anne Frank's diary and it seems that she didn't ever get numb to the injustices she experienced and witnessed.

  October 15 at 11:13am via mobile · Like · 2
• I would disagree with both parts. While it is easy to get jaded and not do anything the position that all injustices you see you must say something about would leave you no time to live. Id say the pick your fights model is the way to go. We are born with a sense of right and wrong even those on death row have a code they follow so IMO we never "lose" the ability it is just like a muscle we must exercise our righteous indignation once in a while to make it more effective.

  October 15 at 11:17am · Like
• I see the truth in that. For me, I found that I was quite complacent to justice until I was humbled and broken to find God real. Then I found that He led me to what is good and what He requires of me...it came naturally...to work for justice, to love mercy and show it, and to do it all humbly. I suppose I am no longer so complacent because I pursue justice and that builds upon each experience, but I must first acknowledge that God first gave/gives me the desire to so act ... I wasn't able to care on my own.

  October 15 at 11:21am · Like · 3
• I do think that when we see an injustice and don't act... and do that over and over, we become numb to it's effects.

  October 15 at 11:26am · Like
• I'd agree if we understand that sometimes (often) prayer is the form that action takes. When we cannot or should not act otherwise, we are still called to act on behalf of the oppressed in this way...

  October 15 at 11:31am · Like · 5
• Agree. It's like the numbing effect.

  October 15 at 11:34am via mobile · Like
• ...I agree with the poster above that in maturity I've learned to pause and think before I act. Sometimes I am tired or grumpy and how I might choose to handle something if I act immediately isn't the way God wants me to act.. Often what I perceive as injustice may have more sides to the story too.  I'm thankful God has taught me to be more discerning and to pray and think before I cause trouble I regret.

  October 15 at 11:34am via mobile · Like
• I find myself getting defensive reading this quote, which I know means is my own problem not the quote. I think it's true to a point but the number of injustices seen that I can't act on makes me queasy and want to give up. Sometimes my motto towards injustice just has to be Ti kal pa ti kal so that I'll keep moving forward.

  October 15 at 12:09pm via mobile · Like · 4
• If it leads to overall apathy and consumerism, yes! If it leads to action, having first things first (ie. taking care of your own locus of control first, your own primary relationships,etc...) then I would trust it. I know Martin Luther King Jr was SUCH an extraordinary leader to the detriment of his family. Could he have not done both?
  October 15 at 12:10pm via mobile · Like
• Totally agree. Each time we do not speak out or act, it becomes easier to accept injustice and look away. Ultimately I think if this is the approach you take you become numb or accepting to these things (although I also think that it may be possible that if you have a certain kind of personality, it may lead to great guilt, unhappiness and depression for not living your life according to your moral "code". Interestingly, this happened to my 11 year old son last year in school. He is an old soul with a huge love for people and great empathy. He also has a very clear sense of right and wrong and stands up even when it isn't easy. He was put in a horrible situation last year by an incompetent teacher. He spoke up about something that was very wrong in his classroom and was told by a counselor that he should just be quiet and ignore the wrongdoing. He couldn't do it- although it would have been an easier and less painful path. He actually started having tension headaches and horrible stomach aches and was in tears at night, talking about the fact that he was ashamed and HAD to speak out, that those are the people who change the world with their courage, and that he had to do the right thing rather than the easy thing (and what the teacher was telling him to do) Sorry, maybe this gave two different answers to your question....

  October 15 at 12:41pm · Like
• Here's the part that I struggle with: isn't NOT acting sometimes better than acting in an ineffective, possibly hurtful way? I no longer believe the idea of "it's better than nothing." Sometimes doing nothing is better. For instance, handing cash to a kid on the streets of PAP because I'm frustrated at the injustice of his situation may actually cause MORE injustice for him. I don't think by doing nothing in that situation, I'm causing myself to become more numb to the injustices in the world. And I believe that there is just SO MUCH injustice in this world that we cannot humanly act every time we witness injustice. Do I believe that we can get in a habit of passivity? Yes. But I do not necessarily believe that every failure to act leads us to numbness.

  October 15 at 2:27pm · Like · 1
• Disagree. I think of all the injustices around. I can't act on them all. In this day and age one needs to be a bit numb to it lest you become overwhelmed by the enormity of it. Does it hurt my character? Doubtful. Does it make me less willing to fight for my own? Absolutely not. If anything it makes me more reactive. You really have to understand the situation before you can respond properly. The quote feels more like a guilt trip than anything else.

  October 15 at 2:41pm via mobile · Like · 1
• I think there are billions of battles out there--battles of injustice worth fighting for...and our work is the work of discerning which ones are ours to fight and then what that fight ultimately looks like: waiting and prayer can be effective ways to fight. But I think each one needs to be discerned individually so there can't be a blanket "rule". This kind of discernment takes much more willingness to listen and trust God than most of us make time for....

  October 15 at 3:39pm via mobile · Like · 8
• Just because you don't act on an injustice does not mean that you are insensitive to it or don't care about it. I agree with Sarah that we have to pick our battles as the Holy Spirit leads us. There were many injustices in Jesus day that he did not try to right because this was not His mission.

  October 15 at 4:11pm · Like · 1
• I am a firm believer in living what you believe. I find that I'm called to live my politics and religion, not talk about it. There are many who think liking a status or picture is activism. I don't feel it's nearly enough for me. I think acting or donating money or time should be something you pray about, be called to do and understand the ripple effects of your actions. Are you donating something and putting someone out of work, etc? I think many things are not what they seem at a hurried rushed face value (like when people quickly donated to Red Cross in disasters w/o holding them accountable comes to mind). Injustice can be seen in the same light. Many can jump on a band wagon w/o doing their own research or from many angles. Maybe it's not injustice or wrong. You need to better understand the situation before you pull out your gun and shoot.

  October 16 at 4:53am via mobile · Edited · Like
• YESSSSSS!!!! When we fail to act, we betray ourselves/our own conscience. This is the premise for one of my favorite books, "Leadership & Self-Deception." SOOOOO GOOD!!!

  October 15 at 5:04pm · Like
• 
  

  If everyone fights for justice where God has placed us, we don't need to worry about going somewhere else to fight for it. God has His people everywhere.

  October 15 at 11:44pm · Like · 1
• For what it's worth, a missionary to south Africa said, "a need doesn't constitute a call" and it impacted me. seems you have a lot of input here, so i'll leave it at that.

  October 16 at 12:46am · Like · 1
• Integrity is built and maintained daily

  October 16 at 2:02am via mobile · Like
• True forever

  October 16 at 9:56pm · Like

Privately, I got a response from our friend Josh, a Pastor we know in Texas. I am quoting a few portions of his response below. (I took some portions out, which makes it jump around a bit.)

"One of my overused mantras is that without transformation there is not salvation. CS Lewis offers a beautiful image of eschatological judgment in book 7 of the Narnia series. I’m paraphrasing, but he essentially says that everyone came before Aslan, there was no choice about that. And they were all filled with fear. Either that fear turned to adoration and they went to his (Aslan’s) right or that fear turned to hatred and they went to his left. What I really like about this allusion to Matthew 25, is Lewis’s theological suggestion. In the scene it strikes me that individuals are judged not based on what they believe or say, but on who they are. And who they are is who they have become through a million choices made over the course of their life. A more explicit way to make this point is in when in the Great Divorce, Lewis says in the end there will be two kinds of people. Those who say to God "Thy will be done", and those to whom God says, "Thy will be done."

"Those million choices we make that form our character range from how I love my wife and children to what I choose to think about someone when I’m angry at them to how much and what kind of food I consume. Repetition of these choices carve out a disposition within me that eventually defines me."  

"All choices are important but we’d be silly if we didn’t acknowledge that large motif in the biblical narrative especially the new testament is God’s concern for the marginalized."

"At our church we have been taking that slow journey with Luke from Galilee to Jerusalem. The church has historically assigned one of the four images in revelation and Ezekiel to the each of the gospels. Luke is given the image of the ox, both for his pace and because Jesus seems to have this yoke around his neck carrying the concerns of the poor. Or as missiologist David Bosch says, “Luke is a gospel for the poor and the rich."

"... That parable of the rich man and Lazarus was a common type of parable in Jesus’ day. In most versions of this parable where there’s a great reversal of the poor and the rich, the rich person in hell is permitted to go back and warn his friends and family. But in Jesus’ surprise ending the rich man isn’t. Here’s what Jesus says in v 31 He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

"In no small stroke of irony Jesus would in fact come back from the dead. Here’s my take, the one miracle even the God of resurrection can’t do, is to overcome the apathetic heart. I think this is probably a good reading of blaspheme of the holy spirit."

"So … to your question, yes the continued decisions of apathetic response is not only dangerous, but potentially damning...In short our choices are exercises in practicing eternity."

In hindsight I did not word my question well and I should have more carefully thought about it but the responses were interesting and challenging in spite of the sloppy question. 

I am stuck on the idea that our responses become our habit and that sometimes our habits make us passive and even apathetic toward injustice. Apathy is problematic and is a difficult thing to change and overcome. I know that many would disagree with me on that, but that is where I landed.

First we form habits, and then they form us.