Jesus said that we are all responsible. It doesn’t matter if we think we have a good excuse to just keep on walking by and ignore all the injustice along the road of our supply chains. And since we are already responsible, the fact that we also benefit at the end of these supply chains makes us even more responsible. There might be an excuse to give your supervisor about why you just walked on by; there might be an excuse to give your shareholders to just walk on by; there might be an excuse to give your customers to just walk on by; but there is no moral excuse for how we are now treating our neighbors who are falling along the side of the road of the global supply chains, which are now the world’s main roads. And if we are part of the faith community, there are no excuses at all.
But the very good news is that there are many Good Samaritans walking along the road now—especially from a younger generation—and they are stopping to help those who have been beaten, robbed, and left for dead. Some are religious believers and some are not, but they all tend to believe that their neighbor is not defined by color, creed, religion, or borders and that we are all God’s children and need to be treated fairly. Whether they are high school students in America who text each other or the young people working in dangerous conditions in the mines of eastern Congo, they are getting connected.
The movement is aiming toward new relationships and new rules. Building relationships is usually the beginning of establishing some new rules. Of course, no rules are going to fix every problem. It takes work, vigilance, monitoring, and a continuing effort to transform the conditions and contexts in which people participate in supply chains. But we continue to hear that fairer rules really do help the people caught in dangerous working conditions or in bloody and violent conflicts. Fairer rules and better protective standards are the best step to make sure that we—whether manufacturers, investors, or consumers—don’t just walk on by.
This excerpt is taken from On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good by Jim Wallis. ©2013 by Jim Wallis. Published by Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.
Order from Amazon.com: On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good
