Canadian Mennonite
Volume 10, No. 13
June 26, 2006
Letters
This section is a forum for discussion and discernment. Letters express the opinion of the writer only, not necessarily the position of Canadian Mennonite, the five area churches or Mennonite Church Canada. Letters should address issues rather than criticizing individuals and include contact information. We will send copies of letters referring to other parties to them to provide an opportunity to respond in a future issue if their views have not already been printed in an earlier letter.
Please send letters to be considered for publication to letters@canadianmennonite.org or to Canadian Mennonite, 490 Dutton Drive, Unit C5, Waterloo, ON, N2L 6H7, “Attn: Letter to the Editor.” Letters may be edited for length, style and adherence to editorial guidelines.
Killing African farmers softly with good intentions
Forgive us, for we know not what we are doing.
With this statement, I opened my address to the executive committee of the East African Farmers Federation, a body representing the interests of 70 million individuals living on small-scale farms in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo. They had invited me to speak on the topic, “What are developing nations up against when they go to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to negotiate a fairer trade deal?”
After first making a personal apology, I apologized—rightly or wrongly—on behalf of Canada’s farming community and the Canadian public, who collectively support existing Canadian agricultural policies that utilize trade-distorting subsidized production and import tariff barriers.
I described both my farming experience in Canada, and those while living with farmers in rural Uganda. I went on to describe the lessons I learned about subsidized agriculture and international trade from my coffee-producing neighbours while living in Uganda. I further explained how I had recently left my farm in Canada and returned to East Africa at my own expense, to learn more about the challenges of East African farmers, so I would be better able to effectively lobby in Canada on their behalf.
In response to this statement, they spontaneously hooted and clapped in a manner typical of East Africans, a rousing chorus that has to be experienced to be understood. This was a very humbling but affirming experience, an emotional moment that I thank God for giving me.
After the clapping subsided, I went on to assure them that Canadian farmers are very nice people. I told them they have families and that many go to church and pray to God just like East Africans. I assured them that they carry no ill will towards Africans.
Further, I explained that most Canadian farmers—like their East African counterparts—are victims of developed world policies of subsidized agriculture that have created surplus production and depressed prices for foodstuffs.
When I told them that a Canadian dairy farmer must pay $30,000 for a “licence” to keep one cow (100 years’ income for an average Kenyan), that an average dairy farm has 50 cows and quota valued at $1.5 million, that some in the Canadian international non-governmental organization (NGO) community support these systems and the tariff protection they require, and that they believe East African farmers should set up similar systems, there were audible gasps of disbelief.
I concluded by explaining that Canada’s 20,000 supply managed farmers now have “licences” worth between $30 billion and $40 billion, giving them the motivation to vigorously defend their interests. I also pointed out that unprofitable cash crop farmers continue to demand from their government larger subsidies just to survive. Finally, I shared my belief that Canadian politicians are generally afraid of farmers due to the disproportionate amount of political power they have.
At the end of my talk, the federation chair, who was leaving for the WTO meetings in Hong Kong the next day (they were held in December), thanked me repeatedly, and, while shaking his head back and forth, remarked, “We had no idea!”
I am not a political leader. I am one small voice in a sea of competing messages. I will not claim to speak for the East African farmers. Rather, I only convey the message they send. On departing, the chair offered one simple message: “Tell them to stop killing us with their agricultural policies that do not allow us to produce and trade fairly.”
When I wrote this, Canadian leaders were in Hong Kong negotiating a new WTO agreement. Canadian negotiators left for Hong Kong with a strong directive to defend the status quo. Canada’s NGO community supports the country’s right to defend supply management practices at the WTO, although it only views it as one possible solution to addressing low profitability and food security issues for developing world farmers.
Is this your will, though? Have you thought about these issues?
I hope that the experiences I have shared will stimulate discussion on this important issue and that the next time Canadian leaders go to a WTO negotiation, they will be reflecting the will of an informed Canadian public.
Science leads to a distant God
I always get a little annoyed when someone tries to show there is no conflict between religion and science (“Pointing us to a loving God: The paradox of natural selection,” Canadian Mennonite, May 29, page 6). That is only true at a superficial level.
Fundamentally, they clash on the issue of God. One believes in a spiritual realm and owes its existence to this belief, and the other only looks for physical causes and material explanations.
The fact that science only deals with the physical and religion only with the spiritual seems, at first, to allow for a mutual respect between them. You don’t intrude on my space and I won’t intrude on yours. This is the route the late Steven J. Gould, a paleontologist and educator at Harvard University, advocated.
It seems to me, however, that very few on either side of the question are willing to do this, because we use scientific explanations in all areas of life. When we are sceptical of information someone is giving us, we try as best we can to judge its objectivity. The more objective we determine it to be, the more validity it has for us.
But there is no objective knowledge one can get about God. By definition, God cannot be proved or disproved. Therefore, if someone wants to believe in God’s existence, one can, of course. Millions of people do.
It is, however, a choice made not on any objective evidence, but for subjective reasons. It is at this point many religious people get uncomfortable. They are not content with a pure faith position. They want there to be some objective evidence to lend credence to their position.
They do this either by way of intelligent design, trying to show where the scientists have gone wrong. (How do they attempt to show it? By scientific means, of course!) Or they accept the scientific explanations and move God further back in the process to where science has not yet gone and perhaps where science is unable to go.
This seems to me to be what Glen Klassen is doing in his article. If you want to move God back, that is fine. Perhaps science will one day intrude on that territory and then you can simply move God further back.
The problem is this. With each step back, God gets further removed from any sort of action in the world. Ultimately, you end up in a deist position, where God at some point started the process but now lets everything happen naturally.
One can believe in such a God, but what is the point? Besides, if you are going to approach it scientifically, the next question after you get to God is: From where did God come?
Low-tech toilets compromise dignity
I would like to congratulate Aiden Enns on his explicit description of his waste disposal method, and particularly Canadian Mennonite for finding the space to print this (“Low-tech for the soul,” May 15, page 8).
I have a better suggestion. Dig a hole in your backyard, put a little house on it with a moon in the door, cut a hole in the seat—and you never have to flush again. Oh, by the way, cut two holes so he can go there with his buddy and have a little competition. One more thing—find an old Eaton’s catalogue and save the toilet tissue.
Mr. Enns, if you think you have invented something new, you have not. I have lived in a house with five families; the facilities were down the stairs, through a hallway, to the road, down the road for 100 metres, across a barnyard, to the loo, then you could stand in line as there were five families using it. I have also lived in a house with no electricity or running water. So to you, Mr. Enns and Canadian Mennonite, keep your suggestions and let me live like a human being in dignity and comfort.
Government called to do more to relieve poverty
As a Canadian living in Kenya, I am watching yet another food crisis kidnap thousands of childhoods. Fourteen million people in isolated regions across East Africa are struggling to find food and water—again. Seasonal rains that normally last two weeks in northeast Kenya petered out after a miserable day-and-a-half. This current drought—the worst in four years—is yet another example of our incredible propensity to ignore the root causes of poverty that grip Africa.
While the world asks, “Why again?” I hear whispers of, “It’s Africa, get used to it,” and I cringe. The situation here is so serious that farmers are herding their livestock into Nairobi’s city parks to graze. They risk fines or even arrest as they desperately try to keep these animals alive.
A top United Nations official has warned that if we wait any longer to provide immediate food aid in East Africa, it will be “absolutely catastrophic.” Yet response from major donor countries has been lethargic at best. We wait as people continue to suffer. And as always, it is the most vulnerable who succumb first—children, pregnant mothers and the elderly. I refuse to get used to this.
Addressing the root causes of poverty is our only hope of transforming the lives of the poor.
As a Canadian, I am encouraged to see my country wrestling with international poverty. The debate has not been so public since the days of Lester B. Pearson, who envisioned 0.7 per cent of our gross domestic product going to overseas aid. Thousands of Canadians are demanding more and better aid, as evidenced by their support for the Make Poverty History campaign.
Are our politicians listening? Sadly, it seems not. Our government spending on foreign aid stands at an abysmal 0.3 per cent—an international disgrace.
Until we address poverty in Africa in a serious, long-term, holistic manner, we will continue to see drought after drought. We must commit to combat poverty through sustainable development. Either we support concrete change or we accept images of starving children as normal. I, for one, refuse to get used to it.
Thanking God for better discipline techniques
I read the articles from the May 15 issue of Canadian Mennonite regarding church discipline (“Understanding church discipline” and “Whatever happened to church discipline,” pages 11-15). I commend the efforts of the magazine in your attempt to touch on topics of this nature.
Similarly, these articles remind me so much of the way schools used to discipline their children in my day. I remember classmates having to sit in the waste basket or getting strapped with the ruler in front of the class. I wonder what those children actually learned from the public humiliation they were given. New and better methods of teaching and disciplining have surfaced—and I thank the Lord for it.
I am grateful that our church uses the “gentle guidance techniques of the pastors” to influence the congregation into a clearer understanding of the difference between “right or wrong” on various issues.
Christian Churches Together an impressive gathering
I recently had the privilege of attending the annual meeting of Christian Churches Together (CCT) as an observer and representative of Mennonite Church USA. This is a truly remarkable movement, bringing together leaders from varied parts of the Christian Church who have often been at odds with one another, “to strengthen our Christian witness in the world.” The group includes leaders of large African-American denominations, moderators of evangelical and mainline Protestant churches, and Pentecostal, Catholic and Orthodox bishops. (See “MC USA considers Christian Churches Together, Canadian Mennonite, Aug. 22, 2005, page 17. Ed.)
At the gathering, in late March near Atlanta, Ga., representatives of 34 denominations and national organizations made the historic decision to formally organize as Christian Churches Together in the U.S. Eight additional churches considering participation were present as observers. MC USA leadership is continuing to gather information and counsel from our 21 area conferences as well as others about our participation in this movement.
The vision of CCT began with a diverse group of Christian leaders gathered in the fall of 2001, who expressed a longing for an expanded Christian conversation in the United States. They stated, “We lament that we are divided and that our divisions too often result in distrust, misunderstandings, fear and even hostility between us. We long for the broken body of Christ to be made whole, where unity can be celebrated in the midst of our diversity. We long for more common witness, vision and mission.”
The official formation of Christian Churches Together was delayed last year because of insufficient involvement of racial/ethnic churches. Many meetings and conversations have ensued, with the result that two of the very large black Baptist conventions are participants and the largest black Pentecostal denomination was present as an observer and anticipates becoming a full participant. CCT leadership is committed to ongoing efforts to broaden participation.
Significant attention was given to the issue of poverty. Time was spent in Bible study and hearing stories and testimonies from people who had experienced poverty. While some shared a concern that CCT not be perceived primarily as an issue-oriented group, those gathered came to consensus that addressing poverty is “central to the mission of the church and essential to our unity in Christ.”
I am encouraged and deeply moved by what God is doing in bringing the different parts of the body into relationship with each other. I continue to believe that participation in CCT by Mennonite Church USA would be a modest but significant step in that process.
Family Ties
Going with the positive
There are a couple people in my family who drive me crazy. I suspect it’s reciprocal. You likely know how this goes. I want to play; she wants to work. I want conversation; he wants peaceful silence. I’m looking for encouragement and support; she’s offering “constructive criticism.” I’m low on energy and he’s ready to party.
Our inclinations seem to run in opposite directions, which often leads us to being in opposition. We clash. Those differences lead to frustration and irritation. Our focus becomes what we don’t like about the other person. Their inadequacies, shortcomings, character flaws. We exert effort on the other to change, to fit our expectations, to conform to our image of what we want them to be. At least, I confess, that’s often the path I go down.
By and large, it’s a futile path. Change in the other person doesn’t happen. Recently, I’ve explored a new direction. What about changing myself? Specifically, what about focusing on the positives the other person possesses, instead of those qualities that I find so annoying?
This has proven to be highly effective. I imagine it’s even written about in conflict resolution and communication skills manuals. (And I truly believe I’ve even counselled others in this regard. Sometimes I am amazed by what I know and don’t practise!)
My new approach has involved one simple step. Instead of making a critical, irritated comment, I voice an affirmation towards the other person. The results have borne fruit—both inside of me and in the overall climate between me and the other person. By choosing to focus on their endearing positive qualities, I see the other person in a gentler, lovelier light. I am softened as I attend to their unique, precious characteristics. As my stance shifts, both verbally and nonverbally, the tone of our conversation lightens and is sprinkled with laughter and mutual pleasure. That is the power of grace.
A recent incident may illustrate this, though it is not to suggest that my mother is one who drives me crazy! One evening, as we left the church after my grandmother’s viewing, my mother said she needed to make a sausage casserole when she got home. It was nearing 10 o’clock, and I thought rest and bedtime were better pursuits. I was certainly weary and concerned that my mother was even more so. I began to protest and suggest alternatives, in effect, contradicting my desire to be supportive and helpful. Plus, I know that attempts to sway my mother from food preparation are doomed.
I backed off, and began to problem-solve with her about how to accomplish the task most efficiently. We arrived home and she began to assemble the necessary ingredients. As I washed my hands, my sister-in-law came alongside me. Though committed to helping, I still needed to grumble a bit to her. She waited until I finished, then said, “Well…this is what makes her who she is. Do you want to change that?”
While I was mulling this over, my mother brought the recipe to me. I recognized the cookbook from my grandmother’s church immediately, and sure enough, the recipe was Gram’s. Of course, my mother needed to make the sausage casserole that night. Grace enabled me to get out of the way, and enter into the holy space with her.
God, money and me
Credit card bondage
Credit card usage is proving to be more temptation than people can resist. The practice of “buy now, pay later” has resulted in a current outstanding balance of $50 billion to VISA and MasterCard in Canada alone. If everyone paid their card balance in full each month, the problem would diminish considerably, but many consumers carry a balance and are subjected to exorbitant interest rates.
Credit cards may have started as a convenient alternative to carrying cash, but have become a pacifier for consumers and a cash cow for retailers. Many large retailers have admitted that a majority of their profits no longer come from the sale of retail goods found on their shelves, but from the interest collected on the charge cards they issue.
What makes credit card debt so bad is just that, it’s “bad” debt. Bad debt has two characteristics. First, it’s expensive. Most credit cards charge interest rates of 18 percent or more. Some are nearly 30 percent! They may begin with no interest or with a single digit interest rate, but read the fine print of the contract. If you miss a payment or neglect to pay the balance in full, the company reserves the right to increase the interest rate to nearly stratospheric levels.
Credit card debt is also bad debt when it has been used to purchase a “depreciating asset.” Anything that begins to lose value the moment you purchase it—such as clothing, furniture, electronics, and restaurant meals—are examples of depreciating assets.
For example, you find the mountain bike of your dreams on sale for $999. You use your credit card to buy it. Before you can even put the card back in your wallet, the bike begins to lose value. If you haven’t budgeted for it, and you can only pay the minimum monthly payment (2.5 percent of the balance owing or a minimum of $10, whichever is more), it will take you nearly 13 years to pay off the bike!
Over the 13 years you will pay more than $1,100 dollars in interest in addition to the purchase price. The final cost of the bike will be more than twice the sale price and you will still be paying the bill long after the bike has become worthless or sold at a garage sale. Still happy you bought that bike?
How do you avoid paying the outrageous interest costs on your credit card? Use your card only for planned purchases, and be sure to pay your balance in full and on time each month. If you can’t afford the full payment, stop using the card. Period! Cancel the account, cut up the card and start using good old-fashioned cash for all purchases. At most, you need one credit card. Keep the one with the lowest annual fee and cancel the rest. Remember, a credit card is a tool, not free money.
Proverbs 22:7 reminds us that the borrower is servant to the lender. If we use plastic foolishly, we become bound and trapped by our debt and the servants of the credit companies. Resist the trap. Be free to place your “interest” in things you most value, rather than worshipping the god of bad debt.