June 18, 2010
Taking the Time to Make a Difference
What does it take to make a difference?
BY PAUL R. LEINGANG
(Listen to Paul read this column | Weekly podcast)
Did I hear that correctly?
On my way home from an early Sunday morning trip for a special parish celebration, I stopped at a fast food store for a breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee.
As I sat down at an isolated table, a conversation was underway in the next section. Three men were discussing automobile salvage.
They discussed the price of truck batteries versus automobile batteries, about nine dollars versus six dollars, one man said. He had apparently collected about 10 batteries to take to the salvage yard recently, and reported on his payment.
They discussed the various restrictions on what a salvage yard would accept. Gas tanks and radiators had to be drained, and at one place, an automobile’s tires had to be removed, according to one man who was part of the conversation.
The last bit of information that I heard before I left — if I heard it correctly — had to do with one man’s practice to boost his income.
“I take the garden hose and soak the inside,” he said. The water in the carpets and upholstery, of course, adds weight to the car — with or without its tires and whatever else needs to be removed before it is weighed for scrap metal.
I wish what he said was not such a common practice. But I know such dealings are part of too many transactions, all the way from the local junkyard to international trade by global companies.
I remember the outrage — even revulsion — that I felt, as an American who grew up on a farm, when I first learned about “blending” practices used by international grain sellers.
One of the great pleasures of summer on the farm for me was walking to the wheat field, pulling a few heads of wheat from their stalks and rubbing them between my hands. The grains would emerge, and the chaff would blow away in the wind. The ripe kernals were hard, but they tasted fresh and wonderful. I recalled the Gospel story of the apostles doing just the same thing.
The truth is hard to hear, that one of the largest companies in the world desecrated — and maybe continues to desecrate — the sanctity of the grain given to us by God for our daily bread.
The company, according to published reports some years ago, was repeatedly cited for “blending” — that is, adding foreign matter to its grain.
One account gave an example of an export contract that allowed for as much eight percent of the grain volume to be foreign matter. If the grain provided by American farmers had only a little foreign matter, the exporting company would mix in dirt and gravel — until the maximum variation was reached.
The result? Foreign buyers paid wheat prices for dirt. The company made unjust profits. And the world judged American farmers on the evidence in hand. Our “amber waves of grain” were soiled for a few dollars more.
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There is no real difference between adding water weight to a junk car and adding dirt and gravel to grain intended to feed another nation.
“Do not act dishonestly in using measures of length or weight or capacity,” the Lord said to Moses, as told in Leviticus 19. “You shall have a true scale and true weights,” the passage continues, reminding the hearers that the one who gives these laws is the Lord, your God, “who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”
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The challenge of Christian life is to be honest in dealings with others on a personal level, and also to demand justice from others in their dealings.
It is not enough for one to say, I am fair in all of my dealings, while refusing to confront unfairness and injustice on the part of those who lead our cities and our civil society, allowing the poor to be cheated and exploited by neglect or even by design.
We are not called to turn away from what we hear, or to fear offending those who are doing wrong. Some days, it takes outrage to begin to make a difference.
Comments are welcome at office@cfm.org or the Christian Family Movement, P.O. Box 925, Evansvsille, IN 47706-0925