Let's Say Grace. Why?
I'm sorry God, but I'm not going to say grace anymore. So, when someone says “grace” around the dinner table what is actually happening? Are we thanking an invisible superior being for providing us with the requirements for life or is it simply a benign tradition that is barely meaningful anymore? I do not want to appear flippant in this discussion, so please don’t dismiss my message before it’s given. I really like the idea of humbling ourselves and acknowledging the provision of nourishment to our body. I simply am questioning the reasoning in the current day and age.
When my family sits down to a nightly meal, there are many factors to consider when we give thanks. Did we grow the food in the backyard? To whom are we praying that we are able to facilitate the differences in religious acknowledgement around the table? Why are we grateful to anyone who is not already seated at the table and to whom we can speak directly?
I guess my question here is one that appears to point at a rather negative connotation between religion and capitalism. Why should I thank “God” for anything to do with the current supply of food? Why should I give thanks for a meal I’ve prepared myself? Why should I thank God for a meal my partner and I have worked our entire week, away from our loved ones, to obtain the earnings to prepare? Why should I give thanks for a meal a supermarket distributed with more focus on profit maximisation and market share than nutrition? Why should I give thanks for a meal that has required a farmer to battle depression, or worse, to harvest? Why should I give thanks for a meal for which Monsanto has genetically modified the seeds? Why should I give thanks for eating the flesh of an animal I am not prepared to kill myself but has been carelessly packaged by a mass producer? Why should I give thanks for a meal that has provided so much plastic waste that it is going to take anywhere between 15 and 1,000 years to break down in landfill? Why should I give thanks for a meal containing sugars, pesticides, insecticides, fertilisers, artificial additives and colourings that are potentially life-threatening and carcinogenic? I don’t understand it. God certainly did not provide this bounty. Monsanto is now the god of seed production. My employer allowed my family to eat. Yet, Christians still train their kids to sit down and pray to their God in gratefulness for the genetically modified, sugared, artificially-everythinged food!
Am I just plain stupid? Has God completely lost the plot here or has Christianity simply failed to acknowledge the reality of societal changes? I cannot fathom why Christianity is not the front runner of the environmental movement. Their Bible depicts a creation of the Earth in the opening chapters. It’s probably the most readily read passage in the book by all those people that think they’re capable of reading that document from cover to cover. (My personal congratulations and commiserations with those that have achieved such a feat.) If Christians truly believed that creation story, I would expect to see them at the front of every picket line to protect the Earth. In my years, I haven’t seen a single sign stating “God loves creation” except if it relates to some sort of abortion protest. Humans were only one minor part of the creation story. What about the trees, animals, skies, air? Why aren’t Christians fighting against Monsanto’s rapid genetic engineering seed takeover of the agricultural world? It’s in complete opposition to the creation story. With genetically modified seeds acting in the way seeds do and cross pollinating all other natural crops, I would have thought Christians cared about natural versus artificial; God’s creation versus man’s manipulation of this creation. What about this body being a temple business? Not applicable anymore, perhaps? Yet in a situation where the sheer weight in Christian numbers could change the world and revolutionise humanity for the better, apparently the Christians are concerned about something else that keeps them busy.
The people that give their spirit to that frontline to protect Earth have all my respect. These people appear to be custodians of Earth. These are the ones that have the spiritual knowledge that I appreciate. Yet, they may all have differing religions. Some of them are atheists. These people display more godly qualities than all other. These humans make the world a better place. They care for me without me even knowing I need to be cared for. They honour the Earth that sustains me.
If God created the Earth, why aren’t the religious preserving it? I believe the passage in the gospel is something along the lines of “For God so loved the world...” Did God love only the Western world that he made it so bountiful? No, that can’t be right because the Beatitudes belie that ideology. Did God attach a price tag to wheat in the book of Genesis that I missed? Does the Bible decree that we should pay for our food? No, God neglected to instruct on that. Jesus was able to provide bread and fish that never exhausted. I’m pretty sure he didn’t charge people a premium to obtain this meal or look at market share reports before he handed it all out. If Jesus is alive today, as some radical on a Melbourne street corner spouted recently, why is he allowing all this to go on? 2000 years ago, as a child Jesus apparently let loose in a corrupt temple. Why then, is Jesus watching the world behave in the way it currently does? If Jesus is alive and living in the hearts of Christians, why then is Jesus doing nothing to arrest the selfishness and exploitation of Earth at the hands of capitalism?
Why has the Western world created a system that requires humanity to pay for its own existence? I just don’t understand the concept of being forced to pay to stay alive. Humanity requires food to live. Without it humans die, although in the Western world if you want food you must first obtain money. To obtain money you must do whatever is required to get it. So, somewhere along the way the Western world system became money=food rather than food=life. I just can’t understand what has gone wrong and why we put up with it. Why should I have to pay money to keep my children alive? Our species should be worthy of life without having a price tag. Why do we accept a charge from corporations on our own right to life? Bypass the abortion right to life argument for a moment. Where is my right to life? Why am I not entitled to be alive without financial cost? Where are all the Christian picket lines standing outside my doorway demanding my right to life?
I certainly shall not be saying “grace” within a system that forces me to pay for my own life, and that of my four children, three times a day each and every day. If I didn’t pay for their meals, who would come to our rescue? God? Doubtful, given that God is caught up fighting wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and wherever else the Christian USA contingent determines. My partner would die to protect me and the family and that’s where my allegiance lies. The Earth provides my bounty and bears the scars of it; I shall forever be unable to show the immeasurable level of gratitude.