My Shoes Were Made in Vietnam
The question that has followed (and challenged, haunted and encouraged) evangelical Christianity into a globalized world is simple: Is the good news actually good news? That is, is the good news actually news that the world would deem good?
I once heard a pastor preaching about the good news. He referenced the needy in his community and said, “They don’t need socks; they need Jesus.” Essentially, this pastor’s answer to cold-footed community members was, “No, the good news is not actually good news for you, at least not today. Jesus wants to save you from your sins, but someone else will have to save you from frostbite.”
Tom Lynch’s story of his own transformation with the work of the International Justice Mission (IJM) gives a very different answer to this question: The good news is actually good news. Good news to a slave cannot simply be about freedom in the afterlife; it must also include freedom and justice right now, today. Tom describes his own conversion experience to this deeper understanding of the good news like this:
It was my turn to accept the invitation [to take action], but my question was, How? …[The IJM speaker] shared the how, yet it still felt so distant. I realized, in the same way one has to decide to follow Christ, that I needed to decide for myself how I would get more involved.
As Tom points out in his article, faith requires action. It’s not simply hope; it’s also evidence. The action our faith requires is to tangibly join God’s mission of bringing love and justice to everyone everywhere.
Globalization not only means that we are connected to billions of others through technology, policy and goods; it means that when Jesus invites us to love our neighbor, he’s not simply talking about the person who lives on the same street as we do. Our neighbors are all those with whom we are connected, especially those who are oppressed, victims of injustice and on the underside of power.
As youth workers, how do we help young people to see this reality, and how do we invite them to do something about it? Their world is inundated with consumerist values. They don’t know anything other than a globalized world. They have been conditioned not to bat an eye at the fact that their t-shirts were made in Bangledesh; their jeans were made in Honduras; the metal in their smartphones was mined in Africa; and the tomatoes on their burgers were grown in Mexico. The mindset they know as normal opposes the mindset Jesus teaches us to have and the mindset Tom describes the International Justice Mission as embodying.
What I love about Tom’s story is that it invites the reader to consider a whole-person sort of engagement in God’s mission to bring justice to the world. IJM doesn’t offer mission trips or curricula that allow adults or students to simply scratch their missional itches by doing something that makes them think they’ve made a difference, patting themselves on the back and then going back to their typical consumerist lifestyles. IJM engages God in prayer and in action, and they are serious about it.
Consider the typical mission trip: A group of Americans spends thousands of dollars to fly to a foreign, often exotic, place. They build homes, clean up parks, distribute food or perform Vacation Bible Schools. They medicate and vaccinate themselves to go. They take all safety precautions. They purchase new work clothes. They take pictures. They drink bottled water. They undoubtedly spend a day at the beach. Then they go home.
We youth workers allow and often encourage them to feel as if they have made a difference. But have they? Is it possible that we are further reinforcing their consumerist practices and hubristic identities? Do we point out that the money spent on airfare could possibly have been better used in the local economy to repair infrastructure or provide microfinance loans? Do we explain how building homes for free could have put a local builder out of business, creating more poverty and not less? This, of course, is not the case on every mission trip, but the point highlights Tom’s argument—that we are called to actually make a difference, not just to feel good about ourselves.
Consider another typical missions project: the simultaneous consume-and-give business model. It’s a model that seeks to capitalize on young people’s desire to both consume and to give, often offering a cool product with the promise to give goods or money to the needy. The most popular is Toms Shoes, a company that promises to donate a pair of shoes to a needy child every time we buy a pair for ourselves. It’s not just shoes. It’s t-shirts and sunglasses and watches and hats and bracelets and any other product young people are interested in. The morality and effectiveness of the model is a complex discussion, but what is simple is the value we display when we invite our students to engage in this type of activity: I don’t have to feel guilty for consuming whatever I want because I’m also changing the world.
Tom’s story of IJM challenges us all to live and act differently. It’s not a plea to give money or an article written to try to recruit volunteers. It’s a story of transformation that has happened to many of us. It’s a whole-life transformation and reorientation.
My transformation came a few years ago when I realized I was telling students they should change the world, but I was never sure if the experiences I provided for them or the practical steps I offered would actually change the world for the better of for the worse. I began to see that the forces at work in poverty, relief, development and politics were complicated and difficult to navigate without training. Now I’m on the home stretch of a social work degree that I’m earning for the express purpose of helping Christians engage the great causes of our day with effectiveness. I believe that the good news is actually, here and now, supposed to be good news, and I want to do everything I can to announce and bring it to everyone.
Tom’s article is not just Tom inviting us into this way of life; it’s Jesus saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s James saying, “If any of you sees a brother or sister is without clothes or daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what good is that?”
My shoes were made in Vietnam—by a real person with a real story, real struggles and real joy. And that person is loved by God. And that person is my neighbor.
Ideas for furthering the conversation with your students:
Put a pushpin on a map to represent the country of origin for every piece of clothing your group is wearing.
Challenge your students to read the Good Samaritan story (Luke 10) every day for a week, writing a new answer to the question, Who is my neighbor? each day.
Challenge your students to keep a journal of where all their food and clothes come from for a week. Ask them to make up a name and a story for one person in another country who produced their clothes or grew their food.
For more on mission trips, serving and effectiveness, read David Livermore’s Serving with Eyes Wide Open, Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty or Steve Corbett’s When Helping Hurts.
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