Mexico, The Kardashians, And Thanksgiving

When I was in high school, my youth group went on a mission trip to build houses for people in Tijuana, Mexico.  We did this on Spring Break, and we did this for two years.  The first year we went, I remember during our debriefing discussions we would discuss what we learned during our time amongst people who own less possessions than we did.  We would generally share some form of the same thing, “I just really realize how much I have, and how I take things for granted.  I need to be more thankful.”  The second year was not nearly as impactful, because I was just reminded again of how I need to be more thankful for the vast blessings God had given me, and not them.

My sister occasionally watches the show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, I cannot help but watch sometimes.  In one episode Bruce Jenner thought his daughters were spoiled, and he wanted them to see people who were not.  Again, for the sole purpose of them to hopefully become more thankful for what they had.  The wealthy and glamorous Kardashian daughters visited a homeless shelter for women and children where they interacted with people and played games with the kids.  It was touching.  At the end of the episode, they left the shelter touched by the stories of hope and courage of the women and children they had met, and they were also reminded how incredibly blessed they were.  They left feeling more thankful than ever that they were not living the lives of the people they had met.

What does it mean to be thankful?  Does it mean to simply be grateful that our lives do not suck as much as somebody else’s?  Or does genuine thankfulness call us to something deeper, something that actually brings equality amongst economic injustice?  During this time of Thanksgiving, many people decide they want to tell each other what they are thankful for.  Some common things are: family, friends, living in the United States, having a job, food, health, shelter, spouse, and God.

I think that all of these things can be very deserving of our thankfulness, and we should be reminded during this time of Thanksgiving of these wonderful gifts.  One of the things that I am really thinking about during this season of thanksgiving is that there are people who really don’t have much to be thankful for, if anything at all.  It is true, I talk to them every day at work.  What am I to do with this reality?  There are people who have no family that love them, no friends who care.  Who have been screwed by the systems and institutions in the United States, and have no job (many who I cannot imagine ever working or anyone wanting to hire them due to their mental health condition).  The food they get is the left over, cheap, nutrient deficient food that people or agencies give them.  They are in terrible health and are constantly not feeling well due to the lack of food, or low quality of food they eat.  They have no shelter according to our definition, and their best hope at shelter are the emergency shelters that are unsafe; many would rather be on the streets than be in them.  They don’t have a spouse who loves them, and their experience of God has been primarily negative mainly due to the pain they have experienced in their life.  For some, the social workers who help them get into housing are the closest people they have to a friend or family.  A thankfulness that has no active response to this painful truth is not thankfulness, but oppression with the mask of praise to God.

I do not wish to make it seem as though the masses that are struggling with poverty and homelessness have nothing to be thankful for in their lives.  This would be a very ignorant, arrogant, and oppressive response.  I just want to point out that not everybody can easily name things when asked what they are thankful for.  For some, Thanksgiving day can be a day of pain and sorrow as they reflect on the situation they find themselves in.

I do not want to be someone who tries my best to ignore these people, or at best realizes their pain and turns it into making me feel better about my life.  I need to realize that in many ways my extreme thankfulness can cause the depression and misery of another who cannot imagine having a family and friends who love them.

Giving thanks to God for what we have, placed in the right context can be a beautiful act of praise to God.  However, as I discussed in my last blog (I Am Thankful For Your Misery), there can also be times when giving thanks can do nothing more than further oppression and systemic violence against the poor.  What we need is a holistic and active response to thanksgiving.  Holistic in the sense that our thanksgiving doesn’t come at the expense of another’s misery, and active in the sense that it leads us to attempt to live in solidarity with those who have been at the oppressed end of the many things we deem “blessings.”  The act of thanksgiving can either lead us to do nothing but feel good about how much better our lives are than others, or it can lead us to acts of compassion and justice for those who have not been treated well by their friends, family, and/or country.

Thankfulness for blessings commonly leads to demonizing (viewing or treating another as less than human) those who are not blessed in the same ways that we are.  For example those who live in houses tend to demonize those who live on the streets.  People who are not addicted to drugs tend to demonize those who are.  People who live in nice neighborhoods tend to demonize those who live in poor neighborhoods.  The opposites of all of these can be true as well.  This is done either outwardly through obvious language and action, or more subtly by just doing nothing to question or change this inequality.

When thanksgiving doesn’t lead to greater love for suffering humanity, it is useless and a waste of time.  We are just ignorantly reassuring ourselves that God has blessed us, while we ignore those God created who are suffering around us.

Like I shared about my trip to Mexico, my acts of thanksgiving did nothing to question the injustice around me.  I did not wander why it was that the people I was around were living in poverty, I did not question the economic systems that create such inequality.  I was just happy that I lived in the U.S. and that God had blessed me in a way that God hadn’t blessed them.  The Kardashians were not filled with a desire to stop the injustice of mothers and children living on the streets, they were simply filled with thankfulness.  Being thankful that they didn’t have to live that kind of life.

It is indeed healthy and honorable to thank God for the life that we have, but we must recognize that for many of us the blessings we have received have come at the expense of somebody else that doesn’t have as much as we do.  Holistic and active thankfulness would not celebrate this.

May our thankfulness not lead us to feeling good about how blessed we are compared to
those who are suffering near and far, but may our thankfulness lead us to question why people are suffering.  May our thankfuless lead us to question our own benefit from economic inequality, and may it lead us to change our lives so that we may work to bring the Kingdom of God to earth as it is in Heaven, where all are equal and none are blessed more than another.

 

 

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