This is my WHY

This feisty little girl is my reason "WHY." Why, despite my degree in history, my master's in european history, and the "Fulbright Scholar" award on my resume, I'm choosing to leave my teaching career and build a business with Arbonne. 

My 19 month old is hilarious, spunky, stubborn, and cuddly only when exhausted. 

She loves Monkey's Friends, Noisy Orchestra, pushing her babies around in her stroller, and playing Noah's Ark Little People. 

And every morning as I rush her out the door by 7:15, explain "Mommy can't read that right now,"and hurry her to the car rather than let her play outside, I grow weary. 

As I watch the clock on my desk at school reach 4pm, 4:15pm, 4:30 pm and later, and I promise myself that "one day of working late won't matter to Collins," and that one day turns into most days, I grow heavy-hearted. 

As I sneak out of the house several nights a week, and most Sunday nights, to grade papers, hearing Collins cry after me, I grow regretful and resentful. 

I AM MISSING IT. My daughter is growing up in the blink of an eye, and I only spend two to three hours a day with her. 

So THAT is my why. 

I am choosing Arbonne, a company devoted to helping people find freedom in their life, flexibility in their careers, and joyful fulfillment in selling products that grow a business and hold the potential to transform lives. 

Is the business difficult? Yes. Some people reject you, even people who are close to you and you swore would support your new business. Others judge you for "selling lipstick." But many people thank you for introducing them to unrivaled products that help restore health, promise safe ingredients in a scary, chemically-laden world, inspire beauty and confidence, and offer hope for a career with financial benefits and flexibility to prioritize family. 

I was in Las Vegas this weekend at the Arbonne training conference, and I heard the company's leading women explain the story behind their "why" for joining Arbonne: of a woman growing up homeless and finally finding stability with Arbonne;  of a mom who was constantly traveling for work, so her children played "work" by rolling the suitcase through the house; of women who were able to alleviate their husbands' financial pressure to provide in a world that is increasingly expensive when salaries are remaining stagnant. All of these women found Arbonne because someone was bold enough to tell them about the business. 

Are we as consultants perfect when we want to share the business opportunity? Far from it. But when we see what Arbonne's potential is for our families, HECK YES we want to share that opportunity with a world of overworked, underpaid, financially stressed people. 

If you had asked me two years ago if I would be an Arbonne consultant, I would have laughed at you. I probably would have told you it was a pyramid scheme. And honestly, the several months before I went to training in Vegas, I was searching for evidence that the company was a scam. I'm a skeptic by nature, and I just couldn't believe the company was solid. But after hearing the CEO, the product developers, the Chief of Sales, most of whom are female, I was impressed. Like "call my husband, my mom, and everyone I know immediately to explain how I'm sold on Arbonne" impressed. 

So, as yesterday was Mother's Day, this little girl who made me a mother is my "why." 

Happy Mother's Day, everyone. If you have a pretty great "why" like I do, I'd love to chat. 

erika.mosteller@gmail.com 

On Homosexuality

That's right. I'm going there. Why? Because I'm tired of Christians looking like hateful bigots. I've had some of my non-Christian friends ask me lately why Christians "disagree" with homosexuality. Considering the gluttony of media attention Christians have received for the North Carolina amendment and stances against anti-bullying legislation, I can understand how non-Christians just can't seem to reconcile the idea of "loving your neighbor" with the seemingly hateful rhetoric of Christians against homosexuals. For more on how Christians might be doing more harm than good in this culture war, read this great article by Rachel Held Evans. 

The big questions, from what I've gathered, are 1) Is homosexuality a sin  and 2) Are homosexuals going to hell. I'm not going to broach gay marriage in this post, but I'm formulating thoughts for a later post on that topic. While I am certainly no theologian, I've been percolating and researching Christian views on homosexuality for a couple of years because I've never been comfortable with the anti-gay tone of the American church. So, here are my thoughts. 

1) Is homosexuality a sin?


Many Christians believe homosexuality is a sin because the Bible clearly ordains sex to take place between a man and a woman within the confines of marriage. So, this means that any sexual relationships outside of marriage are sinful, including pre-marital sex and adultery. It's much easier for the American church to attack the homosexual minority rather than discussing the fact that many members of their congregation co-habitate before marriage, are addicted to pornography even though they are married, or have engaged in adultery. 


The issue for many Christians, from my understanding, is about the translation of the passages in Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Leviticus (see more details on these passages here). Some liberal Christians argue that the New Testament passages criticized using male sex slaves rather than demeaning homosexuality in general. Other arguments claim that the term "homosexual" didn't even exist until the 19th century, so our arguments about homosexuality in the Bible are anachronistic since the term didn't exist in Biblical times. For me, whether or not these arguments are true, the main point is this: the Bible clearly states, in many places and with no ambiguity, that God designed sex to occur within marriage between a man and a woman. So, anything outside of this design is considered un-Biblical, including homosexuality. 


Does this mean that someone dealing with homosexuality can just "turn it off" or "convert to heterosexuality?" I honestly and firmly believe the answer is no. I think many Christians wrestle with this very topic and unfortunately the church is not a safe space for discussing the torment of believing in Christ and the Bible while struggling with homosexuality. To read about a committed Christian's experience growing up homosexual, click here. I don't agree with many of his ideas on homosexuality in the Bible, but I think it's important for Christians to glimpse his struggle. 


2) Are homosexuals going to hell? 


Unfortunately, the American church's track record with homosexuality is embarrassing and hurtful. For some reason, ignorant Christians have decided that their task in life is to shout from the roof-tops that gays are going to hell. 

ATTENTION AMERICAN CHRISTIANS: GAY PEOPLE KNOW WE DON'T APPROVE OF THEIR LIFESTYLE. So let's find a way to stand for truth while still loving our neighbor. 

That said, I don't believe gay people are going to hell for being gay anymore than I believe heterosexual people are going to hell for having sex outside of marriage. Orthodox Christians believe that all men are sinful, meaning all men commit actions that separate them from God. This separation and sinfulness is what makes Christ's death on the cross necessary, to atone for the sinfulness of man and allow God's justice to prevail without punishing sinful man.  So, the fact that we are sinful in many ways is what separates us from God and sends us to hell. Only when man admits he needs a savior in Christ does this separation end, whether you are gay or straight. 


Here's the rub for me. Many Christians believe this theology,  but they don't want to admit that their own actions are sinful. Instead, they focus on easy "target sins" like sloth, gluttony, or of course, the all-time favorite, homosexuality. These same Christians will, however, step out of their $600,000 homes to drive their brand new luxury car to their million dollar vacation homes and not think twice about their sins of materialism.  The Bible has ove 2000 verses (!) telling Christians to be generous with their time, talents, and money. Jesus is very clear about the mandate to care for the "least of these" (Matthew 25); the prophet Isaiah warns of the false religiosity of people who refuse to care for the poor and vulnerable (Isaiah 58); James calls "pure religion" caring for "the orphans and widows in their distress." It's much simpler and less messy for the church to lambast homosexuality, however, instead of speaking to the actuals sins of church congregations. 


So, those are my thoughts. I'll leave you with this video clip of Tim Keller at the Veritas Forum at Columbia University, which is where I got many of my ideas for this post. 

I'm back

So, I've taken a blogging hiatus since December, mostly because December was a crazy busy month, but also because I'm pregnant! And being pregnant means that I've been sick for the last 8-9 weeks and haven't felt like getting up off of the sofa, much less blogging or exercising any higher level thinking skills. Now that I'm pregnant, and especially in light of the recent debates over the Planned Parenthood-Susan G. Komen scandal, the Virginia bill over trans-vaginal ultrasounds before allowing abortion, and the whole contraceptives from Catholic institutions mess, the issue of women's rights and pregnancy seem to have been blasting from all media sources. 


I've always been opposed to abortion because I feel that a child is a child from the moment of conception. With my own child growing inside of me, I have been reading more and more about fetal development in the first trimester of pregnancy: the baby can feel pain, has fingernails, has all major body organs, kicks and swims gracefully in the amniotic sac, has reflexes, and by week 12 can even suck it's thumb. To me, all of these milestones are markers of humanity. And as I've read about my baby's progress and seen my baby's ultrasound, I keep being reminded that thousands of babies are killed despite showing these markers of humanity. No, my child could not survive outside of the womb. But when people raise this issue, I'm reminded that no infant can survive outside the womb without someone caring for it. 


I'm not opposed to contraceptives or sexual education. I experienced both and was especially grateful for contraceptives so that Tucker and I could somewhat plan when we started our family. But I get so frustrated with the liberal-conservative vitriol over the issue of abortion. Liberals claim that pro-lifers are misogynistic for wanting to limit a woman's rights to her body. Conservatives claim that pro-choicers are favoring convenience over a child's life. Both sides are guilty of hypocrisy. Liberals rail on conservatives for being pro-life while limiting access to basic human rights like healthcare. My question for liberals is how a child's right to life is not considered a basic human right? Further, how can some claim a woman's right to her body trumps a child's right to live?  Many pro-choicers claim that a woman's rights have precedence because the fetus is not truly human yet. But as Ayelet Waldman's interview admits, as quoted below, with modern-day technology, it's hard to argue a fetus is just a "clump of cells."


I'm not saying that many women don't agonize over the issue of abortion. Ayelet Waldman gave a raw, emotional interview with NPR's Fresh Air describing her second-trimester abortion and the searing pain of knowing she had killed her baby after finding out that the baby could potentially have a chromosomal disorder. She admitted that it wasn't a matter of not being able to afford care for the child but that it was a matter of not wanting to care for a special needs child. After making her decision, she was depressed for over a year. She was racked with guilt. Yet, she still supports a woman's right to choose. While I don't understand her perspective, I respect her honesty in facing the fact that she did not abort "a clump of cells" but that she killed her baby. Here is an excerpt from her interview:

“For women of my mother’s generation, who struggled so hard to get the right to abortion, what they needed to do in order to achieve that right and to maintain it was to describe what they were doing in a certain way. So I - you know, when they were describing the process of having an abortion, language was really important to them.

“So they never called the baby a baby. It was a fetus. It was an embryo at best, you know. It was - and this is a quote - a clump of cells. But to women like me, who've grown up in the age of the ultrasound, we now have three-dimensional ultrasounds of our babies from the very beginning, you know, when we can actually see their features, recognizable features, and we can see them suck their thumbs. And for us, abortion - even though I think I am absolutely as committed to choice as my mother is - the idea of abortion and the fact of abortion has become something very different. And I think women of my mother’s generation are very uncomfortable with how we talk about abortion….

“Well, we had a D&E, which is a dilation and extraction, which is they, you know - and here’s another point where, you know, my mother and I differ completely on this. You know, my mother, when she describes a procedure, she doesn't describe the details. And for me, I needed to know exactly what was happening. And in this procedure, your cervix is dilated, and the baby is extracted, and the baby's extracted, essentially, in pieces from your uterus.

“It's horrible. It’s - the photographs that you see that the right-to-lifers show, you know, they're real photographs. I mean, that's really what it’s like. And I say this because I feel like I can’t support a woman’s right to choose unless I’m willing to look at the darkest side of it, and that was the darkest side of it.

“So one of the things I asked the incredibly generous, gentle doctor who did the abortion was, I asked him if he would make sure that the baby didn’t feel anything. That was – sorry (crying) That was really important to me, that he be dead, essentially, before that grim process took place. And the doctor promised me that he would give an injection that would make that happen.”

I think I would respect pro-choicers more if they at least admitted that it's not "all about a woman's right to her body" as if somehow there is no other person involved. There are other people involved, one person in particular: the child, who is being killed by no fault of its own.


But to me, Conservatives are just as hypocritical. Conservatives rail on liberals for being murderers, yet these same right-wingers will readily jump on board with the United States' imperialistic war aims, nuclear proliferation programs, and death penalty defenses. My question for conservatives is, if you're going to be pro-life, shouldn't you carefully consider war, nuclear issues, and the death penalty? How is an aborted child any different than a death-row inmate that's not truly guilty, or innocent civilians caught up in drone attacks? Shouldn't conservatives also be trailblazers for international aid programs and fair-trade support to protect children overseas from slavery and trafficking? Shouldn't conservatives be front-runners for foster care programs and adoption programs? If conservatives truly believe in anti-abortion, shouldn't they be just as concerned with caring for the children after they are born? Otherwise their rhetoric for cherishing and protecting life falls flat. 


I read a New York Times Op-Ed today called "The Safe, Legal, Rare Illusion" that revealed the similarities among Republicans and Democrats regarding the abortion issue as well as the cracks in each sides' argument. The author claimed the pitfalls of the Conservatives' program against abortion was  

"that it doesn’t map particularly well onto contemporary mores and life patterns. A successful chastity-centric culture seems to depend on a level of social cohesion, religious intensity and shared values that exists only in small pockets of the country." 

About Liberals' program against abortion, the author explained, 

"a lack of contraceptive access simply doesn’t seem to be a significant factor in unplanned pregnancy in the United States. When the Alan Guttmacher Institute surveyed more than 10,000 women who had procured abortions in 2000 and 2001, it found that only 12 percent cited problems obtaining birth control as a reason for their pregnancies. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of teenage mothers found similar results: Only 13 percent of the teens reported having had trouble getting contraception." 

The author, clearly favoring a more right-to-life stance, concluded his article with the following:

"At the very least, American conservatives are hardly crazy to reject a model for sex, marriage and family that seems to depend heavily on higher-than-average abortion rates. They’ve seen that future in places like liberal, cosmopolitan New York, where two in five pregnancies end in abortion. And it isn’t a pretty sight."

I don't think that pro-choicers and pro-lifers will ever admittedly share common ground. But I sure would love to see us engage in respectful discourse that admits the areas of hypocrisy in each sides' arguments and stops using hyperbolic rhetoric that reveals at best half-truths. In other words, the media rants against Susan G. Komen and Rush Limbaugh's offensive comments need to stop.  This type of mudslinging doesn't help anyone, least of all the unborn children many conservatives hope to speak for. 

Resolution of Thanksgiving

Earlier today, while spending time with Tucker's family, my father-in-law remarked that he had read a challenge this week from D.L. Moody to write a "Resolution of Thanksgiving." I didn't quite understand what he meant by this "resolution," but after Randy read his own resolution, the concept became clear. Moody, in his own words, decided

We often set apart seasons and have meetings for prayer; I think it would be well for us to have special seasons also for thanksgiving, to praise God for what he is doing in our midst. Let those who have been redeemed from the hand of the enemy speak not of themselves, but of what God has done for them.

Randy challenged his family to each write their own Resolution of Thanksgiving, so I decided to put pen to paper (so to speak) and ponder my own gratitude to God. How often to I truly thank God for my blessings? How often does my own attitude alter depending on my circumstances? What's the frequency of my "I wish" thoughts? So, while contemplating these things, I developed my resolution of thanksgiving.

"I, Erika Mosteller, make this resolution of thanksgiving to meditate on the blessings of God.  

I recognize that my job or my husband's job may not always pay what I desire or think is fair, that it may not be the job I or my husband wish to have, that it may not allow me to do what I'm passionate about. The progression of my life may not move at the pace I desire, meaning I might not have children, a house, vacations, "nice" cars, or retirement when I plan to do so. I may not always have good health, nor may my family members. My future children may not make good decisions, nor might my husband and I. I may not be financially secure. I may lose friends. I may dislike my country's political climate and situation. I may have aches, pains, or injuries. I may gain weight. I may feel frustrated that I can't purchase what I want when I want to do so. I may dislike certain aspects of my church. I may never continue my education in an official capacity. I may no longer be able to travel widely. Ultimately, I may not live the life I expected or planned.  

But I hereby resolve to be thankful. I'm thankful for two families that love and support me. I'm thankful for a husband who loves me more and better than I could have imagined. I'm thankful that regardless of our employment situation in the last 4 1/2 years of marriage, God has provided for us financially, even when we only had $8 in our bank account at one point. I'm thankful that I have access to food, vitamins, water, sanitation, health-care, education, transportation, employment, banks, physical security, freedom of worship, and low-censored press. I'm thankful that my children will also have access to many of these things. Most of all, I'm thankful that I'm saved by Grace, that God is sovereign and present in my daily life, that God provides means of grace to give me strength, and that God loves me abundantly. I'm thankful that regardless of life's circumstances, I can relish in the promises of God's faithfulness to me, even when I fail to in fact be thankful."

Halloween and Human Rights

I read somewhere several years ago that much of the cocoa we eat in delicious chocolatey treats comes from forced labor. Of course, this information convicted me for the time it took me to read the article, and then I promptly forgot about it. Recently, however, I read a blog posting on Rage Against the Minivan that reminded me of the link between Hersheys, Nestle, Mars, American Cadbury and child slavery. In the post, Kristen Howerton linked a BBC documentary on the chocolate trade.

I suggest you watch all 5 segments, since they're only about 10 minutes each. I was so galled by this documentary that I did a little experiment with my Christian Thought class. I had already bought my Halloween candy for my students this year. After reading Howerton's blog posting and watching the documentary, I felt ridiculous for mentally whining about paying $12 for 3 bags of chocolate when in actuality, I paid LESS than I should have since the chocolate companies get free slave labor. Ouch. So I handed out the bags of M&Ms to my students, and after they bit into savoring the chocolatey goodness (at 8am...gross) I said, "Congratulations. You all just participated in the modern day slave trade." Their faces dropped in disbelief. We then watched the documentary, and they, like me, were disgusted by the corporate and human greed that leads to child slave labor. 


There are more slaves today than at any other point in history. The current estimate for modern-day slaves stands somewhere between 12 million to 27 million. The most prominent forms of slave labor are forms of bonded labor, where someone pledges themselves against a loan that "miraculously" never gets paid off, and slaves trafficked for the sex trade.  While slaves are today a lower percentage of the human population than during the 19th century, before Western countries abolished the slave trade and chattel slavery (picture cotton plantations in Georgia),  modern slaves are ridiculously cheap, therefore fueling the illicit trade. You see, slavery is illegal in all countries, with Mauritania being the last to officially outlaw slavery in 1981. However, the high levels of government corruption in many poor countries allows the slave trade and the use of slave labor to persist and often thrive. To read more on the human sex slave trade, read Half the Sky, one of my favorite books. 


Kevin Bales, President of Free the Slaves, states the following about how "market economics" continue the tide of forced labor:

"In the United States before the Civil War, the average slave cost the equivalent of about fifty thousand dollars. I'm not sure what the average price of a slave is today, but it can't be more than fifty or sixty dollars.

Such low prices influence how the slaves are treated. Slave owners used to maintain long relationships with their slaves, but slaveholders no longer have any reason to do so. If you pay just a hundred dollars for someone, that person is disposable, as far as you are concerned...

And while the price of slaves has gone down, the return on the slaveholder's investment has skyrocketed. In the antebellum South, slaves brought an average return of about 5 percent. Now bonded agricultural laborers in India generate more than a 50 percent profit per year for their slaveholders, and a return of 800 percent is not at all uncommon for holders of sex slaves."

So where do we as consumers fit into this? We have the power of the purse. If we curb our demand of Hersheys, or Mars, or Kraft chocolates, and demand these companies pursue cocoa sources from fair labor only, and that the US government regulate these companies to ensure they follow fair trade sourcing, we can impact the lives of children forced into slavery all the way in Ghana. Write your congressman, buy fair trade chocolate with the official seal (same goes for coffee, by the way), and do your part as a consumer. You can even join the #nohersheyshalloween movement and sign a petition to get Hersheys, the largest offender for child labor cocoa, to pay attention to its consumers or lose profit. To read about ethical candy options for trick or treating, click here. 


In the meantime, look for this symbol and buy fair trade. 
Is it more expensive? Yes. Personally, I'm OK paying a little bit more knowing that I'm not contributing to human rights violations around the world. Not to guilt you or anything...

I'm Racist

True confession. I don't want to be. I try so hard not to be. But I'm bombarded with racism in our society, and I find it creeping from my subconscious when I least expect it. Many people I know, especially many white people, get annoyed with me when I claim that most people are racist. "I'm not racist," they say. "I don't see color," others assure. I'm here to tell you that if you were raised in a western culture, and you are white, more than likely you're racist, even if you try so hard not to be. It's because in our culture, especially in the South, we find ourselves "surprised" if we meet a highly educated black person, or a wealthy African American who doesn't play sports or work in entertainment. Can you imagine being negatively pegged your entire life based on your phenotype? To be expected to never finish high school, let along college? To be expected to end up in prison, or living in the projects with illegitimate kids? To be poor your entire life? I can't, because I'm white. I have always been expected to go to college, get married, have children only after being married, have steady income and savings, parent my children responsibly, be cultured and well-traveled. These expectations were set in place from the time I was socialized, and, I would argue, heavily impacted my motivations, goals, and methods of "fitting the norm." So what does that say for the flip side of this picture, those who are expected to fail? How does that impact entire generations?

I know these are sensitive issues, and I think many white people don't want to face them because they think "slavery ended after the civil war. It's been over a century. Get over it." But our culture still grants primacy to those with "white" skin. Maybe, as a white person, I'm not supposed to talk about this? But I read a blog posting by a black professor tonight, and it convicted me so deeply. I started thinking through how many times I hear people say with such surprise, "oh, you study slavery and the history of racism?" Or "your summer reading for your US history kids was on black men in Reconstruction? Your black students will really appreciate that." I literally want to ask, "And why wouldn't my non-black students appreciate it too?" I get nauseaus when I hear people say of slavery in the south , "But the slaves liked being taken care of. They didn't want freedom." Or when people claim that "affirmative action" is racist against whites. Skin color is SO powerful, but we think that racism is no longer a game-changer in our society. I ask you, then, have you read the new laws against immigration in Arizona? Alabama? Georgia? If those aren't about racism, I don't know what is. Hispanics aren't "white" and therefore aren't acceptable. Spew at me all you want about them "not paying taxes" and "being here illegally," but I will shoot right back that the answer is not racially profiling them and intimidating them into pulling their children out of school and fearing going to the grocery store for being arrested. The answer is finding a peaceable, respectable way to naturalize them. 


Here's the excerpt from that blog, the words that got my whole rant started. Click here to read the whole posting. It's pretty powerful, for me at least. 

"...I don’t want to talk about race because it gives weight to a fiction that was created to oppress. It has no basis in biology and is a social construction in this country that was engineered to maintain access to free labor. The fiction created by race distorts the reality in which we live.

Plus, as a black person, I am called on often to speak for my “race.” I can never give an opinion without it being assumed to be that of a multitude. So when a white person asks me my opinion about an issue that can be related to race, I suspect that there is going to be a moment later when that white person is going to say, “Well, I have a black friend, Steve, who says…” And that will be the black authority on the subject.

Black people can’t talk to white people about race anymore. There’s really nothing left to say. There are libraries full of books, interviews, essays, lectures, and symposia. If people want to learn about their own country and its history, it is not incumbent on black people to talk to them about it. It is not our responsibility to educate them about it. Plus whenever white people want to talk about race, they never want to talk about themselves. There needs to be discussion among people who think of themselves as white. They need to unpack that language, that history, that social position and see what it really offers them, and what it takes away from them. As James Baldwin said, “As long as you think that you are white, there is no hope for you.”

When you went to Africa, you said “you were the minority for the first time in your life.” That’s not true. You have been the only adult in a room full of children, the only man in a room full of women, the only non-incarcerated person in a jail. In America if you were a minority at a hip-hop concert in Compton, you would still have the privilege that accrues unbidden to persons designated as white, with all of the political, social, and economic access that comes with it."

Something to thing about. I know I will.  To read more on racism in our society, read here a former post I wrote on racism.

Youthful conviction

If you read my blog, you probably realize that the idea of social justice is something I've been wrestling through. It's taken me years to even begin to reach the point of having my heart broken for the things that break God's heart. I used to be the one who wanted to help those less fortunate than me to make myself feel good, to "be a good Christian," and, probably on some level, to show my superiority. I honestly believed that I wasn't in "their" (meaning the poor) shoes because I worked hard. I had a job because I pursued it relentlessly. I wasn't in debt because I made good choices. I received an excellent college education because my studiousness allowed me to do so. Only recently have I realized that all of my opportunities came from my socioeconomic position. I am white, born to parents who taught me to value education, who sacrificed to allow me to thrive, who were able to move so that I could attend excellent public schools. While I wouldn't say that until recently I was apathetic to the poor and suffering, I will say that my heart was not broken for them as the Lord's is. 


At Furman, as I learned more of the human consequences of sin, I recognized the complexity of poverty and oppression. When I began to teach high school in Macon, I showed my FPD students the documentary Invisible Children. As someone who prizes education and despises ignorance, I wanted to enlighten my students to the world outside of their bubble. But it was their hearts that moved to ACT after hearing about the plight of child soldiers in Uganda by raising money to help fund schools. Now, with the students in my Christian Thought class, we've been talking through James 1:22-27:

"²²But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. ²³For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. ²⁴For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. ²⁵But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. 

²⁶If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. ²⁷Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."

This idea of "being doers of the word" has been plaguing me. My heart is broken for the orphans, for mothers who can't feed their children, for the victims of human trafficking, for women denied education, for mothers dying in childbirth, for babies who contract HIV, for aging grandparents trying to provide for their grandchildren after AIDS ravaged their family, for countries still reeling from ethnic genocides, for gender-based abortions, for communities who have no clean water, for honor killings, for the fistula crisis in Africa, for Haitian children who still can't find their parents, and on and on and on. Sin has very real, painful, dire consequences. But what can I do about it?

As I read through my students' recently assigned papers answering the question of God's vision of social justice and how American Christians respond, I was humbled and inspired. Their youthful conviction struck me. One student wrote, "We as Americans are sheltered, spoiled, and most of the time blissfully unaware of the tragedies of everyday life in other countries...But when we show justice and God's love to people, we are following after God's own heart, because he cares about them deeply." Another student beautifully summarized, "Human nature keeps track of social justice by hours and calls it community service, but God's vision of social justice is constantly measured in the heart and demonstrated through words and actions." This student then continued, "Americans are narcissistic. Sinful nature causes us to focus on ourselves and forget those suffering around us, but Jesus begs us to travel through the narrow gate and go beyond the simple desires of our flesh."  (Can you tell I have a future writer on my hands!?) Another student wrote about God's association of himself as "defender of the poor" in Isaiah, determining that "God needs us to be earthly defenders, going out of our way to show people the love and mercy" that Christ showed us on the cross. She continued that "Christians have turned their faith into a habit, instead of creating a personal relationship with God. Since they have no relationship with the Lord, they cannot successfully make just relationships with society."

Most students decided that we as Christians fail to act on God's design for justice. Tim Keller argues for biblical justice based on the Hebrew term, mishpat, which means to treat people equitably and render what they are due, whether punishment, protection or care. However, Keller emphasizes that mishpat must work in tandem with chesedh,  the Hebrew term for "mercy." My students beautifully expressed their belief that God's vision of justice necessitates "doing justice out of merciful love," a mandate perfectly enacted through Christ's death for us on the cross. Jesus died to take our punishment, but he did so out of merciful love to protect us from eternal separation from God. How then could our hearts not transform and extend this same mercy to others? One student aptly concluded her paper with Psalm 33:5: 

^"5He loves righteousness and justice;    the earth is full of the steadfast love of the LORD."

I pray that I would help show God's steadfast love, righteousness and justice. And I'm thankful that my students' convictions helped remind me to act on these commands. As a teacher, I continually strive (obviously) to instruct my students; but in the meantime, my students end up teaching me so much along the way.