A Famine of Hearing
Amos: 8:10 I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.
8:11 The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.
8:12 They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.
The prophets can be tough to read. I think we either struggle seeing ourselves in the text or maybe we see ourselves too clearly and we aren't sure how to move from despair to hope. I think the worst of those two possibilities is the former. If you go back a bit in that reading from Amos, you see a people who had forgotten the call of God to justice, kindness and mercy. The charge against them was as follows.
8:4 Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
8:5 saying, "When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances,
8:6 buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat."
The poor were getting poorer, they couldn't wait to end their religious celebrations so that they could continue making money, the goods brought to market carried less value, people were being bought and sold and even the leftovers were being gathered before the poor could claim them. It's hard to hear the warning of the prophet and miss how it speaks directly to the empire of the West. Here we see the gap of the poor and the wealthy widening more and more every day. People die on the streets of hunger and disease that results from extreme poverty. The mall on a Sunday afternoon is packed along with every restaurant in the city with finely dressed church-goers. The goods that hard working small time manufacturers have spent generations creating and building, see their prices being driven down by giant stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot. People are locked into modern day slavery, working 3 and 4 jobs each, leaving their children to fend for themselves. In the meantime, farmers, manufacturers, grocery stores and you and I, waste $165 Billion in food each year. $165 Billion, yes you read that correctly.
This may seem harsh to some and maybe an unfair representation of the "West" but for many, they live this sad reality every day. To be fair things have gotten out of control. It isn't like we all woke up one day and this was just the reality of things. It has been a slow process. Manufacturers and distributers who are protecting a bottom line have cut corners, we have begun spending ridiculous amounts of time and money acquiring the latest and greatest goods, frivolous law-suits against farmers and grocery chains have caused them to be careful about where even the excess food goes. We have stopped paying attention to, or God forbid, we have stopped caring about the fact that children never see their parents because they are constantly working to provide for their family. If we took the time to talk to people who live a life that is damaged by this truth, how could we continue to do nothing about it?
Hearing-Loss
The end of this section of scripture, specifically in Amos 8:11, speaks directly to the end result of such careless living. The result is not that God was going to take this wealth from them or that they themselves would go without food or drink. The result is that they would stop hearing from God. Not that he would stop speaking. The wealthy and the privileged would just stop hearing it. I am sure that those who were enduring the hardship brought upon them by the greed of many of God's people still felt the comfort of the voice of God. The privileged had just gone so far that they refused to hear. So now the word of the Lord that would warn them and cause them to feel something deep within their soul, would now sound like wise decision making. Ruthless business practices would go unchecked and all for the sake of the mighty Shekel.
When a person no longer hears from God for those convicting warnings that bring them to repentance, they are left to their own devices to determine right from wrong. The problem is that no person knows what it feels like to be wrong so we assume that we are right. Being wrong feels exactly the same as being right. Randy Harris, the great Christian teacher and thinker, says that when you realize that you were wrong you are no longer wrong, you are right. Now, you can reflect on the way that you were wrong but all of your insight comes from the feeling that you now are experiencing, the feeling of being right. In the same way, when you are aware that what you are taking part in is harming a group of people, you are no longer unaware. The conviction that you have received is from God and you can either decide to shut out that voice or to do some small part to bring about change.
Have you been experiencing famine?
I get that this may be a challenge. I would be lying if I said that it wasn't one for me. The first thing that this reality of the economic and political systems of the West implies is that I have been at least complicit in the way that it functions. I shop at the stores that use child labor, I shop the best price with little attention to where I find it and how they were able to sell at such a low price. There have been times that I have had an opportunity to speak for those who have no voice and decided to say nothing. We are a country of people who have made it a national past time to turn the other way when faced with our own ugly truth. What we find is that the small voice that we hear that pulls at our heart when we see a person living on the street, or the pain of a young black man who is unsure if this traffic stop will be his last, that voice gets more and more silent. When the next news story comes up we turn the channel, when a young man shares why he takes part in the Black Lives Matter movement shows up in our newsfeed, we role our eyes and keep scrolling.
But to do so means to ignore that feeling in your gut that feels like motion sickness. A tension so great that we feel like we don't know which ways is up any more. we can no longer compartmentalize everything into right and wrong, in and out. I can say that if you continue down that path of ignoring the voice and conviction of God, that dissenting voice does go away. You'll stop second guessing yourself and you will settle on your own truth and reality that you are indeed right and the voice of the other is wrong. Unfortunately the price to pay for such silence is famine from hearing the voice of God. While this may feel like temporary freedom from care it ultimately becomes a deafening silence and fear. You find yourself praying for that same conviction that once haunted you so. If you search long enough, you will find people that will agree with you, pat you on the back, "like" your post on Facebook and validate all of your personal and political ideals. What you may find, if you are honest, is that it's a crappy substitute for the voice and approval of God.
Heed the words of the prophet.