$39.99. That is how
much you will pay for the shirt shown above at your local GAP.
$38.62. That is
how much the average garment worker in Bangladesh gets paid per month to make
it.
98%. The
percentage of clothing for sale in the US that is manufactured in other
countries.
Last week an 8-story garment factory in the country of
Bangladesh collapsed, killing over 400 workers who were trapped inside. It is the worst disaster of its kind, ever.
It has raised questions about who is to blame, and it has shed further light on
the truth that most of would like to ignore about the clothing on our back; the true cost is much greater than the
number on the price tag.
There is no such thing as a “morally neutral” decision in
this world. Every decision we make is placing another stone, building one Kingdom
or another, and bringing Heaven, or Hell, closer to Earth. Every decision. This thought can be paralyzing, but it can also be
freeing. Freeing in the sense that our work is not futile and our daily actions
are far from inconsequential. If we have the ability to participate in systemic
evil, then we also have the power to participate in its demise.
I recently told students in a class I was teaching on Social
Justice that there is a significant difference between charity and justice. Charity
is meeting temporal needs (food, clothing, shelter, medicine, etc.) while justice
is dealing with the source of those problems (racism, discrimination,
educational inequality, etc.) The
distinction is often poignantly depicted in a famous parable about babies found
floating in a river, and the way a village responds. As the number of babies
found in the river each day increases, more workers are called to help rescue
them, until, someone finally suggests that they head up river and find out who
is throwing the babies in. Rescuing the children at the end of the river is charity,
heading upstream to deal with the people throwing them in is justice.
I use this illustration to suggest that our infatuation with
high-priced clothing, our attempts to acquire more beautiful “fig leaves” to
cover our nakedness is a deeper issue than how much garment workers are paid,
or how much a shirt at the GAP costs. It is part of a larger systemic evil that
is bent on determining the value of a human in dollars-and-cents. Consciously
or subconsciously we suggest, I am more valuable than others if the jeans that
cover my legs cost more than a weeks worth of groceries. The workers in
Bangladesh are less valuable than me and should simply be grateful that they
have a job, in a factory, making jeans for me that cost more than a weeks worth
of groceries, even if by doing so, the company I bought them from won’t pay the
workers enough to buy their own groceries this month.
This is why I believe Jesus gave us commands in terms that
we could easily understand. “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Mark
12:31). In the chance that the first half of that verse was mysterious to you
and me, he clarifies it for us in the second half. I may find it difficult to
discern what it means for me to love my neighbor, but I have made it a point in
this life to figure out what it means for me to love myself.
Would you work for $38 per month? Maybe your neighbor
shouldn’t either.
