On the pressure to do the ‘right’ thing

For several years I have bought most of my clothes (far too many!) from Fairtrade or environmentally friendly catalogues. They have some truly lovely things, although I wait for the sales as the prices are inevitably higher. I also try to buy Fairtrade tea and coffee as well as other foods, and environmentally friendly cleaning materials – not to mention recycled paper, while recycling every sort of packaging material (when will the supermarkets stop using so much packaging?). 

As for climate change, we have solar panels on our roof, plus a ‘power vault’ that stores and releases the energy generated, and my husband and I both drive electric vehicles (his for work, mine for pleasure). Is this what nowadays is called ‘virtue signalling’, the modern-day equivalent of Pharisees praying on street corners? Well maybe it is: I like to feel I am doing good, though I don’t necessarily require others to know about it. But there is a problem. Every day I learn of some new trade malpractice, some new level of pollution: for instance, I eat fish instead of meat, but tuna is supposedly full of mercury, not to mention the radiation from the Fukushima nuclear accident. Because we have moths, I tend to buy artificial fabrics that of course shed microplastics everywhere, which in turn are consumed by the sea creatures that we, and even our babies, consume…

Listening to the right voices

It seems it’s impossible to get it all right. And there are voices from all directions telling us we ‘must’ use this and ‘must’ avoid that, which locks into my ambivalent relationship with my late mother, for whom ‘must’ was a favourite word. How can we decide which voices to listen to, when trying to listen to them all will likely drive us crazy?

How can we decide which voices to listen to, when trying to listen to them all will likely drive us crazy?

The fact is, the voices of the trade and climate campaigners, while very worthy and entirely correct in their analysis, have almost become more oppressive than the voices of the Pharisees who insisted that to be righteous you must keep all 613 commandments of the law, even if you were so poor that you could barely afford to keep clean, let alone make an offering in the Temple. What are we to do? 

Learning from Jesus, and loving our neighbour

Jesus said: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30). Where do we find this easy yoke, when not only the world but the Church is piling obligations on us to do things the ‘right’ way? I’m not sure I’ve found it yet, but here are some thoughts.

The kind of yoke Jesus was thinking of was one used to join a pair of cattle to pull a cart – not the sort a picturesque milkmaid used to carry her two pails of milk. To be yoked together the two beasts had to walk in step, otherwise one would get ahead and the cart would take a wonky route and veer off the path. To be yoked to Jesus, then, is to walk in step with him – the same image used by Paul when he urges us to “keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). This then is not a matter of counting up how many things we can get right and how few we can get wrong; rather it is a lifelong process of learning to hear that still small voice that says: “This is the way; walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21), what many have called ‘God’s satnav’.

I don’t claim for a moment to be an expert in this. I get it wrong all the time – not just in my purchasing decisions, but in my personal relations. Only yesterday I was so frustrated by being batted around a hospital’s telephone system for half an hour and then, when I finally reached the right person, being abruptly cut off, that on reconnecting, I screamed and swore at the hapless medical secretary (I apologised immediately, and either the swearing or the apology worked, because I’ve now got an appointment in less than a fortnight!). Learning not to do this is probably more important in my spiritual development that any amount of Fairtrade or eco-friendly buying.

Perhaps it’s time to look at it another way (and to be fair, I think this may be the way the Fairtrade and eco-campaigners see it). What if I don’t make these ethical choices to make myself more holy and righteous, but simply because it is what small-scale farmers in the developing world, and those who live in the most climate-threatened areas, need from me? It then becomes not a series of acts of self-justification, but of neighbourly love. Now of that, one can never have too much.