Shock Tactics

I have deliberately put this in small - it is fairly gross - soda being poured over fat in order to shock New Yorkers into drinking less soda. if you want more details follow this link.

Shock tactics are exactly that - but sometimes truth is so startling and yet so ignored that they seem as though they justify themselves in the outcome of waking us up from our slumber. I think back to my childhood in England where the evening news often ran terrible, disturbing footage of South Africa or Northern Ireland and then the terrible famine that took grip of Ethiopia. A rider was always given warning us to look away now if we might be offended by violence or suffering.

But the pictures were never gratuitous, at least in my mind, they did not try to outdo themselves in portraying the worst sort of misery - they showed the facts of those situations - and all of them have improved - although there are many others which are still out there.

There are shock tactics and shock tactics - different things designed to wake us up, make us outraged and move us to action. We all know thing can go too far - but should we be so offended that we simply refuse to acknowledge those issues which really question the way we live and treat those around us? In real life, in those we meet and hear of every day, as Christians, we probably should not have a "look away now" option. If the Incarnation means anything it is that Jesus is in those very places which shock us most - and we are called to be there too - sometimes physically but more often in economic and political ways, seeking justice and equitable distribution of this planet's still bountiful resources.

We celebrated St. Francis on Sunday - many with blessings of animals and talk about poverty. But this idea of shock should also resonate with the Franciscan train of thought - in some ways, giving up things is an easier solution than actually allowing ourselves to imagine the path of another, in all its details. This letting go of our comfort, of our assumption of rights and priviledges, is a much harder journey - and giving away material things, pledging, tithing have to be symbolic of a deeper turning away from the world and into the shocking reality of our humanity and the depths of God's interaction with it.