I write this in a bit of passion as I just finished watching Blood Diamond. I have wanted to see this movie since it came out but we aren’t much for going to the movie theater.
It saddens my heart the way people treat each other and the reasons we do so. Blood Diamond is about what are called conflict diamonds. Diamonds that are in some way shape or form, dug up and moved through illegal means that are then sold and the money goes back to support some kind of war. Whites against Africans, Africans against other Africans, civil wars, drug wars, war wars. The problem is evident. But like some many other problems we are unaware and ignorant or just don’t care.
Andrew Peterson so eloquently puts it, “I am shackled by the comforts of my couch” and I think of these words every time I watch or read something about the plight of Africa. Whether its the genocide in Darfur, the conflict diamonds of Angola or Sierra Leone, slavery still being practiced or corrupt governments sucking the life out of their people so they can live in luxury a get out of the mire of poverty that corrupt governments before them only made worse. Blood Diamond is right up there with Hotel Rwanda in my books of movies that do an amazing job of telling the story after it happens. These topics never make front page news or get a second of coverage on national news. Why? Because we don’t care (if I were a cusser I would use a few explicatives to express my frustrations, but I’m not). We don’t give a flip what is happening on our watch because it isn’t happening here on our streets in our cities. Diamonds are a girls best friend only because she never saw the blood that covered it when it was pulled from the ground. I’m not some crazed activist. But someone who knows his call to administer grace a justice to those in need of it. My life has been changed by my forays into social justice and spreading the word. I have seen man at his worst and man at is best and know day after day both are happening. I want to be a person who does more good than bad in the world, trying to be aware of the world around me and letting my life be transformed by the nudging of the Holy Spirit to see all people the way Jesus saw them. That is what it is all about: A world in need of a Savior!
In the end our desire for material gain pays out: sometimes in cash, sometimes in possessions, but more often than not it is first paid for in blood. We get what we pay for.
Check out both movies Blood Diamond and Hotel Rwanda and sites like Make Poverty History, One, Save Darfur and get involved or if you are passionate about something else find it or start your own. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
[tags]Blood Diamond, Hotel Rwanda, social justice, conflict diamonds, One, Make Poverty History, Save Darfur[/tags]
