christian living on Exploitation

Good and Gracious Lord, You hold us in the palm of Your strong hand, working all things for our good and to Your glory. There’s no place we can go that escapes Your notice and is hidden from Your lovi...

A genuine leader will never exploit your emotions or your pocketbook.

God of all nations and peoples, Lord of all places and lands, who didst form man of the dust of the ground, and make of him a living soul, we praise thee for the infinite variety of thy human creature...

Gracious God, you tend to the earth as your vineyard, longing for it to bring fruit. You want our society and our lives to look more and more like the Kingdom of Heaven. We work against your plans, so...

Leader: Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. People: Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart ...

In October 2014 Wired magazine reported on the dirty work every social media company must somehow handle: moderating the deluge of exploitative, degrading content posted in unimaginable quantities aro...

When conflict and division are driving both politics and media (including social media), the contrast between the way of the world and the way of Jesus stands out more than ever. How can pastors, task...

The priest Henri Nouwen learned humility on a mission trip to South America. He went expecting to pass on his wisdom to the poor and unenlightened. During his six-month stay, Nouwen concluded that a d...

Too Busy for God? American work culture is all-pervasive. For many members of your congregation, it can be a real fight to get actual time off—and cell phones and the internet has made it possible to...

Lord, help us to be a people known for the ways in which we live out our faith by loving and serving all people, even those who, in the world’s eyes, have little to offer us. By treating them with dig...

The Celebrant and People together, all kneeling Most holy and merciful Father: We confess to you and to one another, and to the whole communion of saints in heaven and on earth, that we have sinne...

Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to anno...

This emphasis is directed primarily at the here and now, as Christ-embodying communities of active love in the midst of the world. All of creation is caught up in the restorative work. The mission of ...

God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts. God bless us with righteous anger at injustice, oppression, and exp...

The opportunity for conversion is brief, and our lives are littered with missed opportunities.

Persecution was the devil’s second-best tactic. His best tactic is materialism, and we in the West have been sleepwalkers in our faith for too long, forgetting in the midst of a life of material ease ...

Selfish people pursue gain at others’ expense. But God’s riches are infinite. When you serve Him and others, you store up treasures in Heaven. This doesn’t reduce the treasures available to others. Ev...

The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

We are too anxious to be able to wait for fruit and time to ripen, so we take the shortcuts of robbery and violence, even the torture of little children; sin leads to crimes against both nature and ou...

Hence, whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.

When we keep purchasing, keep consuming, and keep envying and coveting, we are pining for what the objects represent: peace, ease, meaning, beauty, stability, adventure, knowledge, renown, connection,...

We often become offensive to respectable types when we enter into other people’s suffering and brokenness, or divulge our own.

The most fundamental assumption in economics is scarcity. This, in effect, assumes away abundance. Thus, most mainstream economists are not prepared to deal with abundance. They have few concepts that...

Persecution is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems.

The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door.

In his classic fictional work on spiritual warfare, The Screwtape Letters , C. S. Lewis imagined a senior demon (Screwtape) corresponding with one of his protégés (his nephew Wormwood) as the latte...

Want to snatch a day from the manacles of boredom? Do overgenerous deeds, acts beyond reimbursement. Kindness without compensation. Do a deed for which you cannot be repaid.

Looking through the lens of Holy Scripture, human work must be seen first and foremost as value contribution, not economic compensation. We can have a flourishing, fruitful life even if we don’t get a...

Power is the ability to make something of the world.