All you can eat! and other troubling thoughts.

I went to an all you can eat Chinese Buffet last night. Very nice. But as I sat munching through my 2nd plate of prawns and ducks and other lovely things, a thought hit me. How much food am I stealing form others by eating this meal?

This set me off thinking. Everyone on the planet has certain resources. I have them abundantly. If everyone lived like me, eating all you can eat, we'd run out. So I must be stealing from others.

But I wasn't intentionally stealing: I just hadn't thought about it before. Is it still morally wrong to do so? I assumed so. So I thought about what else I do on the planet. I consume lots of resources everyday. Probably too much in some case. I had always imagined that campaigning for social justice would end up with everyone living like we do - but of course that is impossible as the planet couldn't sustain that.

So, campaigning for social justice must be able giving up things so that others can have basics. So what should I give up? Trips to the cinema so that electricity can be produced in Sudan for education? Showering every morn so that Zimbabwean farmers can have more to water their crops? That 5th pair of shoes so that Chinese tea workers can have one?

Where does it stop?

And more importantly, am I prepared to give it up? Morally I feel obliged to say yes - but I know I won't. Is this what being 'lukewarm' for Jesus means? If it is, then a lot of people are in a lot of trouble. And I'm included.