Critique of the Other

Often it is common to see bloggers and many of them theological bloggers involved in frequent critiques of other cultures which are not their own, but rarely critiquing their own culture.  Personally I fail to see the use of critiquing a culture which exists a thousand miles away if we cannot understand and critique the issues which are prevalent in the area and country in which we live.

Certainly we can learn from the critiques of others cultures (or our own culture from the viewpoint of other cultures), but it really misses the point.   We should have the great concern about our neighborhood before we can begin to have concern about other lands.

It is the flaw of many people whose work is entirely theoretical, but fail to live out the theoretical in their lives.  But the issue is the theoretical concern is completely trumped by the practical negligence of those people often times.  It rarely is of much good to simply think of what is good in a theoretical sense.

You see we cannot think ethics theoretically in much of an ethical sense if we are not willing to think ethics in a sense which has practical implications.   It is easy to do ethics in the theoretical only because it does not have implications on us.  We will not in the purely theoretical discover implications which we should do.

You see it is very easy to pretend to have concern for the world, but to move the concern outside of our sphere of influence.  In affect to go tell others to go do the good that we should do.

We must always be open to doing good and not seek to have others do good for us.  We are God's hands and feet in the world, not another voice who tells others to be God's hands and feet and does nothing ourselves.