Mike Wittmer

the rest of the story

The editorial cartoon in today’s Grand Rapids Press pokes fun at Walmart for asking people to donate so its workers can have a happy Thanksgiving. This story made national news last week, proving that none of the newscasts do much original reporting anymore.

When I mentioned the story to my parents, they told me the manager of the guilty Walmart goes to their church and belongs to their Adult Bible Fellowship. He said he set out the bins so his employees could give to their colleagues who had suffered recent tragedy and loss. This is no different than what any workplace might do for its unfortunate employees. This one just happened to be at a Walmart.

What Walmart pays its workers is a serious moral question, with strong arguments on both sides. Let’s not demean the conversation with unfair accusations. The manager may be guilty of not realizing the toxic political environment surrounding Walmart, when even an act of kindness will be reverse engineered and used against him, but he is not guilty of what the news media alleges. There may be examples of stony hearted capitalism within Walmart. But this is not one of them.

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2 responses to “the rest of the story”

  1. skeeter

    Reminds me of the Kalamazoo Gazette running a clever photo someone had snapped showing both medical helicopters lifting off at the same time. They used it to say how wasteful it was for both hospitals to have helicopters in competition with one another. That led to the elimination of one of the helicopters and a friend of mine from my home church lost his job as a pilot for the one that was eliminated.

    The reality is the photo actually illustrated why it was good to have both of them. They weren’t rushing in competition to the same site, both were needed at different sites. With only one, now someone either has to either go slowly by ambulance or wait their turn for the helicopter. Some of them might just die waiting.

    Anything the media gets there hands on can be twisted one of several ways, and they tend to twist it whichever way gives them the best ratings as opposed to whichever one best represents the truth. People are sly little sinners, that’s for sure, and the organizations they give birth to, don’t fall far from that tree either.

  2. Jim Huber

    I believe in capitalism and in the free market. However, those must be guided, not by the government but by a moral compass based on the Judeo/Christian ethic. We have become a case of the “love of money” becoming a sacrament in the “religion” of capitalism. In my opinion, that is our problem.

    The answer isn’t to let the government do it all, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the “forces of the market” has become an id that neither knows nor cares about what is right. Republicans and Democrats will play their games of finger pointing, but we must not become so politicized that our political preferences blind us to a clear weakness in our current society.

    The mainstream media is politically liberal and not objective. The new media is much more politically conservative and not objective. God’s truth as revealed in His Word is where we need to go for answers, followed by prayer and compassionate care to those who are less fortunate. I am not talking about free rides and I do not support welfare as a way of life. I am talking about a biblical concept of sharing the love of Christ in the way that only the church can do.

    The liberal “social gospel” denominations today seem to own the ministry of compassion and care for the downtrodden. Why does evangelical and fundamental Christianity allow this? My fear is that we allow this because we are too interested in what “our people” think and not focused enough on what the bible really says regarding these matters.

    I hope I’m mistaken…

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