Tractors Do Not Bleed and Cry
Exactly.
Here’s the whole quote from Shane Claiborne’s book “Irresistible Revolution”. He’s talking about a group of farm workers who are gently revolting against their treatment in a section called “The Invisible People” (p 298-301).
It was a sacred moment. The executives tried to ignore them. They issued a statement that “the tractors don’t come up to the farmer and tell him how to run the farm.” With tears in their eyes, these workers with calloused hands and leather skin from long days in the sun-scorched fields cried out, as if to God, ”We are not tractors. Tractors do not bleed and cry. Tractors do not have families and children. We are not machines; we are human beings.”
A few paragraphs later he summarizes the problem,
The world of efficiency and anonymity dehumanizes us. We see people as machines, as tractors, or as issues to protest. We live in an age when machines act like people and people act like machines. But machines cannot love.
Like so much of what is good about Christianity, this is right on. It just doesn’t go far enough. There is always another layer that cries out, that bleeds, and suffers underneath human greed and indifference. The animals we kill are not machines either. They bleed and suffer and cry and love life and “tremble before violence”. Have we not enough mercy to care for them as well; to care for them as if we are not machines?
Machines cannot love.
Exactly.
