The family and I watched the movie Amazing Grace last night. Something that came to the forefront for me while I watched it…the connection between human slavery of Africans and the production of sugar. While the movie focused on Great Britain’s support of the slave trade in part due to sugar, I couldn’t help feeling horribly convicted…had I been around at that time would I have supported the slave trade for want of sugar? I mean…how powerful a hold does sugar have on me? In the movie, the hypocrisy was obvious. What about me? Is my “love” for sweet tasting food powerful enough that I would not have been able to boycott using sugar had I been alive at the time when slaves were used to produce sugar? Would I have minimized the atrocities of slavery so that I could justify continuing to have sugar?

Fortunately, these days it doesn’t require human slavery to produce sugar…but I can’t help but feel like the enemy must have had a hand in the production of sugar in its early history…and he likely bet that humans would get so attached to sugar that we would be where were are now…with the “average” American consuming 100 pounds of sugar each year!

I keep thinking…if I were involved in an industry or a hobby or something that had a horrid, disdainful beginning, would I look the other way because “That is ancient history?” I know this sounds really weird, but I just can’t shake that the roots of sugar…something to which I seem to give myself over to so freely and struggle with so completely…had its beginnings in the horrific treatment of other humans…I know that God wept (and perhaps still does) over such atrocity…

Yikes.

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