Over-Consumption

For those of you who heard our first Deep Dive Digital (DDD) conversation, a second is now available for download. You can get it at wkc.org/community/sermonarchive or by signing up for the podcast feed at itunes (search for Deep Dive Digital). In our latest DDD conversation, we look back to the God Debate series and the Easter series which followed. We add a kind of post script to where we have been over the past 6 weeks. But this past Sunday we began our new series which we are calling The Story of Stuff, one good way (we think) to live out our Easter faith.

The title of this series was borrowed from storyofstuff.com, a site we encourage you to visit. On Sunday we showed a segment of the 20 minute mini-documentary that is available there and we encourage you to view the entire piece. It will help you see that while we are consumers by nature -- we must eat to live, we must use the earth to make a world -- we participate in a system that is not currently sustainable. What is particularly coming to light in our time is the way our disposable/throw-away/planned obsolescence culture is actually working against us rather than improving our lives. The storyofstuff.com will help you with an analysis of this reality; perhaps you will see this issue in some new ways.

Our interest in this topic is two-fold. First, we are citizens, participants in the communal good; we carry a responsibility for the well-being of others. Our biblical tradition continually teaches that we live a tension between our pilgrim identity (our journey through life) and our fully-settled citizen identity (we live here, now). And while the pilgrim aspect of our identity tends to get the most play in Christian conversation, there are many times we need to be reminded of our responsibilities as participants in culture. For instance, the prophet Jeremiah counselled those carried into Babylonian exile to make the best of where they were, to participate and work for the common good:

Make yourselves at home there and work for the country's welfare. Pray for Babylon's well-being. If things go well for Babylon, things will go well for you. (Jeremiah 29:7)

The idea of citizenship is the idea that we must live cooperatively, with an understanding of how our human integration and interdependence is a reality we cannot avoid. With this is mind, isn’t the stewardship of the earth a Christian ideal? Aren’t all these current matters in our politics -- issues of consumption, ecological health and stewardship of the earth, more equitable and sustainable economic systems -- all matters that sincere Christian citizens should care about? Of course they are.
But our second interest in this subject is a spiritual one, for the story of stuff has very deep spiritual implications. It is not hard to see that, as we try to help each other pursue the Jesus kind of life, the issue of needless and wasteful consumption is a spiritual issue as well as social-political one. The truth is that we all experience how buying and acquiring becomes a spiritual experience in itself. Our interest in stuff -- more stuff, other stuff, new stuff -- is often connected to our sense of self, our emotional needs, our ache for joy, our flight from boredom or lack of meaning. The story of stuff in our time is a spiritual story.

One of the most consistent and enduring Biblical discussions (shot through both testaments) is that of idolatry. To be sure, the very word idolatry seems archaic, even trite, but the idea itself reveals our enduring human struggle. Idolatry could be defined simply as turning lesser things (which can be good in themselves) into ultimate meanings. It works by the power of a corrupted imagination, by the failure to see reality in right proportion. One way to understand idolatry is the tendency we have of worshipping the things we make, of turning to our own creations as some kind of answer to the spiritual ache and void within us. I will conclude my thoughts by quoting the prophet Isaiah at length. In chapter 44 of his prophecy [vs. 12-20, Message Bible] he reveals the folly of this way with some very effective contrasts. See if you don’t see the story of stuff as it was worked out in an ancient culture:

The blacksmith makes his no-god, works it over in his forge, hammering it on his anvil—such hard work! He works away, fatigued with hunger and thirst.

The woodworker draws up plans for his no-god, traces it on a block of wood. He shapes it with chisels and planes into human shape—a beautiful woman, a handsome man, ready to be placed in a chapel. He first cuts down a cedar, or maybe picks out a pine or oak, and lets it grow strong in the forest, nourished by the rain. Then it can serve a double purpose: Part he uses as firewood for keeping warm and baking bread; from the other part he makes a god that he worships—carves it into a god shape and prays before it. With half he makes a fire to warm himself and barbecue his supper. He eats his fill and sits back satisfied with his stomach full and his feet warmed by the fire: "Ah, this is the life." And he still has half left for a god, made to his personal design—a handy, convenient no-god to worship whenever so inclined. Whenever the need strikes him he prays to it, "Save me. You're my god."

Pretty stupid, wouldn't you say? Don't they have eyes in their heads? Are their brains working at all? Doesn't it occur to them to say, "Half of this tree I used for firewood: I baked bread, roasted meat, and enjoyed a good meal. And now I've used the rest to make an abominable no-god. Here I am praying to a stick of wood!"

This lover of emptiness, of nothing, is so out of touch with reality, so far gone, that he can't even look at what he's doing, can't even look at the no-god stick of wood in his hand and say, "This is crazy."

It is time for us to realize two things at once. First, that our over-consumption is bad citizenry, that we are moving through this historical period as over-sized pac-men leaving nothing in our wake. And second, that deeper than the social-political issue, our over-consumption reveals a hunger for life that we are trying to meet, but are not succeeding. As followers of Jesus, there really is a better way to live. The Story of Stuff continues this Sunday at 9:29 and 11:11 am. Hope to see you there.

Bob