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“Just War Theory” And Simple Living

admin January 15th, 2010

Obama, Niebuhr, “Just War Theory,” and simple living are all of a piece.

It’s time for me to comment a bit on political and world affairs.

I hesitate to go there because this arena has become so filled with hate and vitriol. I also believe that we can live as Christians regardless of what any government or political party does or doesn’t do. However our congregation’s adult Sunday school has been discussing President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and his use of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Just War Theory in it. This got me thinking about the theory, foreign policy, Christian morality, and its relationship to Christian simple living.

Niebuhr, of course, was one of America’s preeminent protestant theologians in the 20th Century who taught for many years at Union Theological Seminary. He is known for his mentoring relationship with German minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, his writings on Just War Theory, and a number of critical books on other theological topics.

Niebuhr and others, most recently Barak Obama in his Nobel speech, claim that Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi-style nonviolence never successfully stops wars or conflicts. They suggest that Gandhi or King could never have succeeded in stopping or preventing the Second World War by talking with Adolf Hitler, for instance.

The theory holds that war and conflict are permanent parts of human life because of original sin, i.e., we are ‘fallen’ imperfect people, and we will always be falling into conflict. Because we live in this sinful world, therefore, we will be forced to exercise power in order to prevent the world from collapsing into chaos, which would not be the Christian thing to do. Rather than merely trying to prevent war through ineffective nonviolent strategies, we should strive to make war as moral as possible by preventing more suffering than is necessary.

The fundamental principles for doing this are that:

  • War must always be a last resort;
  • Force must always be proportional to the threat (never more than an eye for an eye…);
  • Civilians must be spared whenever possible.

So what in the world does this have to do with Christian simple living?

Christian simple living as I’ve defined it, is based on Jesus’ teaching that we should above all else, love and care for others and not engage in war or other acts that are destructive to people. This is what I call “Kingdom thinking.” It is a kingdom where we put our egos in our back pockets and consider the welfare of our neighbors first, no matter how far away or how much we might disagree or argue with them.

Part of doing that is to live simply so that we don’t use up more than our share of things, or use our ‘wealth’ or its accumulation, to abuse, oppress, or injure others, or injure creation as a whole which would be destructive to everyone. Rather we are to use our resources and our energy to build-up others, i.e., the community and the nations, as a whole.

This is a holistic, far-sighted, and patient approach to life which I think is at considerable odds with Just War Theory.

I believe that the notion of the just war is based on the brain wiring we are all, unfortunately, born with. That is, we are biologically and emotionally pre-programmed to use fight-or-flight responses. If a threat of any kind arises, we automatically want to either fight back (go for the jugular) or flee from the threat. Neither of these, of course, leads to peace.

The fight-flight response pretty much prevents us from engaging in long-term, proactive prevention and peacemaking efforts – the kind of thing Jesus has been asking us to do. In fact, much of the peacemaking that does go on today is focused on stopping existing conflicts, and even though that is a step in the right direction, it is not based on long-range or holistic thinking. Reducing current conflicts means that we are still focused on the conflict rather than on preventing future conflicts in the first place.

Even phrasing this as prevention is off-target because the term ‘prevention’ by definition assumes there are anticipated conflicts that we want to avoid. This is still reactive rather than proactive. Being proactive, in this case, means creating the fundamental conditions that ensure peace, period. This would mean, among other things, creating healthy interpersonal, social, economic, and international conditions which optimize the quality of life for everyone. Prevention efforts usually focus on altering only those conditions which affect the current conflict. Although the ‘healthy conditions’ might be preventative, the thinking and psychology behind them and the strategies and tactics used to create them are just not the same thing as prevention.

Under such optimized living conditions, people would tend to feel more fairly treated, would have most basic needs met, and would have better tools and resources for dealing fairly with disagreements long before they became conflicts or wars. I say this having spent a great deal of my career in the health promotion and disease prevention business, particularly substance abuse prevention. So I’ve had some time to think about it.

Our knee-jerk fight-flight response usually kicks-in so quickly that we don’t often give ourselves the time to learn or practice being proactive. We don’t have the time to practice peace! We only have time for fighting the next war or, at best, intervening once a war is about to start. Long term Kingdom Thinking requires patience and understanding so it’s usually at best an afterthought for us – after we’ve counted all the bodies.

Here, then, is my biggest objection to Just War Theory: it enables us, or traps us in the fight-flight vicious circle, because it always leaves open a large opportunity to give up on learning, understanding, patience, and peace, and instead to reach for a gun – fast, because it has been humanity’s accepted way of dealing with things. It’s a huge loophole, which we most often make use of, that actually prevents us from ever learning to do it right.

So day-by-day we get further and further from the Kingdom, and more and more entrenched in the darkening vicious circle of fight-flight and war as our preferred way of life.

So what are Christian Simple Livers to do? Do we have a role to play here?

One of the just war issues is that nations and their governments are constitutionally incapable of keeping the peace through peaceful means. That was Niebuhr’s whole point. Fallen people and their governments can’t seem to do without war. And Obama was in total agreement.

Truth be told, if I were president, I would adopt the same Just War stance even in spite of my Christian beliefs and rantings about Kingdom Thinking.

The secular world of nations and governments is mired deeply in its conflictual DNA as a way of governing and surviving. Obama and Niebuhr might be right that even a Gandhi couldn’t have succeeded against a Hitler.

But I think that is exactly the point that Jesus was trying to make about the Church and the Kingdom. It isn’t for everyone! Perhaps it can never be for everyone. But it can happen – in the Church, if we take it seriously – we just never have. A community of believers can function in this way through care and concern for each other, even those with whom we have very strong disagreements. With faith we can learn to do it. It has been done before.

I do believe that people who are intent on it, and have faith in it, and have faith in God, can create a better community and a better society at least within the bounds of the church community. And it may well spill beyond the church community as it often has in the past. We just need a lot more genuine Christian community based on living simply, and still more spillage into the secular world. Let’s think in terms of millennia here, not just a few years. But even in a few millennia I don’t believe it will be for everyone, as Jesus said.

This is my vision for the foundations of Christian simple living: We are called apart to behave differently – to take a radically different path. We don’t need to avoid the world as the Amish do so as not to be dirtied by it, but to work with Jesus in creating the Kingdom, while being “in the world” but not a part of it. This is a mark of The Church. If we can learn to live simply, spare the earth, and act in just and compassionate ways with each other, we will have taken a few more steps toward Kingdom Thinking and keeping the peace. And we can continue taking more and more steps toward creating equitable and just foundations for a more peaceful world as we mature in Christian simple living.

Within The Church – within this (potentially) blossoming Kingdom, we don’t need Just War Theory – it would destroy us.

This approach is very much in line with what has become known as “Christian Anarchy” which I am a great fan of. I keep threatening to write a few posts on this and have yet to do it, so maybe that will be my next project.

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Simple Living Issues on the Front Page

admin January 4th, 2010

Well here it is: three different articles related directly to simple living and the environment – all in the same edition of The Sunday Washington Post (1/3/10). The stars must be aligning just right!

When our simple living concerns serendipitously show up all at once in the headlines of one of the nation’s most prestigious newspapers, then maybe our time has come… or not. I always get overly excited when things like this happen, as though our world is really, finally about to change for the better. I can’t help but think that it has to be more than just a coincidence. Maybe our collective consumer desperation over our deteriorating financial and economic situation has finally culminated in a rush to sanity!

Then my memory kicks in and I recall that in the past such rushes to sanity have quickly pooped-out when the heat of the crisis abates and most of us revert to type.

But there is always a glimmer of hope that even if the sanity doesn’t last long, that at least a few people will have learned a little about a better way of living and a few more people may actually have tried living a little better – a baby step toward lasting sanity. And I really do think that happens often enough that it’s worth writing and talking about.

At any rate, I commend these articles to you along with a brief summary of each.

Sink Your Teeth into a Fast, Michelle Singletary

Michelle, who writes the Color of Money column in The Post, recommends a 21 day financial fast in which we buy only necessities by curbing our need to consume. Several families took her up on the fast and the article reports on their experiences.

She advocates the fast for people for whom the stress of money causes pain with a spouse, friends or family, or for people who are worried about their retirement or college savings, or if they just don’t have enough to get to the end of the month, i.e., it’s for most of us.

The fast instructs us not to ‘shop’ (or window shop, which she says, is merely shopping for entertainment – a definite no-no) not to use credit cards (cash only), and not to buy anything that is not an absolute necessity like food. No going out to restaurants or fast food emporiums, not even a coffee on the way to work, and no buying gifts or gift cards.

On the gift-giving issue, Michelle tells us that, like most simple livers already know, we can give ourselves or hand made things instead.

And on using plastic: it makes buying too thoughtless and easy. Even if we pay off the card every month, the ease of it causes all of us to buy more than we need.

Michelle also advises folks to make a budget and stick to it, explaining that budgeting is not about you, it is about good stewardship, using well what God has given you.

There are many more very thoughtful items in the financial fast guidelines, so click on the link above and take a look at the entire article.

Happy Talk, Carol Graham

Carol Graham is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland. Her book, Happiness around the World: the Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, will be on book shelves this month, and her article in The Post hits a few of her book’s key points, including:

There is a pattern for those who are happy:

    A stable marriage, good health, and enough (but not too much) income.
    Not surprisingly, events such as divorce, unemployment, or economic instability are terrible for it.

But strangely, we tend to adapt to both prosperity and adversity, i.e. we can have virtually everything and be miserable as well as being cheerful during tremendous adversity. Where our adaptive ability often fails us is around uncertainty. This is difficult for most of us to adapt to and it is under these conditions that many of us feel the least happy.

Carol’s team’s studies in Russia and Peru showed that those who made the greatest income gains were, ironically, the most critical of their economic situation while those with the least income gains were, on average, more satisfied. Of course, she explains, the frustrated achievers may have made gains precisely because they were discontent in the first place.

But the bottom line here is that, as a number of recent studies have shown, our western, First World assumptions about wealth and possessions making us happy are simply bogus.

Beyond recycling and light bulbs, Juliet Eilperin

Finally, a story that once again not only demonstrates how far behind the rest of the industrialized world the U.S. is with regard to the environment and climate change, but also shows how those who are way ahead of us are becoming missionaries to us, the former (how embarrassing) leaders of the technological world.

A Swedish experiment aimed at helping U.S. citizens understand that a lifestyle that curbs greenhouse-gas emissions is not necessarily oppressive, just different, has selected a number of American families to be “Climate Pilots”.

Under the coaching of Swedish volunteers, several Virginia families are installing high-tech greenhouse gas saving devices and changing their daily routines to greatly reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. In addition to installing such technologies as geothermal heat pumps, these families are also using a number of low-tech strategies such as eating much less meat to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by farm animals.

The author reports that Americans each emit 23.5 metric tons (that’s nearly 26 tons U.S.) of greenhouse gases per year, 4 times the world average! The average for the European Union countries is 10.3 tons per capita while Sweden is now at about 7.4 tons. Sweden has made climate change a central pillar of their domestic and foreign policy for over 10 years. The city of Kalmar for instance will be fossil fuel-free by 2030. Several Kalmar families visited VA to coach the climate pilots there how to do it themselves.

Sweden has accomplished this by making climate change a national priority such that every community has a climate and energy adviser, and the government has launched “study circles” on climate across the nation during the ‘90’s. The article also makes the point that Sweden, along with other European countries, has not succumbed to the American pathology of believing that individual’s rights and freedoms must always trump the common good, no matter how many people may be hurt by that kind of ego-centric living.

Post Script

Perhaps Christians who live simply may be able to reach other Americans with the message that it is our community, whether it is our local neighborhoods, or the nation as a whole, that is at stake here. It is no longer about ‘me’, but care for all of us and all of God’s creation that is paramount, not my right to have a Hummer!

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Snow and Simplicity

admin December 19th, 2009

I’m watching the snow fall out of my study window as I write. It’s snowing hard and blowing, and there is nearly a foot of snow on the ground and more to come. The weather people say this is the biggest December snow storm in our area since the early 1930’s, so our family Christmas events for today have been unfortunately cancelled or postponed. Good day to sit by the fire, or next to a nice warm computer!

I’ve heard many people say that they really appreciate these days when we can’t easily get out to shop or work and we are relegated to our warm homes. They say that it feels good not to be able to do those things so they can slow down and pay attention to the here and now – which is a real job for many people since this is the last weekend before Christmas when the shopping frenzy is at its most hysterical.

It’s too bad that these socked-in days pass so quickly and are so infrequent – we quickly forget the lessons they have to teach us and cut short the experiences that mean so much to our souls.

These days are important previews of what Christian simplicity can mean for us and the world, and perhaps we should point that out every time someone tells us how much they enjoyed being confined to the house. Everyday life can be much more like this than our usual “rat race” days.

Living more simply does in fact bring us many of the benefits we so enjoy on these snowy days, but they bring at least some of them every day, not just on these rare occasions.

It’s a great advertising and marketing opportunity for us:

    “Like your experience today? Well you can have many more days like this if you follow Jesus into a life of simplicity!”

These days are also great reminders for us in the simplicity choir too, that we are:

    Not participating in the Christmas shopping hysteria which can be very satisfying, and good for our families too.

    Again focusing on the really important things in our lives like our families and neighbors.

    Taking a little more time for prayer, meditation, and study.

    Thankful for a safe, warm home and perhaps a fire to sit by.

    More mindful of those who do not have safe, warm homes, and how cold and dangerous it is living on the streets – and what we can do to help!

    Appreciating the folks who have to work out there in the weather like Postal Service people, snow plow operators, utility workers, toll booth attendants.

Now I think I hear the snow shovel calling me…

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Little Things Matter

admin December 14th, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, Mike Tidwell, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post (12/6/09, To Really Save the Planet, Stop Going Green) in which he advocated paying much less attention to the our light bulbs and more attention to changing national and worldwide policy on climate change and the environment in general – if we really want to make a difference. He suggests that much more activism on the scale of the civil rights movement would force wide scale change quicker than each of us buying CFL’s or buying local organics.

There is indeed well researched evidence that state and national policy change results in more, positive systemic outcomes than almost any other type of action we can take because it changes the behavior of entire populations very quickly (because if it’s a law, we don’t want to have to pay the fine or do the time!). This was true for civil rights as well as smoking cessation and it could well be true for the environment as well. So it would be worth our while to get more organized and push congress and the White House to do more faster, and include specific policy actions that should be taken.

There are also those bad days when I wonder if all my efforts are wasted as the rest of the world continues on in its destructive, self-serving way. Am I merely a tiny drop of fresh water in an ocean of salt water?

On the other hand… a couple of contrarian thoughts:

1. I believe we need to both push for large scale policy change and do the little personal things like buying CFL’s: one without the other isn’t likely to get us where we want to go quickly enough. It isn’t simply a matter of “think globally, act locally” although that is important. More to the point, each one of us needs to keep the issue of conservation, global warming, and non-participation in consumer culture in front of us 24/7 if we are to change our way of living, which I believe we must.

One way humans have done this throughout history is to think of each of these tiny personal, but world-saving actions as both functional and symbolic. They are symbols of our values, our commitment, and our faith – symbols that remind us each day of who we have become as Christians, and that we are sons of God who are here to care for each other and the creation we have been entrusted with.

These symbolic acts are extremely valuable for our children and grandchildren, as well as for our neighbors. Each action not only helps the physical world a little, but helps those around us think about what they are doing, or not doing, as well. We are educating our kids and shaping behavior that may last for a lifetime.

2. If we are going to up our ante on pushing policy change, we ought to start at home – by thinking of our churches as our first targets for systemic change. In our own congregations we can have direct policy change impacts more easily and more quickly than we can on Federal or State governments – while helping many people rediscover how to actually live their faith.

  • We can push to change the purchasing, recycling, investing, giving, and energy use policies and activities of our congregations.
  • We can push our pastors and Christian education programs to speak more loudly and more often on the need for all members to change their ways of living in response to the Gospel, the Law, and the Prophets.
  • We can make it an article of faith that each member take concrete steps to reduce their participation in the consumer rat race, and then hold each other’s feet to that fire in walking the talk.

Then we can call our Congressmen about the environment!

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It’s Time To Push Our Congregation’s Limits

admin May 8th, 2009

The time is ripe for simple livers to foment a change – to seriously push the simple living agenda, not just as an ‘alternative’ to consumer culture, but as the way we have to live if we are to survive into any kind of reasonable future.

The recession has created the most fertile ground for the growth of simple living we have seen in several generations, and we shouldn’t miss this opportunity…

And I believe the change should start in our congregations.

Where we’ve come to

We have witnessed the nasty turn our culture has taken over the past half century: the race into increasing materialism, self-gratification, and the belief that making a lot of money in any way possible, and piling up as much stuff as we can, is the highest and best use of our time and resources.

This, coupled with “the end justifies the means” thinking, means that most of our society feels that it is just fine to ignore or turn a blind eye to the social, economic, and environmental damage done in the pursuit of these goals, as well as abandoning the ethics and values that we used to live by, and which are now considered ‘quaint’ and obstructionist.

We see the evidence of this every day. Our communities are awash in stuff we don’t need, food that is killing us, and debt we can’t repay.  Globalized conglomerates virtually control whole societies and their governments while impoverishing many and decimating their environments in order to produce ever more ‘product’, increase profits, and escalate their market capitalization and share price – to feed our consumer machine.

Supporting all of this, of course, is the huge and voracious banking and securities industry that feeds it with “other people’s money” while nearly bankrupting us in the process.

Here’s the point

Almost all of us has been sucked into this machine, putting us in the unwilling position of participating in and condoning it – every time we buy ‘product’ or services, use any media, or invest our money, because virtually none of it comes without sticky strings to the whole Consumer Industrial Complex (CIC) and the detritus of its operations.

In defense of our lives and communities, some of us have taken up simple living to help us avoid participating in this death spiral with the hope of making our lives, congregations, communities, and the broader world better, more caring places… and not in small part because Jesus taught us that this is Kingdom living.

What difference can we possibly make? There are few of us compared to the size of consumer culture as a whole and the vast business complex supporting it. We certainly have little money or power to change things, other than the actions each of us personally take.

But the time is ripe for change!

There has not been a time over the past 30 years when so many people have been so receptive to our message and way of living. The Recession has been a wakeup call for many who previously paid little attention to their faith, values, or lifestyle. Many of these folks are now ready because their consumer chickens have come home to roost, which makes this the ideal ‘teachable moment.’

A modest proposal

Since we are a small group, I propose, that we begin where we are – changing our own congregations.

Why?

I’ve noticed, and probably you have too, that our congregations, regardless of denomination, are often as much a part of the CIC as anyone. Yet we have been taught in these very congregations, not to do these things because they are destructive of others as well as ourselves. We have been taught to care for others rather than primarily looking out for ourselves. We have been taught that wealth, money, and power are not to be our concerns, but rather that we should be building up our communities and our relationships with others – even caring for strangers and our perceived enemies. Yet each Saturday or Sunday most of us worship in beautiful, expensive buildings with soft seats and A/C. Sitting in this comfort we are rarely directly confronted with the disconnect between our values and our behavior.

When was the last time your pastor or a congregation member asked you personally,” if Jesus said we should not put money first, then why do you have such an expensive car or house, or such an expansive waistline?”

The Church may have become the problem rather than the solution.  In practice, not just in sermons, The Church demands relatively little of us in terms of how we actually live our day-to-day lives. It most often doesn’t hold us accountable for whether or not we walk the Christian talk. The Church has allowed Jesus’ parables such as “the rich young man,” to become entertaining stories rather than directives for our lives. The old joke about the Ten Commandments becoming the ten suggestions really isn’t a joke in consumer society.

So there is work to do in our congregations as well as in our own lives. I believe that we need to bring Christian simple living into the mainstream of our congregation’s norms, values, and actions. We need to say, and have our churches and our ministers say, that living simply is the way, if we care at all about the world or Jesus’ Church. And the Church should expect us to act on it.

What can we do?

Maybe we need to give up the idea that in church we must always be nice and polite, and instead be honest and confront these difficult issues, even if it causes rumbling in the pews – some of it directed at us.
We could:

    ·    Have a very direct talk with the pastor and/or the church board about what we believe the congregation should do to begin living more simply and walk the talk;
    ·    Request a series of sermons and church school sessions on this topic;
    ·    Question where the congregation puts its money – a local bank, mutual funds, or, in socially responsible funds, community investment funds, micro loans, etc. Then ask the same questions of each family.
    ·    Ask where the congregation and its families shop, what we buy, and how much. Are we really only buying what we need? Are we using socially and environmentally responsible stores, brands, and products? Do we really use what God gave us in a loving, caring way – or do we spend it mostly on ourselves?
    ·    Propose a new set of formal, published norms and values for the congregation as an organization and its member families that support the practice of simplicity and genuine loving kindness as marks of the church in this place;
    ·    Start intimate discussion groups where members can say what they truly feel about these issues and come to grips with their own successes and failures with simple living;
    ·    Start support groups for members trying to practice these principles – it’s NOT easy and we all need encouragement, support and hard information to make these kinds of shifts.

What Would You Do?

Got some better suggestions? Got comments?

More than ever we need your input for how we can move this agenda forward before it’s too late, if it isn’t already.

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A Compassionate Response to the Economic Crisis

admin January 18th, 2009

Consumer culture is sick, and needs a compassionate response from us!

The current economic meltdown has been caused by a severe chronic illness that is causing a lot of pain. It begs for a compassionate cure that only Christians who practice simplicity can provide.

As Christians who live faithfully and simply, we have something of great value to offer this newly troubled consumer world. In fact our intervention now could be crucial to society’s, and the Church’s, long term survival. BTW, it’s interesting that the word ‘crucial’ is derived from the Latin word cross, so this may be an opportunity for us to carry ours!

Christian simple living offers a healing perspective on the poverty and illness slowly emerging out of the economic chaos, and it might finally be seen as a welcome alternative to consumer culture. I believe that Jesus would want us to help the newly poor, and heal the sickness underlying the new poverty, although in some cases it is just a lowered standard of living rather than true poverty.

You could fairly say that in the past, consumer society just appeared to us to be sick because of our theology/philosophy of life, but now, we have all seen the hard evidence that in fact it really is an illness.

As a society we are caught in a vicious circle. Our individual and society-wide sense of entitlement to a good (you could even say wealthy) life pervades every aspect of our culture and economy to the point that it has become the most significant driver of our culture – and fate.

Over the course of the Twentieth Century our ego’s sense of entitlement has been carefully nurtured by business and industry and now it drives our economic decision making from our consumer purchases to how we invest for college and retirement to how we frame the business models of multinational corporations. This sense of entitlement boils down to “I want more money faster so I can support the extravagant lifestyle advertisers tell me I so richly deserve!” The resulting consumerism, speculation, and corporate empire-building, has led us to the current economic meltdown.

But apparently there is a consensus that the cure for this ego disorder seems to be to put still more money back into our personal and corporate pockets so we can all get back to spending money again and “rebuild” the economy. (Brings to mind the old saw that the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over while expecting a different result each time.)

This kind of cure is, at heart, a Ponzi scheme, and it is what makes it a vicious circle. And although the cure may make us feel like it is doing some small amount of good in the short run, it will only foment an even worse crisis in the not-too-distant future, because it not only doesn’t address the real problem, it feeds it.

As a society we could break out of the vicious circle, but of course we won’t. For too many people it just feels too good to be out there accumulating “wealth,” as the brokerages now insist on calling our “savings.”

…and like the heroin addict who feels sooo good when he shoots-up, then feels sooo bad when he comes down (and in his pain thinks mainly about where to get the next fix so he can stop the pain) we too, even in our economic misery, think only about our next high. Without treatment the addict’s body eventually becomes so sick that that he dies of organ failure. Our consumer addiction is likely to do the same to us individually and as a society.

So our economic crisis truly is an illness causing much pain and even some real poverty while much of society refuses to deal with the root cause and get on with living simply.

They need us now!

This may, in fact, turn out to be the best opportunity we will have in this century to help people understand why Christian simple living is a real cure rather than another Ponzi scheme… and we should probably start in our own congregations, because oddly enough, the Church, regardless of what Jesus taught, has rarely spoken out strongly on this issue with conviction and energy, much less taken meaningful action on it – so our congregations are filling with the newly poor… and sick.

What are some specific actions you believe we might take to minister during the crisis?

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