Confessions of a Consumer Addict

admin April 13th, 2010

I’m coming closer to believing that the notion of Christian Anarchy (for a quickie refresher on what Christian Anarchy is, see my previous posts here and here) is a very good way to think about living the Christian life in general and Christian simple living in particular.

But there are problems too

It comes across as a very negative way of seeing the faith. Even the name, Christian Anarchy, is negative if not frightening. Many of the works discussing it spend much of their time on what’s wrong with human organizations (“the powers” in the Bible), or ‘arkies’ (Vernard Eller’s shorthand for any of the world’s ‘archical’ or hierarchical organizations). Tolstoy and Ellul were not a cheery bunch of writers either! And my own foggy musings are pretty negative as well.

It’s never a good idea to describe something by what it is not, or to sell a concept as a glass half empty!

It’s also a very complicated idea to understand as well as describe, which makes it difficult to translate into something practical and useful.

Part of the problem is that the classic works on Christian Anarchy (which I’ll refer to as CA from here on) like those of Leo Tolstoy, Jacques Ellul, SØren Kierkegaard, Vernard Eller, etc., are focused on the theology, philosophy, or sociology of CA rather than its practical application. And although Eller clearly says that CA is not ‘anti’ anything, but rather is just being not interested or impressed by the powers, some of these thinkers are very much anti- government, anti-capitalist, or anti-hierarchies in general, giving their views a radical twist.

Contemporary CA practitioners often organize social justice programs such as Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (a very good thing) (http://www.catholicworker.org/) or promote radical political positions such as Graham Cameron’s (http://christiananarchy.com/articles/).

These are big thinkers and big doers intent on changing the world, or a significant part of it. But there are probably a lot of people who, like me,  don’t want to virtually take  sword in hand and march out to right the world’s wrongs, but merely want to live a good, and even occasionally courageous personal life where they are with the people around them. And most of us probably aren’t intent on tearing things down to do it.

And I just don’t agree that Christian Anarchy is primarily about being a social activist or political revolutionary. I believe that CA principles can apply to all Christians who are really trying to follow Christ, like Christian simple livers, and that we should be able to use the positive norms and values inherent in CA to help build-up ourselves, our congregations and our communities.

I also think that when you use the tenets of CA to create a social or political organization, you have already violated the spirit, if not the definition of CA by creating yet another arky. And since these organizations are created by mere mortals to carry out their own parochial visions, by definition they become just another worldly arky with all their natural human flaws.

… and so we’re right back to where we started – and we probably aren’t in the Kingdom of God yet!

So in an effort to see a practical and hopeful side to CA, I’ve started to think through the issue of practicality – and I emphasize the word started. I’ll keep you posted on my thoughts as they occur to me.

Here goes:

Life Among the Arkies

Christian Anarchy, as well as traditional Christian belief hold that we should live only according to God’s ‘Arky’ and not according to the world’s arkies or in Biblical terms “the powers” – rich and powerful people, organizations, and governments.

As I have defined CA in previous posts (derived from the writers mentioned above, particularly Eller), CA sounds a lot like The Kingdom of God as Jesus might have described it, in the sense that all of The Kingdom’s members would be joyfully living according to God’s law and Jesus’ teachings rather than the world’s values. That may actually be the simple definition of CA and its goal as well!

That would put Christian Anarchy adherents and its practitioners in pretty good company but, like The Kingdom of God as described in the New Testament, CA theory doesn’t give us a lot of help in figuring out how to actually live it as a practical matter. Jesus merely noted that various people were “coming close to the Kingdom.”

No membership manual! He basically said “just do it!” Of course He said a lot more than that, but mostly he taught by example and we have precious few of those examples in the Bible. It leaves me hungering for much more. I learn best through examples and I just get confused when I read things, and especially when I try to write.

So OK, how are we to behave in the arky known as the Kingdom of God? And how does that mean we should relate to, if we are to relate to them at all, the world’s arkies – our government, political parties, fraternal and civic organizations, the corner store and global corporations?

If these arkies surround us and we have to interact with them every day, and they are not to be trusted or followed per Eller’s view of CA, then what is left for us to do and how would our behavior be different from those who do follow the world’s arkies – often blindly or unknowingly – which would include a majority of folks in modern consumer culture?

As I first thought about it I really got bogged down in a long list of do’s and don’ts for living a CA life. In the end it seemed like hair-splitting legalism – and long.

So I took cues from the Gospels and my own meditation practice and things started getting simpler.

The World’s Arky Assumptions and Values

In our culture with its worldly arkies, we tend to pay attention, and often buy into, its arky assumptions, values, desires, and activities – often unconsciously and uncritically. Some of the biggest, broadest assumptions and values could be: “Growth is good (or bad);” “Look out for number one;” “You should always be or look young;” “Success is the most important thing;” “Make as much money as you can;” “The end justifies the means;” “Shoot for the stars;” “Everyone should take care of themselves,” “survival of the fittest,” “Cheapest is best.”

More specific assumptions might include: “Health care reform is good (or bad);” SUVs are good (or bad);” “People should always think you’re on top of things – buy the newest cell phone/PDA/computer/game/car/house;” “Conservatism or liberalism is good while the other is bad;” “The profitability of the company is more important than its employees.”

We believe these notions to be true only because we’ve heard them much of our lives. But where do they come from? We didn’t invent them.

These basic assumptions about life came to us via the thousands of arkies we know and love (or hate), whether they are political parties, corporations, the corner store, the Government, Rotary Club, Boy/Girl Scouts, or schools.

In the end most of these assumptions have a focus on ‘self’, what’s good for me or us, whether it is to be right, rich, powerful, beautiful, successful, or just happy. The arkies advertised these values to us pervasively, although often surreptitiously, and over the years we began to believe them. All arkies do this because the values they espouse support their goals and ultimate success, whether it is to achieve its mission, make money, have influence, “right wrongs,” (as defined by the arky), or “make the world safe for…”

So to a certain extent all worldly arkies are disingenuous because they aren’t primarily concerned about your, my, or anyone else’s welfare. Even when their goal is to be compassionate, like The Church (an arky if there ever was one), a social service or disaster relief organization, the arky itself takes on some of the less-than-compassionate characteristics of their founder’s and leader’s personalities.

An arky’s true goal, despite its hype, morphs toward promoting and maintaining the organization itself and the positions of those who own, manage, or work in it. Even in compassionate organizations, the goal is organizational success, and individual needs begin to take a back seat to the hierarchy (all organizations have them) and its arky goals. In arkies that don’t start with compassionate goals, things can be a lot worse if not blatantly immoral or illegal.

Living Under The Arky of God

So, after all this arky bashing, what’s so great about the Arky of God, and how would we live in it in contradistinction to how we live amongst the world’s arkies?

Simply put, we must live by the norms, values, and assumptions of God’s Arky (Kingdom) as found in such places as the Sermon on the Mount, the Ten Commandments, and the laws of the Pentateuch, and never equivocate or make accommodations with the arkies on these matters. We don’t put them aside if our employer arky, government arky, or our political arky sees it otherwise. We don’t ever allow arkies to be our proxies or stand-ins for God’s values.

This means that we live with equanimity and compassion about all things and all people whether we agree with them or even like them or not, seeing things as they actually are, not as we are told they are, and not judging but acting with compassion towards all people. Living this way can be easily inferred from Jesus’ teachings and it would be living only under the Arky of God, and not being led or controlled by other arkies of any stripe.

Living with equanimity means we don’t follow any arky’s predetermined philosophy, principles, rules, or hierarchical structures and organizations, none of which function purely with compassion. But it also means that we don’t hate, abuse, take advantage of, or misuse the arky and its people because we see things differently. We must be compassionate with them too. We just don’t buy-in.

Living with equanimity and compassion under God’s Arky would mean never consciously or unconsciously buying the “whole package” of any worldly arky’s mission, principles, rules, or advice. Instead we would try to see clearly, in an unbiased way, what the arky along with its hierarchy and rules actually does and how that affects people and the rest of the world. We ask whether or not any part of the arky or its actions are consistent with CA. When it is we can go along with it on an instance-by-instance basis. When it is not, we don’t “go along to get along,” and we may need to end our association with that arky regardless of personal consequences.

This, of course is not at all easy. It takes a lot of practice, honesty with ourselves and others, and support from our like-minded Christian community.

More important, it takes a reordering of our minds so we can see clearly with astute awareness and discernment – again a very tall order for most of us because we’ve spent our entire lives living according to what the arkies tell us while abusing our own psyches in the process.

I have found insight meditation practice in combination with deep prayer to be extremely helpful in gaining some amount of clarity in discerning my reactions and responses to the arkies and my personal relationships as well. Without this practice I’m not sure I’d be able to attempt it at all.

To close out this ramble, I’d like to add that I believe Christian Anarchy directly supports Christian simple living. Most of our self-centered consumer behavior is actually based on the messages and values the various arkies have fed us, and getting past those arky assumptions makes it much easier to live authentic, simple lives that are closer to Jesus’ teachings, and doing so without rancor or bitterness toward the world of the arkies.

God’s peace.

Tags: Commentary, Information, Personal Experience

• Christian Anarchy , Consumer Culture and Economics , Coping With Consumer Culture , Faith and Politics , Meditation and Prayer
• Comments(1)

admin March 1st, 2010

Another Post in an Occasional Series on Christian Anarchy

As I noted in my February 2 Post “The Perils of Prosperity” and Christian Anarchy, the term ‘anarchy’ does not mean ‘against’ or ‘anti’ authority or government. The ‘an-‘ prefix actually means ‘un-’ or ‘not-’ and ‘archy’ comes from ‘archos’ meaning ruler, therefore anarchy means “no ruler” or “no government.”For the secular anarchist this means being autonomous or being governed only by oneself.

Christian Anarchy

“Christian anarchy,” however, defines the term as having little or no faith in, or being unimpressed with or skeptical of, any organization or principle that claims to have authority over us or some portion of our lives or our society. That would certainly include government of all types, but other organizations as well, including retail stores, manufacturers, banks, schools, churches, fraternal organizations, peer pressure, fads and fashions, as well as psychological and sociological theories. These arkies (to use Vernard Eller’s shorthand term) attempt to govern or control us in some way – usually for their benefit rather than ours – although at times they may benefit us as well, even if that isn’t their intent. The trick is to not pay attention to what they say their intent is, but rather what their actions show their real intent is.

Instead, Christians are ultimately responsible to the rule or governance of God, “The Arky of God”, rather than human institutions or value systems.

This does not mean that we can ignore our government, or that we should never participate in any of the other arkies. As both Jesus and Paul pointed out in different ways, we must give government its due for the sake of good order, and sometimes we have a legitimate need for the others arkies as well.

It does mean , however, that we should have little faith in these institutions and we should not expect them to save us from ourselves or anything else. As we all-too-painfully know, human institutions are sometimes effective but they are also just as often not, therefore they are not to be trusted or depended on and we should not invest a lot of energy in them, because they can slowly, unobtrusively, take considerable control over our lives. And sometimes we don’t even notice the takeover until we’re past the point of no return. That’s how we become addicts. It sneaks up on us.

“The Archy of God”

For the true follower of Christ (or the faithful Jew or Muslim) there is only one arky – The Arky of God – and no other arky is to be allowed to take precedence over it. That was true for the law as well as for the New Testament. So Christians are to be ruled or guided only by God and not by human organizations, simply because our organizations are extremely fallible and ultimately always let us down – not infrequently disastrously. Human organizations have a way of misleading us in the service of the organization’s own goals which all too often, are at odds with God’s intent and sometimes their own founding principles, mission statements, and good intentions.

Simple Living, Christian Anarchy, and Lent

From a simple living perspective this would certainly be true for manufacturers and retailers.  These human arkies constantly push us to consume, throw away, waste, or play trendy fashion games in order to make their living (and then some).

Nothing wrong with making a living or a profit, but there is something very wrong with making either by pushing people to buy what they don’t need, can’t afford, and what might be harmful to them, the environment, or society at large. This is a good example of a dysfunctional human organization that is busy destroying itself and us along with it, thereby proving Christian Anarchy’s point. God said “Don’t do that!” but our human institutions do it anyway, blind to the broad long term effects. And they are not doing these things because they particularly care about our well-being. They’re doing it to make money.

Now here’s an anarchist’s golden example of the contrast between the world’s arkies and The Arky of God, perhaps better known as the Kingdom of God:

During Lent we are asked to “give up” some of our ego-driveness and be a little introspective and penitent for the things we have messed-up in our lives and with our brothers and sisters. For instance in last week’s post I described the carbon fast our congregation is undertaking during Lent to, in a tiny way, ameliorate the damage we have done to creation and society.

Meanwhile, as we plan to address some of our wrong-doing, both the arkies of business and industry, along with the arky of the Federal Government and the arkies of the major political parties are pressuring us to consume still more in order to “get the economy moving again.”

But from the point of view of Christian Anarchy, we all individually and as a society, created this economic mess by caving-in to our personal ego needs in the first place. To a greater or lesser extent (I of course leave it to you to be honest with yourself about the extent of your own involvement) we bought into the notion that we can and should have it all regardless of the cost. Thus we fell in love with and demanded more and more from the world’s  arkies:

• Manufacturers, for more high-end, high-tech toys, labor saving devices and lifestyle ‘enhancements;’
• Retailers, for more stuff of all kinds at far lower prices, and
• Banks, to lend us more and more so we could have all of the above;
• Investment firms, bigger returns faster on our investments t help fund our wants;
• The real estate market, so our homes would be worth much more, so we could take out the money to buy still more stuff.
• Government, whether it was for more freedom, less government, or lower taxes, or more freedom to make money any way we want , or subsidies, or social, economic and health programs of many types, and finally for big bailouts.

We fell under the spell of the secular arkies. We believed virtually everything they told us about who we are, where we should be going, and what we should be doing.

Our Internal Dialog About the Archy’s

“Oh, but not me, or at least not much…” you say.

Wrong. We need to be honest with ourselves.

We have built a huge perpetual motion machine, the “Grand Perpetual Consumer Arky”, that all of us now have to keep in motion by running as hard as we can in our little hamster cages (since, as it turns out, the Machine really isn’t running itself perpetually) until we either collapse from exhaustion or the whole machine collapses in on itself with us inside.

We have shot ourselves in the foot by saving too little, spending too much, and having too little thought or respect for God’s world and His people.

But those are just the outcomes. The real problem is the emotional and moral calculus that each of us carries out in the secret recesses of our minds and souls each day:

“I do like what the Grand Perpetual Consumer Archy is telling me about myself. It’s a really great arky! I really do want those things. I do want to look like that. I like the pleasures and conveniences they give me. I like my social and economic status and I don’t want to give up any of it. This is a nice life!

“But… I feel guilty about it. I know other people are suffering. I know the planet is a mess. I know what Jesus taught us about money and possessions and the needs of others, after all I do go to church (that counts for something doesn’t it?) But it would be so hard to do as he said and give up much of it – or even a little of it.

“OK God, how about a little compromise. Let me do just enough (but not too much!) to get rid of some of my guilt. Or better, tell me it’s OK to have what I already have while doing the little I do for others so I can continue living this way, or… please, maybe let me have just a little more. After all I don’t have as much as the guys on Wall Street! That must make me better already… and deserving of just a little more, right?!

“If you don’t strike me dead with a bolt of lightning on my way to work this morning, I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.” OR,

“OK, OK, I’m not even going to ask. I’m just going to let the whole business lay there for a while – maybe you’ll forget about it, huh?”

We all do this calculus, some more, some less: you, me, the whole lot of us.

We have substituted the perverted logic and power of the Grand Perpetual Consumer Archy and all its sub-arkies in place of living in God‘s Archy – because, like Moses’ people, we thought we could do better by sculpting that golden calf all by ourselves!

And it is raising hell with our souls.

This is what we should be penitent about this lent!

More to Come on Christian Anarchy

“Which arkies can I trust, or merely use in this world? Any of them?”

“What does Christian Anarchy mean for me as a practical matter day-to-day?”

• Christian Anarchy , Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

admin February 2nd, 2010

Once again I’ve found strong support for Christian Simple Living in the mainstream media! Not only that, but there’s some support there for believing that Christian Anarchy might help save us from ourselves. Of course the writer of this article probably didn’t recognize that rather obscure point.

Robert J. Samuelson, contributing editor of Newsweek and The Washington Post, wrote an article in the 2/8/10 edition of Newsweek entitled The Perils of Prosperity in which he argues that having our economy go bust every now and then is a very good thing. That’s because busts tend to make us aware of the riskiness of the financial world and its institutions which in turn makes us more cautious in our dreams for our financial future as well as in our actions.

But it is in his reasoning that simple living principles stand out.

I should say at the outset that some of my interpretations of his article are based on Christian Anarchy principles… and yes, I did promise in my last post that I would make having a discussion of Christian Anarchy my next project, so let this post be the opening salvo of that discussion!

Samuelson’s thesis is that all of us, not just the bankers, brokers, real estate agents, and the failure of government regulation, were responsible for this recession, and if we continue to delude ourselves with the thought that these “bad guys” really were the culprits, then we are simply setting the stage for the next big recession.

He says, very insightfully, that “Greed and shortsightedness didn’t suddenly burst forth; they are constants of human nature.” Ah yes, we are all fallen people! So if these nasty traits aren’t new, then what really did cause the recession?

Complacency! We were lulled into the ego-centric belief that the economy and financial system had become much safer than history actually demonstrated which encouraged all of us to take unreasonable risks while expecting much more personal wealth than was either sensible or supported by long term economic history. We only saw the short term economic story of the past 25 years during which the U.S. had the greatest run of prosperity in its history. With our myopic glasses on we imagined that our economic system was nearly perfect or invulnerable and that it would last virtually forever. This prosperity only led us to engage in more and more “self-defeating expectations and behaviors. The huge profits made in these decades by investors conditioned many to believe in the underlying benevolence of financial markets.”

Samuelson notes that modern democracies have made it their jobs to try to create as much prosperity as possible for everyone, i.e. they try to create “perpetual booms,” better known as perpetual motion machines or Ponzi schemes. How else is one to stay in office??

But the author concludes that “The cruel contradiction is that this promise itself may become a source of instability because the more it is attained, the more people begin acting in ways that ultimately invite its destruction…. The quest for ever-more and ever-better prosperity subverts itself.”

The connection to Christian simple living here is fairly obvious: More is not better, and the never-ending struggle for ‘more’ not only does not bring happiness, but rather too often brings disaster.

Here I would like to inject the notion of Christian Anarchy, and how Samuelson’s thesis supports it as part of our simple living practices.

First, does the term “Christian Anarchy” mean that Christian congregations should gather downtown and throw bombs?

Mmm… not quite.

The Greek term ‘anarchy’ has two parts: the prefix “an-” is the same as “un-” in English which means ‘not’ rather than ‘anti-‘ or ‘against’, and ‘archy’ means ‘ruler’ or ‘power’. It is generally applied to governments or other power-wielding organizations,  say like The Church. So broadly defined, anarchy would mean ‘un-power’ or “no power.”

The late Vernard Eller, a Church of the Brethren pastor and theologian who has written extensively on Christian Anarchy, used the term ‘Arky’ for short, and defines it as almost any government or other type of organization that “claims to be of primal value for society.” That would include governments of all types and most other organizations such as political parties, fraternal organizations, churches, schools, philosophies, and even the Woman’s Club! All of these make some claim to our allegiance and they all attempt to govern some part of our beliefs, values, or actions for the, ahem, “greater good.”

Here’s the hitch: for Christians the only real power is God, and all other powers are subservient to Him. So Christians owe their allegiance only to God and therefore cannot owe it to any other person or organization, especially if those organizations require you to believe or act in any way inconsistent with what God tells us to do or believe.

Why?

Because only God is entirely dependable and faithful to us. All other people and organizations are fallible (often very fallible) and frequently cannot be trusted, after all, as I mentioned above, we are all fallen people. Even the very best of us. Even those we have trusted for years and years. Sooner or later they all let us down in some way, and not infrequently, catastrophically. Even “The Church.” Think of all the ills perpetrated by various factions of “The Church” over the centuries – the torturing and killing; the collaborations with illegal and/or immoral people, clergy immorality, illegal or immoral financial dealings, etc.!

Thus, according to Eller, for followers of Christ “Anarchy (unarkyness)… is simply the state of being unimpressed with, disinterested in, skeptical of; nonchalant toward, and uninfluenced by the highfalutin claims of any and all arkys. And “Christian Anarchy”… is a Christianly motivated “unarkyness.” Precisely because Jesus is THE ARKY, the Prime of Creation, the Principal of All Good, the Prince of Peace and Everything Else, Christians dare never grant a human arky the primacy it claims for itself Precisely because God is the Lord of History we dare never grant that it is in the outcome of the human arky contest that the determination of history lies…” (sic.)*

This is at once both a theological issue and a practical issue. Here, today, I’m focusing on the practical part because the Samuelson article is such a good example of what happens when we have faith in the world’s arkys – they mess with us!

This is pretty much what Samuelson tells us. We gave our allegiance to the brokers, real estate agents, bankers, and economists, naively believing that whatever they told us was right. We literally invested everything we had with these folks. We trusted a human ‘arky’ to do what human arkys can’t do, and which Jesus told us specifically not to do.

Truth-be-told, we did it because the promises they, and all the rest of consumer society told us, sounded soooo good, we just wanted to believe it – we just wanted to have it… all!

So we gave up any pretense of believing and acting on what Jesus taught us about what’s important in life –particularly that we should never put our trust in money or goods because they never serve us well. Rather we were taught to live simply and honestly and not to love money.

We gave our faith and allegiance to “the masters of the universe” and consumer society in general. We allowed them to lead us into this pit, then suffered as we crashed and burned together with The Masters of the Universe (although they are rich and don’t care).

A little Christian anarchy a few years back would have served us well.

More on Christian anarchy in the next post.

*Taken from Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy Over the Powers, Vernard Eller. Online book at http://www.hccentral.com/eller12/index.html

Tags: Commentary, Information, Resources

• Christian Anarchy , Consumer Culture and Economics , Coping With Consumer Culture , Psychology , Theology and Biblical Study
• Comments(0)