My basic assumption about Christian simple living, as well as Vernard Eller’s (http://www.hccentral.com/eller3/index.html#toc) is that living simply is the direct result of loving God which is what Jesus tells us should be our prime concern. Loving God means, in addition to other things, that we live and do as He tells us – because our faith is in him, not in what the flawed world has to say.

If we really lived by God’s and Jesus’ basic teachings on a daily basis, we would pretty much be living simply. However, and this is important, if we did it the other way around (choosing to live simply because we prefer it as a lifestyle or because it is environmentally, logical, or socially just) it would not automatically make us lovers and followers of God. This is the situation for people who are secular or lifestyle simple livers. Nothing wrong with what they are up to, but it is different than Christian Simple Living in the long term.

Are these two versions of simple living not the same thing? After all, both the God lover who lives simply as a result of what God tells him/her, and the secular simple liver who lives purely ‘rationally,’ are living the same way and having the same effect in the world!

Not at all! And hence my dilemma over buying a laptop.

In my last post, most of my rationale for buying or not buying the dingus had to do with the logic of sustainability and my Luddite approach to it. This decision-making process can, and often does, become very reductionistic and absurdly difficult as we sort through a cascade of relevant data on both sides of the argument tring to find the single rationally, environmentally-sustainably ‘correct’ action. We simply don’t have all the facts, and even if we did, that cascade of facts and their myrid implications would overwhelm our decision-making process.

From the Christian, God-lover perspective, however, things look a bit different.

God has told us in many ways to be good stewards of what he gives us, to not kill or covet, to heal the sick and feed the poor, to not store up goods for ourselves, to give freely, etc., and these truths have persisted unchanged for several thousand years. So I try to do these things as best I can, knowing that God, who sees longer and further than all human beings together and who is love, wants it done. I have faith that doing this is right for the future of the universe, mankind included.

On the other hand, I, here in the 21st Century, could have used my intellectually trendy, and politically corrected reasoning to decide to live this way just as well. But (big ‘but’), we need to keep in mind that all of us tend to use intellectual models and assumptions that are tied to current social and intellectual trends, and this particular 21st Century science and sustainability mindset is new and changing as opposed to God’s ancient and unchanging wisdom. Tomorrow, today’s ‘rational’ decisions will be seen as naïve or simply wrong by the secular, scientific standards of that new day.

Taking the secular decision-making route makes me a prisoner of the times, and “the times, they are a changing,” and always will. They will change to suit contemporary desires and insights, and will often not be in concert with what God wants us to be up to.

This simply means that, left to my own rational devices and the dictates of contemporary society, I’m likely to be making some bad decisions – bad for others, the planet (and perhaps the universe) and me. We humans, at any given time and place, simply aren’t all that smart!

The Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount, however, haven’t changed. I can count on them!

OK, so what about the laptop?

Instead of thinking like a Luddite, as much fun as that can be, I need to think instead of what my faith says I should do.

Is the dingus needed to do the work I believe God wants me to do, or am I simply caving-in to my need for a toy or to keep up with consumer society? As far as I can reasonably see, will buying this thing injure me or others, or will it help?

In reality I don’t know how to answer that without trying to fool myself and I’ve wasted too much time on that already. But I think that at least the laptop will help us to continue doing the work we believe is what we should be doing – helping kids grow into caring adults through our puppetry and storytelling.

Will buying the laptop hurt?

In the long term I believe it will contribute to maintaining a cancerous consumer society. I can find no way around that conclusion. The same is now true for almost any purchase I make.

So I’m straddling the “in this world, but not of this world” dilemma. In faith, part of what I do I believe is right, and part of it is wrong.

But then of course there is grace.

Several people have posted replies lately suggesting that what is most valuable to them is to hear how other people are struggling with living simply on a day-to-day basis, so I’ll share a dilemma I’ve just been through.

You might have guessed, if you read very many posts on this blog, that I’m a bit of a Luddite. Actually I do believe that part of our current environmental, economic, and spiritual crisis is that humanity has grown and behaved like a cancer over the past few centuries (some writers say far longer). It began as a virtually unnoticeable spot on the earth’s lungs, but over the years grew faster and faster until it has metastasized to every corner of the earth putting the earth and humanity in peril.

I believe that our cancerous behavior is driven both by of our inflated egos and our over-developed technology working in tandem. This dynamic has propelled us to exponentially use up much of the earth’s bounty and pollute what we haven’t already used up. This process has dramatically accelerated with the digital revolution, geometrically enlarging our blighting footprint.

Many, if not most, Americans would say that this process has been a very good thing because it has made us a great country, given us comfort, good health, longer lives, easier work, and much wealth. How could you argue with that?

Easy… when you look beyond these shallow benefits (shallow, compared to the health of the rest of the world) and look at all of the effects of this industrialzing-digitizing process.

BUT, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, even I, the great Luddite critic, love technological toys: computers, phones, cameras, etc. On the other hand, recognizing the ecological and human moral dilemma they create, I have tried to limit my use of these gadgets as much as I can and I encourage others to do likewise.

We were about the last people on the block to have a cell phone (got one because my wife’s old car was in constant danger of breaking down), then kept the first one so long that people were laughing at our big clunky fossil. I keep desktop computers for many years, patching and swapping out components. Don’t have a PDA, GPS, or book reader – which sometimes leaves my friends and family shaking their heads.

We do the same thing with old fashioned technologies like air conditioning which we run only in a couple of rooms when the temp is above 95 degrees, then shut them off.

These greenish practices certainly do not make us subsistence farmers with kerosene lanterns and a mule. We still have an urban/suburban lifestyle here in the close-in D.C. suburbs. But we try to slow down enough and live responsibly enough to make a difference and still be able to live in an urban setting.

So it’s a moral dilemma every time I have to decide whether or not to buy another gadget. I have avoided buying a laptop/notebook computer for years – really didn’t need one even if it would have been handy on occasion. But (there’s always a ‘but’) I decided that we needed one for our puppet theater business in order to run our audio and back stage cueing.

When I was close to making this decision several things began happening in rapid sequence.

1. The adrenalin started pumping: “A new Toy! Oh boy! It’ll be sooo cool. We’ll be just like everyone else! Oh my God… we’ll be just like everyone else. Oh NO!”

In fact there is recent research that shows this adrenalin rush is a real physiological change that occurs when we are making a buying decision. It is what energizes compulsive shopping, but it happens to all of us, even ME! Oh please God, don’t let it happen to me! But it does.

2. And then the guilt and bargaining set in. “But we really need it. My memory is fading fast (aging) so I need the cue support during shows, and with worsening cataracts I need a big display so I can see where we are in the script; we need it to run a digital projector; Ok, OK, we’ll buy a cheap refurb; we have held off buying one for years, so it’s OK now; you can’t do business in today’s world without one; we’ll be able to work on scripts while on the road…”

Endless BS.

But could we really get along without one?

Yep – sure could! We could continue to be a traditional, old fashioned puppet show instead of one that’s more state-of-the-art, and I could suck it up and just deal with my infirmities – no one has thrown us out of their school or church yet because of them.

Of course I bought one!

The chemistry of seduction got me, and it probably will be useful from time to time.

Here’s my question: how can I continue wearing my Luddite T-shirt while warning about a technologically driven “end of the world” while ‘buying-in’ to the cancer I know is eating away at God’s world?

Sure, I don’t buy electronics very often, but every bit matters.

Almost everyone I’ve explained this to says “Oh it’s just fine – it’s for the business.” But is it really? Should ‘doing businesses justify everything we do whether it’s destructive or not? Business is part of the cancer along with our individual egocentric wants.

And is all this simply over-reasoning and creating a smoke screen to cover up the fact that my ego caved-in to the adrenaline rush? Am I just a genetic cog in the wheel of an ecological cancer? Is there no hope for us as a species?

Please let us all know how you handle these things by posting a reply.

There are a couple of reasons for my absence, one easy to explain, the other more important but not so easy.

The easy one is that I have been overwhelmed with getting a couple of new puppet shows together for first performances. The older I get, the more daunting this becomes, so I end up focusing 100% of my energy on it.

The hard one is that my heart will no longer let me write anything that purports to tell anyone how to live a Christian life, simple or otherwise. I don’t believe I have any standing to do that. I have come to grips with a few hard, hurtful aspects of my life that, if I was truly living the life I write about, I would have dealt with and put aside a long time ago.

I’m not talking about not being able to live a perfect, Christ-like life, or anything remotely approaching that. I’m realistic enough to know that we are all fallen people who are shot full of moral, human flaws, even the best of us. Rather I have found myself to have far too little compassion for others and for myself – far less than it probably appears from my posts and articles than I actually have. There are still too many dark places in my soul that are bitter and angry which too often make it difficult if not impossible for me to feel or practice real compassion in my thoughts or actions.

I don’t think it is fair or right, on such a weak personal foundation, to advise others on how they should live their faith lives, what practices they might pursue, or even to imply that I have personally grown a great deal as a result of these, when any growth I have actually experienced is small in comparison with what my posts might suggest. To do so is hypocritical.

An advisor must do better than that.

So I’ve had to stop writing posts here along with articles on the ChristianSimpleLiving.com site that deal with matters of spiritual or moral growth, or the spiritual and moral aspects of simple living.

I’m still trying to decide what that means I have left to write about, but at the moment it feels like I might be able to write occasional pieces on current events and other information related to simplicity, or the history and theology of Christian simplicity, but always with the caveat that because I write about these things it does not necessarily mean that I’m a good practitioner of them.

I do practice simplicity as a key part of my Christian faith as much as I am able. I do believe what I write. I always try to make the information I present as accurate as I can, and I don’t write about what I don’t believe is good and true – but I’m a far better messenger than a good example.

The myth is this:

We will be able to solve our environmental problems such as global warming with judicious use of new technologies such as solar and wind power, electric and hybrid cars, more efficient appliances, and so forth. This, then, will relieve us of the necessity of having to use less energy and buy less stuff, i.e., we will be able to go on living as we always have lo these many years, without having to give up anything.

“Oh I can buy all the toys I want and not worry about the power problem… they’ll think of something! We’ll be just fine!

My response to this has always been that there is no way that technology can dig us out of the hole we’ve dug for ourselves for several basic reasons:

1. The technologies we will need in order to make a substantial difference require, in and of themselves, even more non-renewable and renewable resources and power to design, test, manufacture, distribute, and maintain them. These costs are considerable, especially when most of these technologies use rare and expensive metals such as the rare earths, the mining of which are highly polluting, often mined in the third world under unjust working conditions, and many of which are only available through unfriendly governments. Even though these technologies may operate more efficiently than conventional technologies, their environmental and fiscal costs are in addition to the existing, huge infrastructure that will have to support our old stuff for many years into the future.We might use less oil and coal as a result of new technologies while freeing ourselves somewhat from our Mexican knife fight with the oil producing nations, but we will only have become much more dependent on other untrustworthy governments for these exotic new materials.
2. New technologies take a very long time to develop and get into mainstream usage. Some of them are twenty or more years into the future before they come on line as practical applications, and when they do, adoption by a majority of people will take even more years. Given the scope and severity of our problem, this is a day late and a dollar short.
3. Even if the new technologies were wildly successful in every way, we have to contend with human psychology which is perversely designed to defeat such efficiencies as we always have in the past. We are all like the dieter who eats twice as much because he/she is eating a special low calorie food. “Oh I can have another order of fries because I’m drinking Diet Coke!” And as soon as we have the electric, hybrid, or hydrogen car, we will immediately begin driving even more miles because we think we think it’s free. We will then not have reduced our energy consumption even after years of effort and billions of dollars in sunk costs. There is also the issue of broad-scale acceptance of the technologies by the public. A significant number will not be accepted as has also been the case in the past. For instance there has already been a large public outcry against wind farms at a number of locations across the country.

Adoption of many technologies will not be fast or certain, and we are running out of time.
The real solution, of course, is that we do in fact have to give up some things – actually a lot of things. There is no free lunch. We cannot have it all at no cost to ourselves. And having done so much damage already, we now have to pay the piper and we simply cannot escape him by hiding behind technology.

Our situation demands simple living of all of us.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that in our overheated consumer society there will be a sudden, massive switch to simple living, but I think it is entirely possible that a shift will occur incrementally over time as more and more of us get the message and make the commitment to make a real difference in the world.

But it could also be that the shift to simplicity will come suddenly and massively as our society hits the ecological/resource wall at some point in the not-too-distant future, and we are forced to live simply as we did during the great depression and WWII (if we’re very lucky).

I saw a glimmer of hope that the incremental version may be gathering steam even now, from a very unlikely source.

Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, wrote a piece in the 4/25/10 Washington Post entitled 5 Myths About Green Energy. Of course he was probably trying to make the case that many of our green energy strategies are bound to be much less successful than predicted and we should therefore abandon such tree-hugging strategies and just let businesses do their jobs using whatever methods they see fit to use (my interpretation, not his words). But in doing so he made an excellent case for living simply as I outlined above.

His (condensed) points:

1. Solar and wind power have serious drawbacks. They “require huge amounts of land to deliver relatively small amounts of energy, [while] disrupting natural habitats.” This land demand led to the Nature conservancy, an extremely green organization, criticizing “energy sprawl” in its paper last year. He went on to provide even more statistics to bolster his point that these technologies aren’t going to give us the bang for the buck that we assume.
2. Green energy technologies will not reduce our dependence on foreign imports and erratic foreign governments to sustain our power needs. We have a choice among about 20 countries for obtaining our oil and natural gas supplies, but the rare earth necessary to build and maintain new power technologies are only available from… China, not the most reliable of partners in any weather. This will only make us more dependent on a country we desperately wish not to be dependent upon.
3. We talk a great deal about the new green jobs that will be created to support green technologies, however Bryce points out that we have the same problem here as we have had with shoe manufacturing – high American labor costs compared to many other Third World or emerging countries like, again, China. We simply will not be able to compete with them and we will therefore create far fewer green jobs than has been advertised.
4. Electric cars will not substantially reduce demand for oil because of the physics involved. Gasoline has about 80 times the energy as the best lithium-ion batteries which are famously finicky, short-lived, and which take hours to recharge. Although the electric motor is much more efficient than the internal combustion engine, the process of getting power to the electric motor is not, and there is little on the horizon to make us more optimistic along these lines.
5. America has actually been a leader in moving toward green technologies and has improved its energy efficiency as much as or more than, all other developed countries except Switzerland and Denmark. Bryce’s point here is that since American industry is already doing such a terrific job, we should just let them continue doing it.

   However I would apply another interpretation to this data: if we have done such a terrific job and we have hardly moved the needle after all these years of trying, then at best, it will be a very long time before our technology will even come close to solving our problem, if it ever does.

So I thank Robert Bryce and the Manhattan Institute for so brilliantly and so publically making my point for me even though they wouldn’t ordinarily cozy up to advocates of simple living like me!

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.

Wonderful revelation this Easter morning in, of all places, The Washington Post business section!

Michelle Singletary, in The Color of Money column, reviewed a new book by Gail Blanke entitled Throw Out Fifty Things: Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life, (Springboard Press, $13.99) which of course I haven’t read yet, but will shortly.

The point of the book is that much of the stuff we have (junk and clutter, savings in the bank and mental junk as well), not only doesn’t make us more secure, as we have been taught, but rather when we lose these things as we inevitably will at some point, it causes us to feel very insecure, sometimes to the point of crumbling if what we lose is important enough.

All the while we are collecting and maintaining this stuff we are not free. We are prisoners to it because of the debt it creates in order to buy and maintain it, the pressure to make money to support it, striving to make more money to get out of our increasing debt or, worse, buying even more security blankies (my term) to bolster our sagging egos.  Then of course there is the need for either more space to keep it in, or suffer a loss of living space as we give it over to storage, not to mention having to live with our irritation, stress, and possible depression around having to live in the midst of it all. It gets in our way and slows us down.

On the flip side, you probably won’t be surprised to learn, when, as Gail tells us, we get rid of all those useless security blankies we miraculously find that we not only feel just as secure without them, we actually feel more secure because we are free of it and the burdens it creates for us. Getting rid of it frees us to begin finding out who we are or who we want to be, since we may not know who we or God wants us to be because we’ve been hiding behind our stuff, lo these many years.

Gail says we should throw away 50 things because throwing away our blankies is a cumulative experience in which success at throwing things away breeds still more success and leads to more and even joyful throwing away – our power over our stuff grows while our self-esteem and freedom grows along with it. We also begin to realize the real value of things, not the value we fantasize it will give us before buying it.

I won’t go into the details Michelle Singletary lays out in her review about how this all works because I want to get to the part about my Easter simple living revelation.

Simple Living Easter Resurrection

Easter is about resurrection and new life for all of us, and Lent is about sacrifice or “giving up.” Christian simple livers understand that living simply with less stuff opens a door to new life that is not contingent on physical stuff, and that new life becomes fuller as we deepen our commitment to living a life as much for others as ourselves.

Giving things up for Lent should not be an exercise in self-flagellation just for the sake of experiencing pain or loss. Instead it is intended to be a time of growth in which we re-discover ourselves by getting rid of the things in our lives that separate us from God and from others. For most of us that would mean our stuff and our irrational emotional attachment to it.

So, here’s my revelation, and I wish I had had it a couple months ago: The throwing out of 50 things would be an excellent Lenten discipline which would not only teach us something important about who we are, our relationship to God and to others, but would do something concrete and necessary for our neighbors everywhere by decreasing the size of our ecological footprints, and would allow us to give our stuff to those who need it much more than we do.

Then, Easter morning, we can wildly celebrate Jesus’ resurrection right along with our own. We will have completed our own Lenten hard work and will emerge from the tomb right along with Jesus.

There could hardly be a better Easter than that!

Borg and Crossan paint a Palm Sunday picture of Caesar’s army coming into Jerusalem from the West at the same time Jesus’ procession was coming in from the East, and the authors contrast the goals and methods of these diametrically opposed ‘armies.’

We can see the contrast as “the powers” of the Roman government vs. the anarchy (non-power) of Jesus’ radical new approach to life.

Rome, and each of its successive emperors, believed that the only way to have security and peace was through the “Pax Romana” – peace and security through force, thus guaranteeing a long and cushy reign for the emperors and the reigning elites. Rome believed in taking what they wanted and in a world order that would keep things that way. That order was tightly managed everywhere in the empire to be sure that the pax would not be threatened. All of society’s institutions including the religious infrastructure were forced or seduced into dancing to Rome’s tune.

Jesus’ radical way, however, was not ‘against’ the power of Rome, but was rather for demonstrating a way of living that was loving, instead of warring; caring, rather than manipulating; acting compassionately, rather than accumulating wealth.

It was a way of living that did not use force, power politics, self-aggrandizement, or wealth-accumulation. Jesus did not believe in, or use Rome’s power tactics and zero-sum games in confronting them. He did what they did not expect and in a way that did not further inflame the world but pointed toward peace, freedom, and real security.

Today, “the powers” would have to also include our massive consumer culture and its globalized corporations, factories, and outlet malls, along with the governments, worldwide, that support and enable it.

Our empire’s government is founded on the same notion of security as Rome’s, we just try to be more subtle about it and at least make a big show of negotiating with others, but when that fails, as it often does, we very quickly bring out the military to settle the matter. Once in a while that even works – but mostly not, now days. Maybe, as some have proposed, our empire is already in eclipse.

One difference between us and Rome is that multinational corporations play the tune and western governments dance to it in order to keep their power and money flowing. Perhaps even worse, all the elements of the consumer system conspire to brainwash us into believing that the best life – nay, our very survival – is in consuming more and more. Our entire culture, our governments, business and industry, educational institutions, and (gasp!) churches participate in the structuring of every facet of our lives to support this brainwashing.

So today in our Jerusalem, we have military and business armies entering our lives on one side in order to control our ‘good’ behavior and keep the good times rolling, while on the other side Jesus is entering on his borrowed donkey with his motley crew of fishermen and mal-contents.

He wants us to look deep inside ourselves, our neighbors, and our enemies, and see the humanity in each – that they are us and we are them – and begin to treat each other with compassionate care, equality, and justice rather than wasting our time, money, and, indeed, our lives accumulating and throwing away useless junk that merely serves to keep our “empire of junk” running, but which also distracts us from our real reason for living.

So Palm Sunday is really what Christian Simple Living is all about, and we need to find ways of implementing Jesus’ message about what’s really important in ways that do not use our culture’s abusive, disingenuine, and controlling tactics.

We need to be Christian anarchists (not using the tactics of The Powers) while helping our world to see our better way.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Paul’s letter to the Romans. Our adult Sunday school class is doing a study of Romans at the moment, but what has been running through my mind has less to do with the class and more to do with my bumbling, stumbling, sometimes less than simple or faithful life.

I am particularly struck with Paul’s self-revelation that:

“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” (Romans 7:18-20, NIV).

Oh, that’s me through and through! Often as I sit writing these posts I begin to feel hypocritical because they don’t often describe what goes on in my soul or my addled brain. And what goes on in there isn’t always so pure, giving, or simple as some of my posts might imply.

I have written a lot about the foundation of Christian simple living being love and compassion for God’s people and his creation. But I have not written enough about my own struggle trying to be loving and compassionate while at the same time, being far from the genuinely caring person I would like to be and should be.

I have always had a real problem with a low-grade selfishness and defensive anger. I’m pretty good at keeping them under wraps with other people (not to mention while writing blog posts), but they are always lurking around inside my head, twisting my feelings and perceptions. I tend to get frustrated and angry easily when things aren’t going my way, and all of these un-loving traits really put a damper on actually being the kind of person Jesus asks us to be. It is said that loving kindness is supposed to be our natural response to the love God shows for us. But for me it isn’t natural and too often isn’t there at all.

I feel like Paul even to his point of writing “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Often my anger at myself and others occurs in an instant – so fast that it takes me by surprise, as if someone else were controlling me. Now, having some professional background in the mental health field, I know that isn’t the case, but it sure feels that way and I know exactly what Paul was writing about.

It can be very depressing because I work hard at trying to change these irrational feelings. I pray and meditate on it daily, and try to become more like what Christ asks of us. But it’s a long hard struggle and sometimes (OK, often) not successful. I feel like giving up.

There is now substantial brain research showing that far more of our behavior and feelings are genetic, chemical, and neurological than mental health professionals used to believe, so some of this comes with us into the world rather than it all being intra-psychic processes. Like substance abuse, these ‘innate’ emotions can make us feel like they’re totally out of our control.

Of course, both from a psychological and faith point of view, regardless of how in-born some of these traits might be, they still belong to us, and we have a responsibility to the rest of the world (as well as ourselves) to tame them and make the best of them. I believe that was inherent in Christ’s message.

So once in a while, I remember that I have made some changes over the years. I have become a little more compassionate and a little less reactive through meditation and prayer. It’s just that I’m not anywhere near where I should be, and I’m terrified that my blog posts make me out to be, what I might call, an intuitive lover: one who loves instinctively and well, and therefore lives a very joyful and naturally simple life.

After all, only someone who is really good at all this, and is well-practiced and disciplined in compassion and living simply would be in a position to write about it for the whole world, right?

Not in my case! I write, not because I’m so good at living this way, but because I think these things are desperately important, and that we should all be working on becoming compassionate Christian simple livers. I believe it’s what Christ expects of us, so we all have to do what we can – being on the journey together.

So I find some comfort in knowing that Paul had his moments too. I guess when you get right down to it though, I’m a neophyte at walking the compassionate talk, and at least a little bit hypocritical. I guess it’s another thing I’ll have to make the best of, because here it is, and it ain’t going away!

So I’ll press on, hoping that you will understand.

Thanks for reading.

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?”

For people invested in Christian simple living, however, Lent is the best time of the church year to not only make the point about living simply, but to actually have a real impact on those around us who have not yet made the switch.

Why?

Historically Lent is a time of penitence, or in a more modern mindset, a spiritual spring house cleaning. It’s a self-examination in which we look at the mistakes we have made in our relationships with God and those around us (‘sins,’ in Bible-speak), and in making reparations for them.

But there are a lot of mistakes we make on a daily basis that most people would never consider to be sins, but in fact they are not only sins, but major sins. We’re just so used to doing them that we think they’re a normal part of life rather than sins.

Jesus asked us to give up the accumulation of money and possessions so that we can concentrate on the truly important things in life, but instead we have spent the last 2,000 years not giving up much of anything, leaving us in quite a mess. Our incessant and increasing demands for more dish washers, computers, iPhones, cars, clothes, and the power to make it all go, have impoverished or treated many in the Third World unjustly, used up huge amounts of non-renewable resources, and polluted the earth, not to mention having increased global warming.

I would say that every time we buy or use anything we don’t genuinely need, or when we waste water, fuel, or power, or buy anything made with ‘blood materials’ (any resource procured through unjust, inhumane, or immoral means like those practiced in obtaining ‘blood diamonds,’ oil in the Third World, or coltan mining) we are committing serious moral errors. Our daily and excessive consumer practices are sinful because they are destructive to God’s people and his world in very concrete, visible, and painful ways.

So we have a lot of mistakes to make reparations for during Lent. What a great time to show folks why we believe that living simply as Christians is so critical to our world and to our faith – and why we should all be living more simply.

Our small congregation has decided to have a congregational “carbon fast” for Lent this year. It’s an attempt, in a small way, to revive our historic Church of the Brethren tradition of simple living as a way of redressing our mistakes (our penance).

A bit of context: The Church of the Brethren is an Anabaptist denomination which historically practiced simple living much the same way the Mennonites and Amish have up through the beginning of the 20th Century. As the Century passed however, the denomination slowly gave up many of its simple practices such as not using motorized vehicles or electricity, and became increasingly acculturated so that now there is much less to distinguish them from other protestant denominations. In some ways we may have thrown the baby out with the bath water, for although there certainly were some very rigid and dysfunctional rules that were applied in less than loving ways from time to time, those earlier generations were quite faithful to Jesus’ teachings, had a very light footprint in the world, and  they were well respected by their “English” neighbors for their compassion.

But much more than attempting to retrieve a bit of history, the carbon fast is designed to make us aware of our failings, and to make what is sometimes a painful effort to redress them. In asking the entire congregation to participate in the fast, we are using the power of the passion of Christ to make everyone aware of the depth of our error – what we have done to God’s world and His people in the name of our own self-centeredness – and to offer all of us a way to begin to repent – to get our relationship with God and all his people on the right track again.

The fast requires us to first measure the amount of carbon we are using and pumping into the atmosphere and how that compares to the rest of the world (a very unfavorable comparison by a long stretch). Then we will each make a plan of action to reduce our purchases and use of those things that contribute to global warming, resource depletion, pollution, and social and economic injustice. To do this we will be using a number of online and hard copy tools that measure our footprints and suggest actions that will help reduce them. We found the Tread Lightly on Lent calendar produced by the Presbyterian Church USA to be very helpful along with the Federal EPA calculator.

We will then meet in small groups several times between now and Maundy Thursday to talk about our efforts, problems encountered, and successes over a meal.

It is our hope that this experience will make giving up or fasting for Lent a far more concrete, meaningful and helpful process compared to just giving up chocolate.