A Christian Simple Living View Of Palm Sunday

admin March 28th, 2010

In church this Palm Sunday morning our pastor mentioned Marcus Borg and John Crossan’s book The Last Week which I had read a year or so ago. I suddenly saw a parallel between Jesus’ Rome and 21st Century America.

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’m a Hypocrite

admin March 3rd, 2010

I just have to clear the air about something before I go on to write any more posts.

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.

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A Christian Anarchist’s View of Lent

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?”

A Carbon Fast for Lent

admin February 20th, 2010

Lent ought to amount to more than a casual “What am I going to give up for Lent? Oh yeah, I’ll give up eating chocolate” annual exercise. These commitments sometimes have as much meaning and depth to them as New Year’s resolutions which we usually don’t keep anyway.

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.

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“The Perils of Prosperity” and Christian Anarchy

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

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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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