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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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Finally – A Hopeful Christmas This Year

admin January 2nd, 2009

For years I have tried to hold up the banner of “less is more” at Christmastime along with a small band of folks dedicated to voluntary simplicity. And each year I think I have become less and less popular when I suggest that it might be good to buy fewer gifts at the mall and instead donate the money to those who actually need it, or give time and effort to those we care about instead of gifts. Some even thought I was just a kill-joy and was taking all the fun out of Christmas.

What a change this year!

This year, I didn’t talk to a single soul who didn’t say they were buying and spending less than they ever have before – some with a little self-righteous tone in their voice (covering-up their disappointment), others with palpable sadness.

“It’s so hard on the kids!”

Not the kids I know. Certainly not the very young kids who, in years past, end up with a huge pile of gifts and are simply confused and tired-out by all the excess, or who make the sensible decision to just play with the cardboard boxes and wrapping paper and ignore the expensive electronic toys and to-die-for, cute talking animals.

I cherish my memories of Christmas when I was a kid, not because there were a lot of gifts (there were usually only 3 or 4, plus a stocking full of fruit and candy) but because each of those few gifts meant a lot more to me since there were so few, and they were so thoughtful and needed. They had real value, and I still remember many of them very clearly. Unfortunately very few kids in this generation will remember much of what they got because there is far too much to be appreciated, and few gifts will be prized for years to come.

I didn’t know it back then, but it was simplicity, and it was enough – more than enough. The memories are worth far more than the cost of the few gifts.

This year plenty of people were nodding their heads in agreement as I talked about what a simple Christmas can be: more about people and less about stuff. And as encouraging as it is at the moment, it probably is not the beginning of a simplicity renaissance. If history is any predictor, shortly after the economy begins to improve, many will revert to type and simplicity will become a mere warm memory to tell the kids about, or maybe a nightmare to be forgotten.

In my more optimistic moments I think of this as a teachable moment because the feelings generated by not having so much money (or more debt) and presents, and what we had to do to “make-do” will make lessons more memorable. That would make it a good season to give a few books on simplicity to a few good prospects like Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin, and Monique Tilford, or Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

And I even found a few people who were actually enjoying the idea of a simpler Christmas with less stuff and more people. That is truly good news.

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It Won’t Matter Who Wins the Election

admin November 3rd, 2008

Campaigns, Governance, and Christian Simple Living

The election is tomorrow, and there may be many excellent reasons to vote for one presidential candidate over another, but I don’t believe it will matter which person wins as far as promoting simple living is concerned, and certainly not Christian simple living.

Neither presidential candidate, if elected, will primarily or consistently pursue policies that would move us substantially closer to “living simply as Christ intended.” I think of Christian simple living as coming a bit closer to The Kingdom: caring for, and loving other people, as well as our enemies, and seeing ourselves as a part of, as well as caring for, God’s creation, instead of just feathering our own beds and filling our houses with stuff we don’t need. This is not what any president is about.

Both candidates will make lots of campaign promises (some, in which they might fervently believe) which they hope will get them elected. And we should note that they are both firmly committed to increasing consumerism and the economic ‘prosperity’ they hope it will bring, as well as a blind faith in neo-classical economics. Both candidates are in support of the perpetual motion machine or pyramid scheme that we call our economy. This consumer economy which will always stay focused on how much ‘wealth’ we have (and raping God’s world to achieve it), rather than the real health of our families, communities, and churches.

This is not to say that neither of the candidates will put forth some policies that might promote an issue simple livers care about or feel is critical to Christian simple living. It also is not to say that one may not come a little closer than the other to our “simple values.” But either of these men, as have all past presidents of all political parties, will pursue government and political agendas which will sometimes be strongly at odds with what we value as simple livers or as Christians.

Both John McCain and Barak Obama are good and honorable men, but their primary concerns – their job, if elected – will be politics, power, and executive government leadership. The presidency is a secular job, and gaining and using political and military power is a secular occupation with a vastly different set of goals and methods than those we use in living a faith-based simple, sustainable, and just life in community. One of these men would be, after all, in charge of the entire country including all of its various faiths, beliefs, philosophies, races, and cultures, and what they all want and need – not just what we might desire. There will also be a certain amount of ego and political ideology involved.

So I’ll vote based on a whole bag full of political issues, but not with any hope that my candidate will move our world toward Christian simple living – it ain’t his job! No more than it was Ceasar’s or Pontius Pilot’s job. Jesus didn’t expect it, and neither should I.

But, it is his job to be sure that you and I can pursue our faith and our simple living as we choose, so we’d want to be sure that we vote for a candidate who fully understands and supports the establishment clause in the constitution so that we don’t get run over by something even approaching a state-supported religion. I don’t think that will be a problem for either Obama or McCain.

Take a page from the Christian Anarchy folks – the government is the government and it isn’t ever going to be God’s kingdom no matter how hard we may wish it.

Christian Anarchy – Oh My God!

I think that what I’ve written above can best be summed up through the lens of Christian Anarchy.

Sounds subversive doesn’t it? It really isn’t. But it does cut to the heart of how Christians, and Christian simple livers, can view the relationship between government and our faith lives.

Christian Anarchy is not some radical theology by some new upstart fringe movement. It has its roots in some of the 19th and 20th Century’s greatest and best-known theologians and writers including Jacques Ellul, Karl Barth, Søren Kierkegaard, J. C. and Christoph Blumhardt, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, so it has some substantial support!

To keep it short, Christian anarchy (‘an,’ meaning un- or not- ; and archy meaning priority, primacy, principal, or prince) proposes that Christians, as well as Jews, according to the Bible, owe their ‘primary’ allegiance and obedience to God and Jesus, and not to any other power including a government or other secular authority or organization – including churches, schools, philosophies, social standards, advertising, or psychological and sociological theories – which may lay claim to our allegiance.

The reason Christians should be non-committal, skeptical, or disinterested toward conventional secular powers or ‘archy’s’ (in this case government and presidents) is that secular ‘archy’s’ are all human inventions, and as with all human inventions, they are fraught with huge faults (shortsightedness, lack of wisdom, self-centeredness and selfishness, lust for power and control, etc.) regardless of how good their hopes and stated intentions are. So allowing oneself to be guided by them as opposed to being led by God (the real archy) is in essence the kiss of death. We will be deserted by them or at least disappointed by them eventually.

It is only in following God and Christ that we have true leadership based on love, care, and justice. All the other archy’s are fatally flawed in this sense, and we should know that before we throw-in with them. Better yet, as the Anabaptists would say, be a non-conformist to the secular powers and culture. We need not oppose them per se, but we do need to be clear about who we follow and why – and it isn’t a president. We should be patriotic, and we can support a president or senator for any number of reasons, but we shouldn’t rely on them for continuous truth, love, consistency, justice, healing, or comfort, etc. – if we do, we will often be jilted.

Our true archy is Jesus who taught us to live simply, justly and lovingly, not because a president or Congress passed a law or promulgated a policy, or that a social movement’s research ‘indicated’ that we should, although any of these can, from time to time, be useful to society and us as a whole.

Withor without this government or any given president, we will still follow our real archy.

An excellent online book on Christian Anarchy is: Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy Over the Powers by Vernard Eller, http://www.hccentral.com/eller12/part1.html.

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How Much Gas is in Your Tank?

admin July 22nd, 2008

If we think something is important and we take it seriously, we measure it.

We do this so we know where we stand and what we need to do about it, and doing that is sometimes a matter of life and death.

For instance, we…

· Check the gas gauge in our cars – If you’ve ever had one that didn’t work right, you know how important that can be!

· Weigh ourselves when we’re trying to lose weight and stay healthy.

· Take our temperature when we get sick – it’s one of our vital signs.

· Look at the balance in our checkbooks so checks don’t bounce.

· Insist that the FDA measure a whole host of food and drug safety issues because we don’t want to die.

· Even monitor global warming to the extent that at least once each week those stats are in the papers or the evening news.

We measure what we think is in our best interest.

But most of us probably don’t measure the effects of our personal daily impact on the earth and on other people. And most of us probably don’t measure the results of our own improvement efforts in these areas either. In other words most of us don’t often measure how well we’re doing to live more as Christ intended.

We do think about it a lot, and hope for the best, but we don’t hold our feet to the fire and measure how much we do and how effective it is.

But if it is important to us to:

· Leave a livable, sustainable world to our grandchildren,

· Be good stewards of God’s earth,

· Create a socially equitable society for God’s people,

· Live as Christ taught us…

Then would we not also want to know how well each of us is doing on these issues as much as we want to know how much gas is in our tank? Wouldn’t we want to know if we are making any headway? Wouldn’t we want to know if we should be doing something better to make a difference?

Of course it is much easier and safer for our egos (in the short run) not to make ourselves accountable, even if only to ourselves. It is easier to just read the newest stats in the paper and think that we may have contributed something to their improvement (when we can find some).

But if it really matters to us, we would measure our personal or family performance on each issue we truly want to improve on. After all, most of these issues really are a matter of life and death for millions of people around the world.

And unlike the FDA, you and I can do something about our own performance today, and without an act of Congress.

It’s not so hard, and we would have a much more accurate picture of what we’re actually accomplishing.

One way to start is to regularly take the What is Your Ecological Footprint? lifestyle assessment on the New Community Project Web site at http://www.newcommunityproject.org/pdfs/ecological_footprint.pdf. The tool enables you to score you or your household on 21 categories and then compare your total score to a “sustainable footprint” that we should all be striving to live within. You could take the assessment a step further by creating your own set of performance goals within each of these categories and then re-take the test on a regular basis so you can measure your progress.

Want to know how full your tank is? This is the first gauge you should put on your personal dashboard.

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