Our Story to Write
I WAS WALKING ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON several years ago with an older friend. We went by the ruining log house that had belonged to his grandparents and great-grandparents. The house stirred my friend's memory, and he told how the old-time people used to visit each other in the evenings, especially in the long evenings of winter. There used to be a sort of institution in our part of the country known as "sitting till bedtime." After supper, when they weren't too tired, neighbors would walk across the fields to visit each other. They popped corn, my friend said, and ate apples and talked. They told each other story. They told each other stories, as I knew myself, that they had all heard before. Sometimes they told stories about each other, about themselves, living again in their own memories, and thus keeping their memories alive. Among the hearers of these stories were always the children. When bedtime came, the visitors lit their lanterns and went home. My friend talked about this, and thought about it, and then he said, "They had everything but money."
Wendell Berry The Work of Local Culture
I begin this blog with a Wendell Berry excerpt about his friend’s lament. Berry, a radical agrarian localist, has made his life about the small beautiful circle that is his land and town. He has made it his imagination’s service to build powerful metaphors in which to carry the stories of his neighbors and family. He has committed himself to preserving the fragile discussion between creation and economics. He has made his home & village his bully pulpit.
As I have watched the New Adam community grow and change it has been interesting to watch the power of the home in this emerging enclave. From Eric Brown’s dinners to Dave & Angela Carlson’s holiday pageants and celebrations, it is clear that our stories come alive when they are housed. These nonfiction plays are offered a sacred place when we gather together and listen and share and create a larger story.
As I have pondered and ruminated over the current financial struggles of our nation and world I continue to go back to Berry for vision and solace. He is a renaissance man and his engagement of land, labor, and literature represent to me the kind of mentor for which my soul longs. I, as many men, long for leadership that is rooted in a place, rooted in a heartfelt commitment to be truly human with a people.
As New Adam and Samson have begun to offer a context for our personal stories to be told, we are now beginning to see that our personal lives are indeed a tapestry of narratives that create a world be it small and fledgling. E.F Schumacher’s famous work Small is Beautiful was written about economics but it is evident from authors like Schumacher and Berry and now writers like Michael Pollen (The Botany of Desire), that local is reality. Trans local and global are concepts but they are unable to contain and sustain the deepest parts of our humanity. We are world citizens after we are neighbors.
That is why this current crisis in confidence regarding economies is actually a good thing. For the first time in my life time we are beginning to question the power of the expert to oversee and steward our lives for us. Powerful corporate forces and global conglomerates are experiencing meltdown and in some ways this is due to their actual non existence on the local level. Except for political power they do not exist. You cannot have relationship with a company or global enterprise. When I say they do not exist I mean this on an ontological level. Obviously they exist but their inability to be truly human means their conversation with me is always forced, larger and more abstract than my real life is, and finally unable to see and know the impact of their behavior on me and my family. How many of you have a local banker. How many could go to a bank in their town and ask for help from a person who you knew and who knew you. These days are gone.
As money is continuing to go out to support and sustain the financial sector, it appears that many are bracing themselves for some tough times ahead. Many are beginning to sense that they must get their own house in order and one of the primary ways to do that is to take back the power of the local. How might the New Adam community take back that power to write our own story together?
Get out of Debt
One of the reasons many of us do not share our personal stories when it comes to finances is that we are ashamed of the predicaments into which we have gotten ourselves. We realize now the lack of wisdom in many of our purchases and business ventures. Our speculation was often only submitted to those who had little negative feedback and leveraging was the way we got what we thought we needed sooner than later. It has become evident that many mortgage and loan companies, for example, were more than predatory in this most recent debacle of international borrowing. Because they did not really know our “real life situation” they hedged their bets as best they could but in truth hoped the house of cards did not crumble in their life time. Much like corporate polluters, they hoped the barium and lead burial grounds were never found in this lifetime. Oops!
It is clear now that the debt load of many Americans may put them in debtor’s prison for their entire life time. Scripture is revealing in this area but most of us do not or did not want to hear that kind of cautionary wisdom and discretion. We were living within our means as defined by consumer culture not biblical culture. Most of the companies willing to loan us money had little knowledge of our true estate. Most bought into the ever increasing worth of homes phenomenon and believed that borrowers would use those inflated prices to pay off their commitments if worse came to worse. The conversation as to whether one should borrow or not is never local as most of the companies from which we borrow and buy view personal liability statistically and not literally. The impact of you defaulting on a loan plays little into their ability to exist. They view your relationship statistically and feel comfortable in the downside possibilities based on prior economic cycles. However, much like the existence of a black swan or 9/11, it is not what can be predicted that changes everything. It is what seems irreconcilable and chaotic that can alter the landscape of a world, a nation, or a family in a brief moment in time. It is clear that smart and savvy CEO's went beyond statistical caution and much of the world is close to going under due to their caprice.
Getting out of debt will mean rearranging many of our dreams and taking money’s we deemed for leisure, pleasure, the future or just technological up selling to now go to the hidden world of debt repayment. I say hidden because this means our consumption must on some level cease or be greatly curtailed. This is always hard as paying off debts means using “hard dollar cash” or real money for what we have already experienced and in some cases even used up. Credit card money is on some levels not real. Real money is money one earns and has power over how they are going to use that money. Most of us do not even realize the fine print on many credit card applications. We are truly the servant to the lender.
We must make debt an issue of great discernment and be willing to see the American dream as a counter narrative to the biblical mandates given to us by our Lord. As Michael Hudson has said, “No economy can keep up with the burden of debts growing at exponential rates faster than the economy itself is growing.” For many of us, our debt reduction is happening at such a slow rate we are giving away our retirements and children’s college funds. Flat out, we have no more to spend. Our coffers are dry.
See Our Money as “Our” Money
To return to the local is to understand the impact of being unable to help others when they need it. When we are so highly leveraged we cannot allow anyone of need into our space. We must keep them at bay and stand in Pharisaical judgment over their current neediness. In truth, we may be weeks or months away from the same predicament and our stern reproof is that hypocritical tendency to judge the self we see in others more harshly. This is not a problem like drinking. It is more like a food addiction. Just like we must eat so must we work and earn a living. Therefore, what we do with money and what money does to us matters.
For most of us, money has been a powerful force for either avoiding or shoring up our wounded selves. The power and the prestige that comes through the accumulation of things was our sign to the world that “we are doing just fine thank you.” In the game of life we are the winners. In the game of life we are the survivors. We know this game and have figured out how to procure and sustain our stuff in times of down turn and recession. In fact, in most cases we are rewarded for our opulence and wealth regardless of how we got it or sustain it. This is the Achilles heel in American Christianity where we obsess about gay marriage, communism, pornography, divorce, and totally ignore the dark side of absentee fathers, working mothers, latch key children, premature death due to over exhaustion, and the mono personality of the type A working boss we all put on our boards and seek direction for the paying off of our mega church complexes. We have difficulty seeing all this as a malady as we are still not convinced of the down side of greed.
Truly Usher in the Sabbath Rest
Our obsessive work lives reveal our deeper ruminations of how we truly believe the world works. We are capitalists and technologists before we are Christians. We are desiring to usher in democracy and liberty to nations so they too can have the opportunity to buy our stuff and compete with us for goods. We are sharing in a Kingdom but it is not the Kingdom of God.
To move to the idea that money is not owned merely by one person is to see ourselves as a people and to see land, production, food, power, government, and family as entities that swim in the same waters. These groupings and ventures of life are not separated through some theoretical definition of observation. They co-mingle and when we attempt to sever them from one another we get thalidomide cities and deformed families. We are not meant to be so separate that one family can suffer such need while another goes through life with wasteful abundance. When these two families attend the same church the absurdity of that scenario is even more heightened.
If we are to move into a Sabbath rest and truly experience that grace God has given us in and through His Son, we must begin to submit these parts of our lives. This of course is difficult as much of modern American Christianity is actually going in the opposite direction. Much of our discipleship is so highly personal that the impact of our behavior on anyone but our nuclear family is never even addressed. This is my problem with the deification of the family by many specialists in the para church organizations. I have noticed that one of the central concepts our men in New Adam must embrace is the isolation that the cocooned nuclear family is under through TV viewing, Mcmansions that have all the amenities for the family to use alone, and the underlying message for families to keep up with the Joneses. These are powerful formative messages sent to us at every level of our middle class lives.
We have allowed discipleship to be so personal that men are praying without discernment and knowledge. No one is speaking into our lives. We are infants often talking to a concept of God that is highly sentimentalized and nostalgic. We want God the good old dad that offers up whatever we want. When He does not, we stand estranged from Him much like our earthly fathers.
By taking discipleship out of a place (a town, a city, a state, a country, and a world) we make spirituality about only the inner life as it relates to psychological needs. For real community to take place we must have a place where the redemption and kingdom can be seen in all levels of human activity.
Ironically, the attention many evangelicals have given to the political realm has usually involved single issues and has not asked politicians to build stronger communities. Many involved in political debates in the evangelical subculture are familiar with the voting records of senators and representatives as well as Supreme Court judges but do not know the mayors or school board presidents, PTA leadership or farm subsidy representatives in their local areas.
We are not writing our stories with the people in which we live. More to come.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The Ushering in of Paradox
The Sabbath Rest as Provision
“The question of paramount significance is whether or not anyone is in control of the political, economic, and cosmic histories of which we are a part. Is human life, indeed all of life, at the mercy of uncontrollable and random forces that care little for our well-being?” Norman Wirzba
How could the resting from labor be the answer during a time of great economic downturn? How could inactivity be the resolution to a seemingly bloated world full of goods with no one to buy? In Wirzba's essay The Idea of a Sabbath Rest: A Theological Framework for Economists” he outlines the Jewish teaching on the Sabbath. He points out that rather than merely be a cessation of work, the Sabbath of God was an invitation to cease from our striving. The Sabbath was a sign to us from God that work, play & production had their seasons and flow. The Sabbath was a devotional time of restoration through which to view all of creation and see it as good. When the Sabbath gaze and experience were missing so too was the delight and beauty of creation. Without a pause in our frenetic pace we see nothing but the morrow and our lack. We are stuck in day six of the creation story.
How might this teaching of the Sabbath impact our world today and in particular our current economic crisis? These financial times for many of us reveal a deep presumption about the impact of our dreams and aspirations. We have been formed out of a highly narcissistic inclination and nearly all in the culture at large bow down to its bidding. It is during a significant downturn like this that we begin to discover that our sadness, our obsessive worry; our endless ruminations over what may come do indeed reflect our state of heart. Once again Scripture tells us something about the ruminations of the Spirit and cycles of birth, death, and resurrection.
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
-John 12:24.
I have been pondering more and more the deeper intentionality of the Father's Sabbath rest and have been considering my own role in the ushering in of that heart condition and Kingdom reign. Church history reveals that end time scenarios, countless interpretative grids on the moving target of history, and revelation ultimately point to truths beyond a single heart. It is in times like these that our communal heart and prophetic sensibilities must come together to see where "we" are going. This is not a time that the question “where I am going?” holds up under scrutiny. We are a people. Modern consumerism has so fragmented that sense of connectedness that it takes times like these to reevaluate why humans are even brought into this redemption story.
It must be for more than our own personal worth and retirement fund assessments. It must be for more than the seeking out of our own piece of the pie. It is in times like these that my own heart so hungers for more and I am overwhelmed with my own shallow reservoirs and must tell others I feel so emptied. It may very well be that I have been emptied. It may very well be the very nature of creation to pull from my consumptive hands and heart this deeper desire to usher in the Kingdom with my resources be they large or small.
Once again the Kingdom teaching is so clear about the beauty and power of the small empowered by faith to build a mighty foundation for God's next engagement with this world. It appears that God’s created realm does indeed have a voice in this conversation about how we then should live. Even strident conservative economists & environmental globe watchers will admit that creation has been taking a beating of late. Global warming may be controversial in terms of its ultimate impact, but its reality is not questioned by many. We have treated the world as if it were a bottomless pit of goodies. We have treated the day as night and night as day.
Growing up in the conservative Midwest, I was taught from early on that the Sabbath (Sunday in the parlance of conservative Protestantism) was a time of rest. Biblical literalism meant resting. As much as I loathed the stridency of this weekly mandate, I knew that Sunday was a down day. We worshipped and we rested. We did no labor, avoided leisure and spent time with the family of God. In retrospect, the oversight of this teaching became legalistic but its intentions were powerfully reflective of truth that has now allowed me to see firsthand what “stopping” does to a worried, stressed out, overly busy heart. I was frantic and frenetic even as a child. I chaffed under the seeming law and considered it one more repressive legality to push faith down my throat. Now I see it a missing jewel that cries aloud for replacement in the diadem of faith.
Blue laws that used to confine alcohol and the selling of certain goods on Sunday now seem anachronistic and silly. We want our goods seven days a week twenty four hours a day. Once again the environmentalists tell us that we cannot continue to work the same land, dig the same pit, and draw lumber from the same forest over and over again without some sort of diminished resources. Periodically shutting down trade and consumption is more than an anachronism. It is a principle deeply imbedded in the very center of creation.
As I have taken my place in a local community I have begun to see that more than ever how my own economic activity reflects the real condition of my heart. As Wirzba says, “The structure of our economic systems should be seen as the clearest, most honest indicator of religious authenticity, because it is in our economic practices that we can see most directly whether or not we have ordered or lives to be in harmony with the Creator’s intention.”
Recently I told a friend that one cannot usher in what one does not greatly anticipate. This idea of the Sabbath economy is one such idea. Poets, musicians, preachers, and painters need to bring into the communal imagination a yearning and longing for this deep rest we are missing. That means that much of our longing will manifest itself in tears, lamentations and the singing of the blues.
In recent weeks some of my best friends have been laid off from jobs they had for 30 years. Their pensions and medical plans are also in jeopardy. As I watch these erosions of safety and care manifest themselves throughout the universe I wonder if we are too late to usher in this Sabbath. Much has been said about the end times in Christian literature of late. I, however, have never felt comfortable being an alarmist or survivalist. I have never thought that the end times meant a historical outworking of some final plan that would take most of the world out. Yet I am beginning to wonder if that dark apocalyptic dream many have espoused may have drawn us into this chasm out of fear and for a lack of vision. I do not mean that we are responsible for the financial crisis , terrorism, or the "liberal agenda" (whatever that is). What I mean is that much of the American Church has offered up a very narrow selfish perspective on the reign of God and the ushering in of His kingdom. We have been busy building our corporate & denominational agendas, decorating our lives, fulfilling our personal life goals and directives and now feel a bit embarrassed that the universe seems to be ignoring our well layed plans. We are taken aback at God's seeming absence in all this. Why were we not prepared? Why has God allowed so many believers to suffer?
This may very well be the time to reawaken our deeper selves to the real incoming of God's divine "Yes!" This is the time to cease from our sense of material provision and hunger and thirst for heavenly things. Now is the time to deeply anticipate a new way of being. Now is the time to truly enter into this Sabbath rest.
“The question of paramount significance is whether or not anyone is in control of the political, economic, and cosmic histories of which we are a part. Is human life, indeed all of life, at the mercy of uncontrollable and random forces that care little for our well-being?” Norman Wirzba
How could the resting from labor be the answer during a time of great economic downturn? How could inactivity be the resolution to a seemingly bloated world full of goods with no one to buy? In Wirzba's essay The Idea of a Sabbath Rest: A Theological Framework for Economists” he outlines the Jewish teaching on the Sabbath. He points out that rather than merely be a cessation of work, the Sabbath of God was an invitation to cease from our striving. The Sabbath was a sign to us from God that work, play & production had their seasons and flow. The Sabbath was a devotional time of restoration through which to view all of creation and see it as good. When the Sabbath gaze and experience were missing so too was the delight and beauty of creation. Without a pause in our frenetic pace we see nothing but the morrow and our lack. We are stuck in day six of the creation story.
How might this teaching of the Sabbath impact our world today and in particular our current economic crisis? These financial times for many of us reveal a deep presumption about the impact of our dreams and aspirations. We have been formed out of a highly narcissistic inclination and nearly all in the culture at large bow down to its bidding. It is during a significant downturn like this that we begin to discover that our sadness, our obsessive worry; our endless ruminations over what may come do indeed reflect our state of heart. Once again Scripture tells us something about the ruminations of the Spirit and cycles of birth, death, and resurrection.
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
-John 12:24.
I have been pondering more and more the deeper intentionality of the Father's Sabbath rest and have been considering my own role in the ushering in of that heart condition and Kingdom reign. Church history reveals that end time scenarios, countless interpretative grids on the moving target of history, and revelation ultimately point to truths beyond a single heart. It is in times like these that our communal heart and prophetic sensibilities must come together to see where "we" are going. This is not a time that the question “where I am going?” holds up under scrutiny. We are a people. Modern consumerism has so fragmented that sense of connectedness that it takes times like these to reevaluate why humans are even brought into this redemption story.
It must be for more than our own personal worth and retirement fund assessments. It must be for more than the seeking out of our own piece of the pie. It is in times like these that my own heart so hungers for more and I am overwhelmed with my own shallow reservoirs and must tell others I feel so emptied. It may very well be that I have been emptied. It may very well be the very nature of creation to pull from my consumptive hands and heart this deeper desire to usher in the Kingdom with my resources be they large or small.
Once again the Kingdom teaching is so clear about the beauty and power of the small empowered by faith to build a mighty foundation for God's next engagement with this world. It appears that God’s created realm does indeed have a voice in this conversation about how we then should live. Even strident conservative economists & environmental globe watchers will admit that creation has been taking a beating of late. Global warming may be controversial in terms of its ultimate impact, but its reality is not questioned by many. We have treated the world as if it were a bottomless pit of goodies. We have treated the day as night and night as day.
Growing up in the conservative Midwest, I was taught from early on that the Sabbath (Sunday in the parlance of conservative Protestantism) was a time of rest. Biblical literalism meant resting. As much as I loathed the stridency of this weekly mandate, I knew that Sunday was a down day. We worshipped and we rested. We did no labor, avoided leisure and spent time with the family of God. In retrospect, the oversight of this teaching became legalistic but its intentions were powerfully reflective of truth that has now allowed me to see firsthand what “stopping” does to a worried, stressed out, overly busy heart. I was frantic and frenetic even as a child. I chaffed under the seeming law and considered it one more repressive legality to push faith down my throat. Now I see it a missing jewel that cries aloud for replacement in the diadem of faith.
Blue laws that used to confine alcohol and the selling of certain goods on Sunday now seem anachronistic and silly. We want our goods seven days a week twenty four hours a day. Once again the environmentalists tell us that we cannot continue to work the same land, dig the same pit, and draw lumber from the same forest over and over again without some sort of diminished resources. Periodically shutting down trade and consumption is more than an anachronism. It is a principle deeply imbedded in the very center of creation.
As I have taken my place in a local community I have begun to see that more than ever how my own economic activity reflects the real condition of my heart. As Wirzba says, “The structure of our economic systems should be seen as the clearest, most honest indicator of religious authenticity, because it is in our economic practices that we can see most directly whether or not we have ordered or lives to be in harmony with the Creator’s intention.”
Recently I told a friend that one cannot usher in what one does not greatly anticipate. This idea of the Sabbath economy is one such idea. Poets, musicians, preachers, and painters need to bring into the communal imagination a yearning and longing for this deep rest we are missing. That means that much of our longing will manifest itself in tears, lamentations and the singing of the blues.
In recent weeks some of my best friends have been laid off from jobs they had for 30 years. Their pensions and medical plans are also in jeopardy. As I watch these erosions of safety and care manifest themselves throughout the universe I wonder if we are too late to usher in this Sabbath. Much has been said about the end times in Christian literature of late. I, however, have never felt comfortable being an alarmist or survivalist. I have never thought that the end times meant a historical outworking of some final plan that would take most of the world out. Yet I am beginning to wonder if that dark apocalyptic dream many have espoused may have drawn us into this chasm out of fear and for a lack of vision. I do not mean that we are responsible for the financial crisis , terrorism, or the "liberal agenda" (whatever that is). What I mean is that much of the American Church has offered up a very narrow selfish perspective on the reign of God and the ushering in of His kingdom. We have been busy building our corporate & denominational agendas, decorating our lives, fulfilling our personal life goals and directives and now feel a bit embarrassed that the universe seems to be ignoring our well layed plans. We are taken aback at God's seeming absence in all this. Why were we not prepared? Why has God allowed so many believers to suffer?
This may very well be the time to reawaken our deeper selves to the real incoming of God's divine "Yes!" This is the time to cease from our sense of material provision and hunger and thirst for heavenly things. Now is the time to deeply anticipate a new way of being. Now is the time to truly enter into this Sabbath rest.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
The Rebirth of a Kingdom Mythos
The Merits of a Sabbath Economy
The whole work of creation was performed for the sake of the Sabbath
Jürgen Moltmann
What is played out in the imagination of the artists foreshadows, however dimly, the social reality of tomorrow Daniel Bell The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
I don’t frequent the discussions of end time musings nor do I relish the world’s potential demise due to its hubris or faithlessness. In fact, I feel as if my own heart has been revealed in recent weeks and months as the financial worlds of global business communities and governments have been shaken to their very core. The scenes played out in countries as far apart as Iceland and the US disclose a deeper array of images that form the very manner in which we see and know the world. Our economic imaginations are famished and the word is weary from the toil.
The breakdown of trust in the world of commerce is not a mere blip on the screen. This is an erosion of hope and is in part due to revelations that much of the world has been under the same spell as America. Although we now shame the elite of Wall Street and corporate America, in retrospect, we too turned our eyes away from the avarice of undue remuneration. From sporting figures to the cream of the crop religious leaders, we (as a culture) paid them and paid them well. We all thought the world and its coffers were limitless and so we kept on borrowing and kept on leveraging. We too used inflated housing markets to build our dreams. We too partied when our savings were nearly gone. We too toiled well into the midnight hours hoping to hit the jackpot and make it rich. This is not the disease of the privileged and coddled. This is the very dream of America and much of the world.
Why the crash now? What has happened to us lately that reveals the deeper truths? Some have pointed to the ultimate wilting of the modernism’s flower. After centuries of the self being exalted and the individual being regarded as the center, we now are realizing our children and their children now see little meaning in tomorrow. The Protestant work ethic has little spiritual juice to maintain any sense of direction as self preservation and personal survival trump any sense of community. Time itself has narrowed to our private desires and the hero of bourgeois society is the self made man full of himself and impenetrable to other’s attempts to dethrone him. Our very sense of time and space has been so restricted by our own personal dreams and aspirations that our awareness of history has equally shrunk to contain only that which our psychological self can imagine.
Our story has become my story. Our redemption has become my redemption. The salvation of the world has become deciphered through my personal devotions and God’s hand in my personal life. As I said above, our very imaginations are famished and our dreams are fitful nightmares of personal comeuppance. We’ve tried to get God to join our franchise and He has declined. We’ve tried to make true prosperity to mean financial gain. The sense of confusion on the part of the Church in America is due in part to the capitulation of our calling to a foreign understanding of work, rest, and abundance. We have given the very heart of our faith over to someone else’s definition of wealth. Now, in a world of an abundance of things, the very soul of humankind is so so hungry for something more. We are now frightened by our very selves and our own insatiable appetites . As the adage says” We have discovered the enemy and he is us.”
Is there a divine perspective on these economic times? I have wondered why so little has been said by the Church at large. Are we as well totally given over to the whims and maneuverings of the consumer culture? Are we too unable to make sense of all the seemingly indiscriminant and irrational jumps in the stock market and world economy? Some have said this is a crisis “of the system” and not “in the system.” We are not in a time where we should retool or refurbish the old model but totally redefine the manner in which we engage economics. Is this the time for us as a people to offer up a divine point of view on economics and work itself?
This is a great opportunity for the Church to reintroduce the truth of the Sabbath rest. Will authors and poets bring the new lexicon of meaning into our deepest parts or will we go back to worn our concepts and wearisome assumptions about how the world works? Some of this work will involve deep repentance and submission to one another. This is more than a shift but a total turning away from a false God. Are we up for it?
The whole work of creation was performed for the sake of the Sabbath
Jürgen Moltmann
What is played out in the imagination of the artists foreshadows, however dimly, the social reality of tomorrow Daniel Bell The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
I don’t frequent the discussions of end time musings nor do I relish the world’s potential demise due to its hubris or faithlessness. In fact, I feel as if my own heart has been revealed in recent weeks and months as the financial worlds of global business communities and governments have been shaken to their very core. The scenes played out in countries as far apart as Iceland and the US disclose a deeper array of images that form the very manner in which we see and know the world. Our economic imaginations are famished and the word is weary from the toil.
The breakdown of trust in the world of commerce is not a mere blip on the screen. This is an erosion of hope and is in part due to revelations that much of the world has been under the same spell as America. Although we now shame the elite of Wall Street and corporate America, in retrospect, we too turned our eyes away from the avarice of undue remuneration. From sporting figures to the cream of the crop religious leaders, we (as a culture) paid them and paid them well. We all thought the world and its coffers were limitless and so we kept on borrowing and kept on leveraging. We too used inflated housing markets to build our dreams. We too partied when our savings were nearly gone. We too toiled well into the midnight hours hoping to hit the jackpot and make it rich. This is not the disease of the privileged and coddled. This is the very dream of America and much of the world.
Why the crash now? What has happened to us lately that reveals the deeper truths? Some have pointed to the ultimate wilting of the modernism’s flower. After centuries of the self being exalted and the individual being regarded as the center, we now are realizing our children and their children now see little meaning in tomorrow. The Protestant work ethic has little spiritual juice to maintain any sense of direction as self preservation and personal survival trump any sense of community. Time itself has narrowed to our private desires and the hero of bourgeois society is the self made man full of himself and impenetrable to other’s attempts to dethrone him. Our very sense of time and space has been so restricted by our own personal dreams and aspirations that our awareness of history has equally shrunk to contain only that which our psychological self can imagine.
Our story has become my story. Our redemption has become my redemption. The salvation of the world has become deciphered through my personal devotions and God’s hand in my personal life. As I said above, our very imaginations are famished and our dreams are fitful nightmares of personal comeuppance. We’ve tried to get God to join our franchise and He has declined. We’ve tried to make true prosperity to mean financial gain. The sense of confusion on the part of the Church in America is due in part to the capitulation of our calling to a foreign understanding of work, rest, and abundance. We have given the very heart of our faith over to someone else’s definition of wealth. Now, in a world of an abundance of things, the very soul of humankind is so so hungry for something more. We are now frightened by our very selves and our own insatiable appetites . As the adage says” We have discovered the enemy and he is us.”
Is there a divine perspective on these economic times? I have wondered why so little has been said by the Church at large. Are we as well totally given over to the whims and maneuverings of the consumer culture? Are we too unable to make sense of all the seemingly indiscriminant and irrational jumps in the stock market and world economy? Some have said this is a crisis “of the system” and not “in the system.” We are not in a time where we should retool or refurbish the old model but totally redefine the manner in which we engage economics. Is this the time for us as a people to offer up a divine point of view on economics and work itself?
This is a great opportunity for the Church to reintroduce the truth of the Sabbath rest. Will authors and poets bring the new lexicon of meaning into our deepest parts or will we go back to worn our concepts and wearisome assumptions about how the world works? Some of this work will involve deep repentance and submission to one another. This is more than a shift but a total turning away from a false God. Are we up for it?
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