Faith and Consumerism

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Allen Johnson

Rt. 1, Box 119-B

Dunmore, West Virginia 24934

(304) 799-4137

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christianity Today

465 Gundersen Drive

Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

 

Faith and Consumerism

 

 The damp blue of early dawn illumines a bent old man caressing the dewey grass of a fog-softened Alabama meadow.  A few yards away from a thicket rustles the soft chittering of birds.  The man shuffles a step, stoops once more.  He plucks a violet, tenderly brushing the sprig against his crinkled cheek.  His lips move softly, repetitively, “How wonderful are the ways of God.”  Reverently he places the flower stem into the buttonhole of his black suitcoat.  Again, he bends down to caress God’s creation.

 

As the first streak of sunlight casts its beam into the meadow the man stands up, revealing himself to be a black man, white-haired with age.  As is his custom, George Washington Carver has been up since four o’clock.  Among the woods and fields surrounding Tuskegee Institute, Carver is praying, his senses fully open, alive in praise and wonder.  After a while, with a new inspiration for the day, he will meander back to his laboratory, “God’s Little Workshop”, there to fashion amazing wonders.[1]

 

Intimacy with God and intimacy with God’s creation were of a common thread for George Washington Carver.  The man was in awe of the Creator because he was in awe of creation.  No treasure, no pleasure could surmount what he could find even in the beholding of the smallest flower. Carver believed Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem:

 

“Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies;—

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower—but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.”

 

Life did not start out easy for George Washington Carver, who was born into slavery, orphaned as an infant, and sickly throughout childhood.  His early education was mostly self-taught, and early attempts to attend college were rebuffed due to his race.  He knew many hours of arduous menial labor and years of meager living quarters.  Yet bitterness never crept into his life.  Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and others offered Carver six figure salaries a hundred fold his Tuskegee Institute pittance, yet Carver never flickered any interest to jump ship.  Carver always considered himself incredibly rich for he knew God, and in knowing God intimately and reverently, all creation was given to him to know and enjoy.

 

Addicted to Stuff

 

“When you die, whoever has the most toys wins!”  So trumpet the bumper stickers.  As Christians we gasp at this outrageous perversity of our theology, yet we all have played our games of marbles.  Most of us learn at an early age the heady feeling of empowerment in the acquisition of quantity and quality of material possessions.  Before long money becomes both the gateway and the measure.

 

 Jesus teaches we cannot serve both God and Mammon, but do clergy dare even whisper this to their affluent yet easily-offended congregations from whom a steady income must flow?  Robert Wuthnow speaks to the dualism that segregates spirituality from finances.  "For many of us, compartmentalism is probably the most comfortable way of dealing with the relationship between our faith and our finances.  Keeping the two apart is expedient.  We can fall back on familiar habits—which may be ethically sound—rather than having to think about every decision anew.”[2]  Thus, both Mammon and God can be served, each in its own respective domain.  And (supposedly) from each god benefits can flow!

 

The headlong pursuit of mammon is sin that collectively as a society spills death in its wake.  Human relationships fracture.  The environment reels.   According to Orthodox theologian Vincent Rossi, the word “sin” is too commonplace a term to fasten our attention.  He suggests a more jolting term—addiction.  Most members of our society are addicted to a consumer lifestyle that degrades the planet.  We turn on an electric light, and another wisp of pollutant goes out the stack.  We drive our car, and the planet takes another punch.  We are caught up in a vortex,  we cannot escape this lifestyle.  As addicts hooked to a lifestyle with no seeming escape, we draw ourselves into denial.  “Everyone else has a consumptive lifestyle,” we reason, as we shut out the truth that most of the world has but a fraction of our goods.  As Christians we confess that addictions are not hopeless.  The first step to overcoming an addiction, any addiction, is confessing to oneself and to God the addiction.  Rossi paraphrases Romans 7: “The things that I do not want to do environmentally, those things I do.  And the things that I want to do environmentally, those things I never do—or seldom do.”[3]

 

An addict is one who has a habit that ruins body and soul.  An addict is trapped, unable to change without outside help and miracle.  An addict very often is in denial that he or she is enslaved.   Rossi notes that the difference between those addicted to chemical drugs and those addicted to an environmentally destructive lifestyle is that drug abusers are disreputable.  That most of us good church goers are, say,  addicted to oil and its technologies is hardly scandalous.  “Until we face our addiction, we’re not going to realize that we’re not free.”[4]

 

My Desire, to be like ....

 

“Imagine a scene.  A small child is sitting alone in a nursery that has a couple of dozen toys scattered about it.  He sits there rather dreamily, exhibiting only a casual interest in the toy that happens to be nearby.  Another child comes into the nursery and surveys the room.  He sees the first child and a great number of toys.  There will come a moment when the second child will choose a toy.  Which of the toys will he most likely find interesting?  The first parent you meet will be able to tell you.”[5]

 

Gil Bailie relates this example in his book, Violence Unveiled, to illustrate the anthropological principle of mimetic desire.   As anyone can guess, in our example the second child will be attracted to the toy of the first child, whereupon that first child will suddenly have renewed interest in that toy.  A struggle for the toy is likely. Seminal thinker Rene Girard defines mimetic desire as a “nonconscious imitation of another... that seeks to obtain the object that the model desires.”[6]  The extraordinary intellectual feats of human beings are due to our capacity to imitate, to acquire traits of others.  Even as toddlers we constantly desire to be like others, and we do this through imitation and acquisition.  Imitation enables us to learn survival skills, develop communication abilities, and relate socially. 

 

Our capacity for imitation is God-created.  A Kempis’ title, The Imitation of Christ, sums up our high calling.  Paul expresses our mimetic purpose to the Corinthians: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another”  (II Cor. 3:18a).  An important way toward this goal is to imitate the example of spiritually-mature men and women.  Paul exhorts, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”  To the Thessalonians Paul points out that he did hard work to pay for his own food as an example for them to imitate (II Thess. 3:9).  To the Philippians Paul launches the well-known passage of Jesus’s self-emptying by telling his listeners, “Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2: 5-7). 

 

Yet as human beings we are tragically fallen.  We have not desired to imitate the Triune God, instead we have desired the forbidden fruit of being ourselves gods (Gen. 3).  And paradise is lost.   We have desired  after the creation rather than desired the Creator, and everything has been a debacle (Rom. 1:25).   “We desire and do not have; so we kill.  And we covet and cannot obtain; so we fight and wage war” (Jas. 4:2).  Rene Girard is in line with these scriptures as he scrutinizes history, literature, world religion, and psychology to show that inner conflict as well as societal conflict is spawned through the desire to acquire what others have. 

 

Indeed, the function of cultures and their religions is to control and channel potential conflict over mutually desired objects.[7]  Yet Judaism and especially Christianity are radically different, as Girard convincingly points out, for in agape love the well-being of others is lifted up over against self-interest. The most striking characteristic of Jesus was his God-centeredness.  As Christians we are given The Holy Spirit that we, too, may be God-centered. 

 

A significant mark of our advanced communications culture is that we all know what everyone else possesses, and we all want it all.  We want to travel to exotic places, own all the gadgets, acquire all the specialties, experience all the pleasures—yet we have only so much time and money.  Like a person who has won a ten minute shopping spree at a store, we madly dash about helter skelter acquiring anything and everything we can.  It is a no win game; we can never have everything we desire.  Yet the poor and weak are over-run.  And the environment is bled dry.

 

“My desire, to be like Jesus,

My desire, to be like Him.

His Spirit fills me, His love overwhelms me,

In deed and word, to be like Him.”

 

 

 

A Culture of Discontent

 

The triumph of capitalism on a global scale ensures the continuation of the twin engines that drive growth—improving efficiency and increasing consumer demand.  Efficiency is predicated upon a mathematical model that objectifies everybody and everything.  Consumer demand is necessary for a capitalist economy to expand.  The counsel of Timothy 6:8 is that we be content with basic food and clothing.  But such an exhortation is anathema to our growth-oriented capitalist economy.  A large-scale adherence by millions of Christians to Paul’s dictum would implode our economy.  High consumer demand is essential to keep people buying products and services which justify capital investments.   To fire this demand, advertising creates an aura of discontent.  View a typical television commercial, and one is promised happiness if only one acquires the product.  Mimetic desire is stoked.  Perhaps the viewer buys the product.  The product is conquered, acquired.  Soon enough, however, the “thing” loses its luster, its ability to fulfill.  Another commercial, and once again mimetic desire is kindled.  This time, perhaps, the viewer cannot afford the advertised product, leaving him or her in frustrated discontent.  This disquietude is the malaise of our present society.  We are miserable when we fulfill our desires, and we are miserable when we cannot obtain our desires.  And we never cease our chase.

 

Our incessant thirst to acquire finally pits all of us against one another.  When the rich collide with the poor, the outcome is veritably certain.  King Ahab owned many vineyards, more than sufficient for his needs and extravagances.  He saw the poor man, Naboth’s vineyard, and desired it.  The desire increased when Naboth refused on religious scruples to sell it.   Ahab’s desire for the vineyard stirred up desire in his wife, Jezebel, who perverted the government legal system to have Naboth executed and the coveted vineyard acquired (I Kings 21). 

 

The breakdown of healthy relationships among people is coterminous with an abuse of the environment,  as Hosea 4:1-3 clearly reveals: 

 

“Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.  There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds and murder follows murder. Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air; and even the fish of the sea are taken away.”

 

Augustine speaks well of our malaise and our cure.  “Our soul is restless until it finds its rest in God.”  We are created to desire after fellowship with the Triune God.  In God is our fulfillment.  Any other desire leads to death in all its spiritual and physical forms.

 

The Circle of Life: To Give and Receive

 

George Washington Carver talked to flowers and plants.  He loved them, and in his love for them he was given their secrets.  “You have to love it enough.  Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.  And people, too, will give up their secrets if you love them enough.”[8]  Creation in its God-created order reflects a giving and receiving, a serving and being served.  An oak sapling is nourished by the soil, yet in its death and decay comes to replenish that soil.  A grassy meadow serves the rabbit who feeds upon it, who in turn serves the fox who preys upon it, who in turn serves the long-term vigor of the rabbit population. 

 

Human beings, too, have their role, a special place in this ecology.  As revealed in Genesis 2:15  humans are given the responsibility  to serve creation, and in the next breath, verse 16, humans are given the privilege of eating from its bounty.  If humanity serves creation as a work of obedience to God, then that creation will serve humanity.  As an example, Noah obeyed God in the service of preserving animal species, some of which in turn served his descendants in the restored world with food, clothing, and labor.  Modern day Noahs obey God in the service of preserving animal species through establishing wildlife spaces, or through advocating for protective public policy. 

 

 

 

 

A Royal Priesthood

 

Most people view the environment from the lofty throne of anthropocentrism. That is, the earth and its bounty is for human use.  Christians who are anthropocentric state that God has created the environment for human consumption and pleasure.  The earth is the stage upon which the drama of salvation is played out. The earth’s goods should be shared with one another, which implies a conservation of resources.    However, the earth does not have significant intrinsic worth outside its usefulness to humankind.

 

On the polar extreme is biocentrism, which holds that each entity upon earth is of equal merit and intrinsic worth.  A rabbit, a deer, a bear, a dragonfly, and a human being are all on the same plane, at least in so much as species equivalency. Some of the extreme proponents of biocentrism even view humankind as an enemy of the Earth,  even to the displaying of radical bumper stickers such as “Save the Earth, kill yourself.”  Biocentrism is a reaction against the massive destruction of much of the environment through human impact, a counter to indifferent and smug anthropocentrism.  Biocentrism imputes worth to all of creation, but at the cost of diminishing the special giftings and place of humankind.

 

Theocentrism is the biblical view.  God is the Lord of creation.     “The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein,” shouts Psalm 24.  The purpose of creation is to magnify God, not serve human utilitarian purposes.  “Thou art worthy, O God, to receive glory and honor and power. For Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are created” (Rev. 4:11).  The purpose of creation is to magnify God.  Creation is for God’s purposes, for God’s pleasure. As human beings we have a special ability and created purpose to cognitively and spiritually acknowledge God in praise and loving obedience.  As Christians, even especially collectively as the Church, we are a priesthood, representing all creation before God and representing God to all creation.  This is our holy calling (I Pet. 2:9). 

 

The Incarnation is key to this understanding of a priesthood.  Jesus is the mediation of God toward humanity, and Jesus is also the mediation of humanity toward God.  Humanity  represents all of creation, creaturely and non-creaturely.   Francis of Assisi is surely correct to see his creaturely connectedness with Brother Sun and Sister Moon.  As we worship God with heart, mind, soul, we represent creation toward God in a fullness.  And in our union in Christ Jesus we represent God to creation. God manifests Himself toward the trees, the birds, the air and water, through His people. 

 

The Creation’s Eager Longing

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19).

 

The resolution to the ecological problem that rocks this planet lays with a gnarled, rough-hewn cross and the God-man who died upon it.  In a world in which fallen humanity had tilted the balance of giving and getting to just one of getting, Jesus was the One of total giving.  As followers of Jesus we are commissioned to give of ourselves, sacrificially, to one another but also to creation within its God-created order.  As we give ourselves in service to one another and to creation in the name of Christ, so grace continues its mighty flow that washes all creation in its healing, life-giving flow.  And we too!

 

The time has come when the Church must step up to plate, renounce its idolatries and addictions, and seek the way of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom.  The Church has been given the keys of the Kingdom of God,  entrusted with the Word of God that alone can truly transform individuals and societies.  Consumerism fueled by mimetic passions must be denounced as the sins of envy and covetousness that wreck lives and souls and God’s good creation.  The Church must renounce its complicity in tolerating its members lust for excessive consumption.  Finally, the Church must rekindle its calling as an alternative society, as a first fruits of God’s inbreaking Kingdom, as prophets of the coming eternal age.  The Church can live out as a new society a simplicity of lifestyle, a connectedness to all creation, a mutuality of giving and receiving, that salts and yeasts the world with healing and life. 

 

As churches begin to live out an agape lifestyle, public policy issues will be flavored.  Mimetic passions are not necessarily evil, rather they need direction.  A common, collective passion that cherishes creation, that honors the earth’s bounty, that reverences each species, that preserves the purity of air and water, certainly should be inflamed.  A community can develop an environmental patriotism that is proud of its rare species, clean air and water, beautiful scenery, and ecological wholeness.  As individuals and as communities we can set out to conquer the plagues of pollution and destructive greed that would blight our landscapes and waterways.  We can desire the good, and hate the evil.  In Christ’s name, and through the power of His Spirit, we can bring light into the darkness. And in the indwelling, life-giving Spirit, living out lives of obedience to the teachings and cruciform life of Jesus Christ, we can find a fulfillment that no manner of material goods, pleasures, and securities can ever deliver. 

 

The late afternoon sun shafts golden beams through the window of the laboratory.  As George Washington Carver hangs up his lab coat, his eyes rest upon the violet threaded in his coat buttonhole. A radiance brighter than the sunlight is on his face. He smiles.

 

The end

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


[1].Clark, Glenn.  The Man Who Talks with the Flowers.  Macalester Park Publishing: St. Paul, Mn. 1939.  pp. 21, 22.

[2].Wuthnow, Robert.  God and Mammon.  The Free Press: N.Y. 1994. P.151.  See p. 9.

[3].Rossi, Andrew. “Addiction, Apocalypse, Asceticism: Choices for Christian Ecology” Firmament.  Summer, 1990.  P. 3.

[4].Ibid.; p. 16.

[5].Bailie, Gil.  Violence Unveiled. Crossroad: N.Y. p. 116.

[6].Girard, Rene.  The Girard Reader. edited by James G. Williams.  Crossroad: N.Y.  P. 290.

[7]. Ibid.; p. 290.

[8].Clark, Glenn.  P. 22.