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Over Indulgence: My Confession
I can’t sleep these days. I lay in bed for at least an hour every night. Sometimes 2 or more hours. This is after I’ve turned off the lights, shut down the computer, and closed my book. I lay there. Heavy. Overwhelmed. And thinking. I can’t quit thinking about my over-consumption. I talk about how much I can’t stand materialism and commercialism . . . but I buy right in. And I’ve come to the sad realization that all my talk about sustainability and what little acts that I do are nothing more than token attempts at appeasing my guilt and to make me feel better because I’m “not as bad as that person”.
I’m giving up beer for a while. I’m fasting from beer because I am a saint. Who else gives up beer? Nobody but me. But even if I only have a couple of beers a week, that’s over $500 a year. More than what 40% of the people in the world make as income. I’m giving up beer. I am a saint. In it’s place, I’m sitting in a coffee shop with espresso machines whirring away and sipping on a $4.00 strawberry/banana smoothie. I am a hypocrite. I am the antagonist.
When I can’t sleep because I’m tossing and turning and crying thinking about all the poor people in the world, I turn on my $300 iPod and allow music and Wendell Berry essays to lull me to sleep. I am a saint. I am a hypocrite. I am running from my guilty thoughts.
I share 5% of my income to global small businesses via Kiva. 80% of the people I support through Red Cowboy are women. And all of them are in the third world. I’ve made 39 loans while the average user only has 2.4. I am a saint. Oh wait . . . I have a $2300 computer that’s 2 years old and I need a new one. A $1000 camera. And countless other little pieces of metal with little wires and little circuits. I am a hypocrite. I am full of shit.
I don’t watch television. The only show I watch is LOST. So maybe 2 hours a week. Tops. I tell myself I’m an intellectual and that I’m a better person for reading books rather than watching American Idol or Dancing With The Stars or insert any other reality show here. I am a saint. I tell myself this myth to make me feel better about my self. It’s a shame that we bought a $600 flat screen HD television to watch LOST and play the Wii. And I spent more time on my computer than 10 average people combined. I am a hypocrite. I am my own worst enemy.
I’m aware of the injustices that go into the global food market. I haven’t eaten fast food in almost a month, have given up soft drinks (for the most part), and only buy free-range meats. So I make my own blackberry jam, can my own pickles, and make whole-wheat organic bread. I am a saint. The only small catch being that I do so with a $100 bread maker and continue to eat out 2 or 3 times a week and over-eat when I do. I am a hypocrite. I go to sleep on a full stomach of Ben & Jerry’s $3 ice cream.
We use cloth shopping bags. Look at us. We don’t use god-awful plastic bags. We care about the environment. I am a saint. I’m glad I bought 5 of them when 2 would have done the job. I am a hypocrite. I care more about appearance than I do function.
I haven’t bought any clothes in nearly 6 months. And only a few things over the last year. Mostly from thrift stores. I never go to the mall except for movies. I don’t like to shop. I am a saint. But I take pride that my utilitarian jeans and solid shirts are more powerful than fashion. I enjoy looking plain. I enjoy feeling better than people stuck in the vicious cycle of trying to stay cool. I am so much better than them. I am a hypocrite. I am ashamed of my own thoughts.
I don’t buy books. I go to the library and check them out. I even am intelligent enough to read 1 a week. I read big books too. The big kind with 300+ pages and big words like Straussian and antinomy. The kind that talk about economics and theology. I am a saint. It’s almost comical that I pay hundreds of dollars for domain names and hosting space that is neither material or tangible so that I can blog and podcast my pretentious little thoughts for the world to see. Millions of people across the world own little to no physical property such as land, home, or necessities. I own a whole variety of “virtual worlds”. I am a hypocrite. I am a cyber landlord.
I don’t use gasoline lawn mowers. How brutish would that be? I have a manual reel mower and I cut my grass and pull weeds with my own bare hands and my own human strength. As the blades move manually as I walk, the sharp cutting sound is music to my ears. I sneer at the neighbors across the street. I make my own pillow from the feathers of cat tails in the neighborhood retention pond. I have reclaimed and reimagined the wasteland that is the suburbs. I am a saint. I lay my head on my pillow every night in a comfortable bed with sheets with high thread counts and down comforters. And two of my rooms sit empty while people sleep under boxes on the cold streets. My closet is full of clothes that I wear once every couple of months if at all. Perfectly good shoes sit on my shelf next to my extra blankets and coats. I am a hypocrite. I horde my privacy.
I am so thrifty and conscious. I’ve changed all of our light bulbs to compact fluorescents. We keep our house at 60 degrees in the winter and 76 degrees in the summer. We hang the majority of our clothes on drying racks. I drive a Vespa that gets 75 miles a gallon. I pass Hummers and use a choice word under my breath as I weave past them. I am a saint. Meanwhile I give my dog some of his $65 vitamins every night with his $30 dog food, his $5 treats, his $15 blanket, his $5 spray, and his $20 toys. When we go out of town, we pay $25 a night for him to get a good night’s sleep at a kennel. My dog lives, eats, and plays better than most of the children of the world.
I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I.
Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.
I am a hypocrite. Hear me roar. I sip my smoothies and blog with my expensive technology. I listen to my indie music with my utilitarian wardrobe. Don’t mess with me! I give money to the poor. I pay extra to get our electricity from “green energy”. Come! Come follow me. Downward mobility is the way to go. But wait . . . I am not going downward. I’m accessorizing my middle mobility. This is not change I am doing. This is not life that I’m creating. I’m perpetuating a myth. I’m soothing my guilt. I am the great politicizer. The great moralizer. The great theorist! Come and hear my new theory on economics. I have something new to share with you about politics. Tomorrow I will espouse upon my new theology. My affluence grows and so does my imagination. Let me tell you about it. But first let me go throw up.
Ha!
I am broken. I am ashamed. I am full of shit. And that’s no where near harsh enough. Welcome to my inner dialogue every night.
P.S. I’m not depressed.
P.S.S. I was just sitting on the front porch with Jack and Mason Jennings’ Jesus Are You Real (listen to it here) came up on my Hope Playlist. These words have an interesting way of refreshing me when I get overwhelmed. Cranking the volume to 11 doesn’t hurt either.
jesus my life does not feel the same
new things happen everyday
things i can’t explain
but i am not a man of faith
i’m a man of truth
but is this feeling in my heart
is this feeling proof
when you do not know you know
when you know you do not know
and when you think you do you die
and when you do not think you grow
are we left here in the dark
or are we left here in the light
it seems to me that both are true
and its up to us to know what’s right
And all I do is doubt you God
All is do is love you God
All I do is question you
What else can I do
This world was never solid ground
Religion can not help me now
All I do is search for you
What else can I do
And when I say I search for you
I mean I search for peace
I search for hope I search for love
And one day for release
God give me strength to accept the things
that i just can not know
and even when i lose control i will not let you go
Discussion
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Josh,
There’s something about letting a million people have access to our personal diary isn’t there? But seriously, wow…your post really resonated with me. It’s the same…always the same…”soothing our guilt…accessorizing my middle mobility”
Thanks for sharing, really, very true…but where do we go from here?
I don’t want to minimize your passion but don’t beat yourself up to bad. The point is often not achieving but pursueing. I think that is why He said to seek or strive or pursue after the Kingdom. As your pursue God does great things. Some of the things you mentioned like your comp and camera seem to be tools you are faithfully using to glorify God with the money you earn. Your right, we are all jacked up. But the point is to pursue something better. You stop doing that you can start beating yourself up. One of the traps of legalism is the idea that you are never good enough. I don’t know if this applies directly but Matt Chandler will sometimes instruct folks to ‘Stop managing the flesh and walk in the Spirit.’ I will let you decide how much that applies.
Broken and ashamed as well,
Josh
holy cow. wtf. now i hate myself and you too.
Josh,
That Mason Jennings song looks incredible. Just as an anecdote, my 73 year old tiny British teacher Wendy Miller said this in class the other day;
“In the Hebrew tradition, faithfulness is NOT expressed in passive submission to the things we face as ‘God’s will,’ but IS taking one’s anger and struggles and doubts before God in lament, as well as one’s joys and smiles and happy-clappy times. It is a conviction deeply honest about and affected by reality, not a conviction separated from daily reality.”
Much like Jennings was saying.
“accessorizing my middle mobility”
Ouch.
And true.
And a little more ouch.
Wow, sounds like we have a lot in common, except that you are more generous and use the library a lot more than me.
On that note, have you read ‘Bobos in Paradise’? I could give you my (used) copy, if you’d like.
hmm…
i kinda agree that i hate myself more after reading this than i did before i read it.
but only because it is so true of me too.
thanks for sharing yourself.
btw… not a fan of the picture.
it plays into the stereotype that certain people (i.e. in this case, obese people) are more over indulgent than others.
I share many of these feelings. The question I come back to is - is this about the guilt? is this all about me? or is service and sacrifice and alt. lifestyles about helping the other? does feeling guilty just turn the focus back onto me and my personal needs?
Dave,
Sorry to be blunt, but obesity is overindulgence…amongst a host of others indulgences of course, but overindulgence nonetheless…and probably the biggest problem amongst Christfollowers in America today.
Nate… perhaps, but not always. There are other issues related to obesity that are not related to overindulgence. But that is beside the point.
There is no question that overeating would be overindulgence.
What I don’t like is that obesity is easy to look at and judge. But the point of this post was Josh saying, “I am just as bad.” He is essentially saying, “I pretend I am better than some one who eats to much, but in reality, I am not.”
i changed it out to beers instead of fat people.
thanks for the correction dave.
and i hope i’m not making anyone feeling guilty. i totally get what julie is saying. i guess i just wanted to be honest on my blog. i do a whole lot of talking about sustainability and if i’m not careful, i can make myself look a whole lot more generous than i am.
in reality, i’m a big ball of contradictions. full of myself. i should probably just close the comments on this thing. but definitely don’t want anybody to think i’m being accusatory. just more pissed at myself than anything.
Josh… thanks for changing that. Though I do feel more guilty about my food consumption than my beer consumption!
As for making me feel guilty…
I don’t think that guilty is the right word… convicted may be better.
I love the honesty, not only because it gives me (us) insight into who you are, but because it also forces us to be honest with ourselves about who we really are.
This was seriously one of the best blog posts that I have read in a while.
I agree with Dave…a great post of intensity and honesty and, I’d say, faithfulness. After reading Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship a few weeks back, one of the things he said has stuck out to me since. I’m paraphrasing, but he essentially said (referring to Matthew 6:1-2), “Who is the righteousness of the disciples hidden from ultimately? The righteousness of the disciples is hidden from themselves.”
The way I read that is this: God calls us to a lifetime of change and transformation as we follow Jesus, one of gradually lifting our eyes off ourselves to the reality of the world around us. And, in some ways (this was really challenging to me when I heard it), as Pete Rollins said when you and Nick interviewed him, it’s a journey what is perceived as greater darkness rather than light. And as we walk that road, trying desperately to be faithful in the midst of a shattered world, we become a part of the healing God desires to bring about; though we don’t necessarily sense it because we’re in touch with our continual hypocrisy. So our righteousness is hidden from ourselves.
I think.
Irregardless, your honesty is refreshing
In the middle of my comment, I intended to say, “it’s a journey into what is perceived as greater darkness rather than light.”
And sorry to be a jerk, but I’m less a fan of the beer picture than the fat lady one…cause man, most Christians I know think one taste of that there devil drink is already overindulgence.
I’d put a picture of the Teletubbies or Billy Ray Cyrus or Benny Hinn up; I think we ALL can agree a little of them is definitely overindulgence.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/static.onmylist.com/list_item_images/33127/Billy_Ray_Cyrus_list_view.jpg
What are you trying to say?
Cyrus definitely didn’t overindulge in the use of scissors.
As my friend says, “That’s a Kentucky waterfall right there.” Or to offend my Georgia friends, “Business in the front, Georgia in the back.”
Man, I’m right there with you. And I don’t even make a fraction of the good choices you make! Ahhhh… it sucks to want change and realize how much you fall short. Good thing for grace!!
this is why i read and comment on your blog more than any other…you’re honest and you put yourself out there. your transparency is refreshing.
that being said, i feel you. i have moments like this often. like you said, i do what i can, but i could always do more. that’s the paradox, to save the world or savor it. we’re all somewhere in between wishing we were more “real.”
if it makes you feel any better, i’m crappier shit.
this is the shittiest post you’ve written and i mean that in a good sense.
Thank you for this post and for your many others.
Amen Julie! (2/23/8:42pm)
Maybe you and Isaiah have a little in common 64:6…all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…
Me: I’ve been a consumer my entire adult life (obviously as a kid too but as an adult I was making all the choices) and this Christmas decided to start recycling. One tiny step but if it’s in the right direction does the rest matter?
…and here’s the great irony (imo): the orthodox rush in to argue about Emergent but this is the post where they should be showing up with open Bibles - not to fight but to gently point out the power of what they believe. (If indeed it works)
Josh, it’s great that you care about how you live and are aware where you fall short of your (God’s) standards - BUT it sounds like you’re living under The Law. The gift of orthodox theology is that Jesus died so you wouldn’t have to do that any more. You’re supposed to be set free from that aren’t you? Didn’t Jesus bear your guilt already? Jesus never said not to care - he said the opposite - but from beginning to end the Bible has given solutions to guilt hasn’t it? So that humans could care without being kept awake by guilt that they fall short of whatever standard they are aiming at?
Have you read this lately?
I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.
The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.
But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
(If that’s too orthodox then you can try what I do as an almost-atheist: managing my expectations, working at not being such a perfectionist, breaking things down into doable steps, being careful not to disproportionately focus on my failures compared with my successes, pick myself up and try again after spectacular failure etc.)
Caring is good and doing what’s doable is good - but losing sleep at night doesn’t make any difference to the poverty and injustice in this world. Which isn’t to say: so feel more guilty, but rather - why not cut out what’s keeping you awake because you won’t do any less good if you sleep instead of feeling guilty. You’ll probably do more because people who get more sleep have more energy and can think more clearly.
Sorry if this was preachy.
This actually is one thing the concerns me about orthodox Christian theology - for some reason it’s much easier for people who truly care to remember the parts about the high standard than the parts about forgiveness and grace. And there was never supposed to be one without the other, as best I can tell from the Bible.
I didn’t want to be so presumptuous as to post my thoughts on what seemed such an introspective post that comments would never do it justice, but since the can has been opened I’ll share.
I think what you’ve described is the beginning of the beauty of this relationship. We have a God who is always ready to show us the next level, and not in a way where if we don’t jump to the next level he’s disappointed in us, but in a way where the next level serves to draw us even closer to him.
We make a commitment to give to micro-finance, and he shows us where we can give more. We make a commitment to cut back in energy “spending” and he shows us how to cut a little more.
Again, not in a way to rack up guilt and cause us pain, but in a way to bring us to more of a relationship with him. I think it was meant to be a thing of beauty, this call to the next step, and instead we’ve turned it into a guilt racking experience.
Just my thoughts.
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excellent … I feel the same most days …
Peace
Matt Scott–Yes!
You know, as I was reading this, I found myself thinking, “Wow, I’m so much better at stuff than this guy.”
‘cos I don’t drink expensive lattes and I *did* lend out my spare space to someone.
and I’m a hypocrite, and full of shit, and Jesus showed it to me in the gentlest way possible. But just because people in the world are going hungry is no reason to piss on our campfire — and beating ourselves senseless is not the solution. I think the answer is not in what trendy life change we can make, what cool burden we can take on, but in living out Christian Freedom — freedom do Redeem the world without becoming a Sadu.
anyways, great post.
thanks for the comments everybody. definitely encouraging to know i’m not the only who feels crazy sometimes.
as far as the legalism or beating ourselves senseless . . . i definitely don’t feel that. i’ve never doubted the proximity to god in my life. or in a rant like that. in fact, i would say that i feel strangely closer in those “dark nights of my soul”. my frustration more had to do with my deceiving myself that i was somehow downward mobile. or that i was in fact getting my hands dirty. clearly it’s easier for me to write about how we should get our hands dirty and just change out some light bulbs every now and then, than to actually get my hands dirty with giving in ways that involve people other than me.
clearly it’s easier for me to write about how we should get our hands dirty and just change out some light bulbs every now and then, than to actually get my hands dirty with giving in ways that involve people other than me.
I struggle with that too. And that I uphold friendly respect online but not always in person.
But I still hope you figure out a way to sleep better.
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Maybe guilty wasn’t the best word choice. I fully admit that I overindulge and all that, but I’ve had to realize that I can’t wait to serve God and live the life he calls me to until I become perfect so to speak. Justice can’t be an all or nothing endeavor or else nothing would ever get done. So I have to be grateful for the convictions to keep changing, but not let that paralyze me into inaction.
Josh -
You just redeemed yourself with me. Thanks for sharing.
Your fellow hypocrite,
Agent B
Great post Josh, really resonated with me.
Thank you.
Wow, that was really good. Thanks.
Great post and what can I say - eerily prophetic in nature?
I think we all feel this when we compare ourselves with what we know about the world around us - we can never do enough for the goodness we now know. This is quite common in any honest person’s heart - namely when they think about ‘love’ and their role in that process. I am with you on this one - I suck.
However, we need to do something with where we are and who we know - that both reflects the faith we love and helps change the world around us. Imagine if we all felt this way then impacted each and every person around us (namely in the spirit of Christ - forgiveness, mercy, love, and peace) - think of the crime rate falling and the impoverished minority getting a fair shake.
‘I was given this world I didnt make it’ (2Pac)
awesome post, I could have written it myself (especially the part about LOST).
if you don’t already feel bad enough - have you ever watched this? http://www.storyofstuff.com
We have to keep the faith, but we fail more than succeed. Narrow is the way, etc.
I really enjoyed this post. Afterwards, I was mindlessly surfing and came across this (through Oprah’s website, no less)
http://www.freegan.info
It just turned me around a little.
Thanks for sharing… I don’t have anything to add to the stream of comments except “Thanks” for letting me read your thoughts.
Wow, and of course I’m just getting to this post now.
Thanks for opening that up.
holy crap. a crap load of people read your blog. anyways, do you still sleep on your cattail pillow?? or does it smell like poop?
Yeah … a big “I agree” on this one, I came across this thought today, I feed the poor but I choose to eat at home. I guess it’s a lot more cosy there, eh?
[...] Over Indulgence: My Confession - Josh Brown [...]
I think you are being a little harsh on yourself. Ok, so your motivations aren’t perfectly pure, join the human race.
Remember two important things that Jesus said: “the day’s own trouble is sufficient for the day” and “don’t worry.”
How does it serve you to beat yourself up over things that have happened, stuff that you bought, nights when you over-indulged? you lay there in bed, focused on the past, pessimistic about the future all the while surrounded by the things your identity is dependent upon. When you write on your $2300 computer in your house with two extra rooms you aren’t thinking about all that. you are simply living in the now doing what you do best. apply what you know. do the best you can to live in the moment instead of some place your mind has created in the future or past. and most importantly, don’t forget to write a blog about LOST this week… we miss it.
Good post - bold. I share many of the same struggles.