The Consumptive Church: The Non-List List.

The Context For My Starting Point, Different Starting Points, The Religious Industrial Complex, Opium & 3 Legged Chairs, The Model Speaks Volumes, The Medium Is The Message, Appeasing The White Man’s Guilt

In the not too distant past I began working through some of my thoughts on consumption and how consumption fit into the larger role of the church. My main premise from the beginning has been that the community of God at it’s very nature is antithetical to the hyper-consumption that we have in our society today. It’s been a while since I posted. Due to the holidays (ironic that the most consumptive season of the year distracted my attention) and a busy work schedule since I’ve been back, I haven’t had time to develop my closing thoughts. Plus, I also have a short attention span and am trying to be more disciplined about using the computer less. All of this is a recipe for a close to a month pause between my last post and this one. But here’s to dramatic pauses.

Now that I’m done with my usual lengthy preface and done with the critique (even though critique is construction), I thought I’d share some of the solutions that I envision. These solutions may appear idealistic and simple, but I honestly think the easiest step to reverse our current situation is as simple as not consuming. And my fear is not that the problems are complex and systemic, but that we lack the audacity to live simply and the imagination to dream up alternative solutions.

So here’s my non-list list. It’s more personal in nature than comprehensive. In order to properly critique the consumptive patterns we are each going to have to practice simplicity as individuals before we affect change globally.

My Short List:

- Move from the transient and disposable to the lasting and good. To often we buy things that aren’t high quality and inherently good. We buy knock-offs, bad art, and cheap plastic. We need to rediscover the values of good & beauty in contrast to the disposable and transient so that when we do buy, we buy things that are lasting and are consistently and intrinsically valuable. As opposed to things that receive their value from transient culture and have very short shelf lives. We even need to rethink how we have come to arrive at our decisions about value.

- Embrace the community of God as the family of God. To often we attend church and our contact with other Christians out of proximity and location rather than it being because of our deep commitment to our well-being. Most Christians only see other church members on the days that they are at church. Church then becomes an event. But if we see the community of God as the family of God, then we will be connected by more than proximity and location, but by our deep love and genuine concern for the rest of our family. Making ourselves aware of the real needs of our family, thus making it easier to respond naturally and regularly.

- Re-evaluate and take seriously our stewardship of resources. To often we externalize the money coming into the church and forget that people are sacrificing and giving of their hard earned money. Where I used to work (a church) and where Anna used to work (a denominational office) we must have thought it grew on trees. It was like free money. If we wanted a new computer or to go to a conference or a meal, we just used the free money. We need to remember that it’s not our money. And to think twice about the value of a dollar here for our “accessories” and the value of a dollar to a family or nation with nothing.

- Live in close proximity and sensitivity to the other. To often we are not only unaware of other people, we blindly ignore them, not to mention indifferent. But when we live close to those who are different than us, we are able to see the real needs that other people have. It makes it harder to justify our exorbitant wants.

- Consume less. The answer isn’t cloth shopping bags. The answer isn’t recycling. The answer isn’t organic foods. These all have their proper place. The real answer is to simply consume less stuff. We should use what we need instead of having 3 of everything in 3 different colors.

What is on your list? What would you add? What is helpful to you?

Listening: Curious George Soundtrack by Jack Johnson

The Consumptive Church: Appeasing The White Man’s Guilt.

The Context For My Starting Point, Different Starting Points, The Religious Industrial Complex, Opium & 3 Legged Chairs, The Model Speaks Volumes, The Medium Is The Message

I suppose I’m close to finally wrapping this thing up. At least from the critique side of things. Although as I’ve said before, critique is a form of construction . . . so hold off on the “Josh is always negative comments”.

I was reading Eugene Cho’s thoughts the other day on Buy Nothing Day and he makes some good points. His basic premise was that it’s easy for guys like me (white, affluent, etc) to support Buy Nothing Day once a year. I can afford to be “holier-than-thou” on the day after Christmas, because my lifestyle affords me the opportunities the rest of the year to buy what I want to when I want to. Whereas, for a lot of people, standing outside in freezing temperatures on the day after Christmas for electronics and children’s toys is more of a necessity.

For me it’s just as much a privilege not to buy something that particular day as it is for me to buy something on any other day. I can afford to opt-out of Black Friday. I can afford to opt-out of mass consumerism for a day. Because my lifestyle still affords me the luxury of opting-in on other days.

In hindsight, choosing to buy nothing like I did, had less to do with my critique of consumption and more to do with the privilege that has been afforded to me as a middle-class American. It had more to do with me wanting to appease my guilt for my consumption throughout the rest of the year than it did with me challenging the systemic injustices of hyper-consumption itself.

I get that. I really, really do.

While I think The Consumptive Church is only possible in an affluent white man’s world, I am also becoming painfully aware that critiques like mine are only possible because of the larger framework of that same affluent context. Perhaps these critiques really are more rooted in appeasing my guilt than they are in deep fundamental change.

In these critiques of mine . . . these “opting-outs” of conventional consumptive patterns, I’m afraid that the larger myths of consumption to satisfy might still go un-critiqued.

My favorite stanza of lyrics of all time comes from Ryan Sharp in I, Obstruction:

Just get rid of all your crap now
Just give it to the poor
So that they can have your crap now
So that they can want some more

What scares me more than anything about my life, is that my critiques will begin and end with nothing more than a shifting of my crap and affluence from me to someone with “less”. That I will do nothing more than shift my consumptive patterns from me to the third world.

At some point my critiques have to be more than economic restructuring. More than a shifting of politics. More than a reallocation of resources. At some point they have to challenge my hyper-consumption at it’s roots.

I don’t think consuming is a bad thing. If I don’t consume food and drink I die. If I don’t consume wood and gas, I don’t stay warm in the winter. If I don’t consume cotton and polyester, people will laugh at my hairy chest and I will freeze in the elements. Consumption is a part of life.

It is the hyper-consumption that has to be critiqued. It is the hyper-consumption that has to be challenged.

The question is not whether or not I need food and drink, but whether or not I need as much food and drink as I do. It’s not whether or not I need clothes to cover my body, but whether or not I need a closet full of overpriced, transient clothes made by 14 year olds. It’s not whether or not I need oil to get from place to place, but whether or not I need oil ensured by war and for my decadent disposal.

The question is not whether or not capitalism is a valid economic system, but whether or not capitalism as a consumption-based system where spending, owning, and hoarding are the leading virtues is better than capitalism as a production-based system where saving, sharing, and the common good are the leading virtues.

I need a better critique. I need a better alternative. I need to move beyond appeasing my guilt and towards embracing the common humanity that I share with everyone else. A critique that comes from below as opposed from the top, or worse yet . . . in the middle of.

Then I listen to the last lines of I, Obstruction:

It turns out I am the obstruction
Turns out I have been one
To loose them or enslave them
And just leave them all undone

Listening: But I Tell You by The Cobalt Season

The Consumptive Church: The Medium Is The Message.

The Context For My Starting Point, Different Starting Points, The Religious Industrial Complex, Opium & 3 Legged Chairs, The Model Speaks Volumes

Yesterday, Derek had a great post about how the early church’s model was anti-consumptive in nature. Which led me to take a little rabbit trail in my thinking about Marshall McLuhan’s seminal essay The Medium Is The Message.

While McLuhan was only discussing the changing mediums in technology . . . this idea that there is more to the message than just the message is a formative thought. To assert that there is more to the message than just words given to an audience is huge.

As we explore this some more from a theological posture, we begin to see that all of life is theology, and not just the words that we use to describe it. Tony Jones has spoken of this idea in multiple places by saying that everything that we do and how we do it are just as theological as our doctrines and treatises. That our communities, architecture, spending patterns, meals, and politics, to name a few, are every bit as theological as our views on Jesus, the Trinity, salvation, the church, etc.

How we organize as a community . . . how we spend our money . . . how and where we live . . . all of these things are theological acts. And speak a great deal of how we view ourselves in relationship to God and to our world.

It is in this vein that I’m beginning to see things afresh.

If the medium is the message (as McLuhan proposes) and everything is theological (as Tony proposes) then perhaps we have a lot of rethinking to do.

In that light, what does meeting in a warehouse as a megachurch say about how we view God and people? Could the “theology” be that we see people as numbers and the church as dispenser of goods like the other warehouses (Wal-Mart, BestBuy, Costco)? Success is bottom-lines and the moving of mass produced products as quickly and as profitably as possible?

In that light, what does state of the art sound and lighting say about how we view God and people? Could the “theology” be that we believe God needs a show and the audience needs to be entertained? That it’s less about the long-slow process of becoming like Christ and more about the big, marketed “WOW” factor?

In that light, what does sitting in rows upon rows of lined chairs say about how we view God and people? Could the “theology” be that we believe the pastor is the dispenser of knowledge and the audience is for the simpletons who are supposed to “learn” knowledge every week as opposed to practicing wisdom? That sermons are more about passing information in lecture format from point A to point B as opposed to being conversational, relaxed, and authentic.

In that light, what does shopping and eating at franchises say about how we view God and people? Could the “theology” be that we care more about fueling up for the next few hours as opposed to eating healthy and holistically? That it’s more important for us to look stylish and trendy (and to do so cheaply) even if it means that the people who make the clothes we wear couldn’t afford them themselves and work 18 hour days to do so?

These are just a few rather obvious examples. But I could do this all day. The point is not to create some sort of guilt factor. But rather to point out the underlying theology that makes up each of our decisions. Everything we do, in one form or another, is directly related to how we view God and how we view the world.

I’m afraid that for so much of conventional christianity, the consumptive patterns go unchallenged and even unnoticed because there is such a huge disconnect between what we do and what we believe about God.

I’m not sure our lives are full of so much blatant disregard for God and his world as they are just blind to the reality that everything is theological, that everything is spiritual.

What makes it worse, is that this blind indifference plays a unique roll in reinforcing the same consumptive patterns that the larger culture practices.

Derek shared an excellent insight on this when he writes,

There’s also an emphasis in the New Testament on contentment. This drives right at the heart of consumption. Of course, you have to eat, you need a place to sleep, etc. There’s a basic level of consumption that we require. But the desire for consumption far beyond that is rooted in our nature of discontent – that no matter where we are at in life, or what we have, we always desire the next thing, the better thing, the bigger thing.

At the root of our problem is not our consumptive practices. But the lack of contentment that feeds them. And our discontent leads us to live in a culture that creates waste with temporary fads and transient products.

To this thought, Wess Daniels explains (in the comments of The R-I-C) that the logical outcome of a lack of contentment is a culture of waste.

Industrialization and modernity more generally, as they are built on capitalism, and in the business of creating and hoarding excess. How do we handle the excessive waste produced by our various industries? While consumerism is the driving force of what makes our country stay afloat, what the country is floating on is a huge trash heap. In order for capitalism to work, things have to be made and for things to be made energy and material are used and used up (excess), on the opposite side is the necessity for our televisions to stop working, cars to break down, PC’s to meltdown, and even clothes to fall apart. We need the products (that when made created so much waste) to themselves become waste. Now with that framework – think about what you said of the church. We continue to create a sub-culture of waste (books, music, waste) because we work off the same principles of modernity. It is no surprise then that the church, and the Christians within it have homes filled with excess. As one of your readers pointed out, how many of us will spend hundreds of dollars on excess/waste for Christmas? Until we practice counter-consumerism can we become a community non-excess – or better yet a community that lives “give us this day, the bread we need” as we see Jesus instruct in his disciple-forming (Lord’s) Prayer.

In many ways this is why the christian culture is just as full of waste as the larger culture. The music is transient and has very little lasting power or is inherently good as a work of art. The architecture is transient and has very little lasting power or is inherently good as a work of art. The sermons are transient and have very little lasting power or are inherently good as a work of arts.

Outside of guys like Billy Graham and some of the contributions from the more academic theologians, I’m not sure what of value and lasting worth has come out of the conventional model of church over the last 50 years. The best art we can muster is Thomas Kincaide. The best sermons that we can come up with our self-help lessons about how to have better marriages, finances, and kids. The best music (radio & worship) that we can create is a cheap knock-off of dated, candy-coated pop love songs.

The last 50 years of christianity has created a big pile of waste. Very little that will be remembered 500 years from now. Very little that will last and stand the test of time.

If the medium is the message, our message is dated, transient, temporal, plastic, shallow, and a knock-off of the larger culture.

Listening: The Ortolan by The Deadly Syndrome

The Consumptive Church: The Model Speaks Volumes.

The Context For My Starting Point, Different Starting Points, The Religious Industrial Complex, Opium & 3 Legged Chairs

On this particular post I’ve invited Derek Mooney to guest blog. If you ever have a chance to follow the comments of this blog, you’ll know that Derek and I come off as polar opposites. From economics to politics to the inspiration of Scripture. To call the give and take that we have back and forth robust would be a gross understatement. But to be honest, one of my best conversation partners that I’ve had through this blog has been Derek and his push backs to my heretical leanings. A lot of people are under the impression that I don’t tolerate or can’t get along with people who are different than me . . . my growing friendship with Derek couldn’t be further from the truth. Derek is different than most people I tend to disagree with . . . he actually is intelligent and “argues” intelligently. Even when I think he’s wrong (wink, wink). He doesn’t proof-text (as is the habit of some), rather he couches scripture in the historical context of the church and the practice of his local community. Derek is also a “house church” guy, along with some of my other friends (Eric, the D10s, his brother Britt).

Derek left a great comment under The Religious Industrial Complex making the connection between the “model” of church being deeply connected to our views of consumption. So I asked him to expound upon it and devote a whole guest post to it. Which is probably a good idea because I originally started a post on this connection but only got as far as the title (Churches Are To Temples What Christians Are To Pharisees) and an opening sentence (But some of the biggest opposition towards Jesus came from, what at the time was the institutionalized religion and it’s religious leaders. Jesus threatened the status quo of the temple) before I realized that I didn’t want to write another negative post if I didn’t have to.

So without further ado or rambling setup . . . here’s Derek’s post. Be sure to stop by his site and follow his thoughts.

Most Christians today, myself included, ascribe to the Bible some level of authority in church discipline and practice. We believe that the Bible is, in a very mystical way, somehow “God-breathed,” despite that it was written by men. I do believe that God inspired and guided the process, and that the New Testament reflects a new covenant between God and man. Most Christians today would have little to disagree with me in that belief.

Yet for some reason, our churches today look vastly different from the church described in the New Testament. This is true in many areas that I’ve covered on my blog in the past, but I think that the New Testament actually has a lot to say about consumption, on both a personal level and on a church organizational level.

And all of the believers met together constantly and shared everything that they had. They sold their possessions and shared the proceeds with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity. (Acts 2:44-46)

This is the foundational scripture of the church, part of Acts 2:41-47. The Holy Spirit had just descended at Pentecost, and 120 leaders, including Jesus’ hand-picked disciples, added 3,000 people to their little Jewish sect. I’ve heard many megachurch pastors focus on Acts 2:41, and say that it’s perfectly fine for them to focus on numbers and what it takes to achieve them. After all, there’s an emphasis in Acts on numbers, so why shouldn’t they focus on it? But megachurches usually ignore Acts 2:44-46, which is the core description of what the early church actually did with those 3,000 people, describing the level of relationship and sharing that they had.

Compare how the early church got started to today’s church. They didn’t start by hiring an architect – they used the meeting places that were readily and freely available at the time, including public meeting places (the Temple court) and private ones (their own houses). Surely not all 3,120 of them could fit into one home. You can imagine that they “daily” split up into smaller groups in order to make this feasible.

So on an organizational level, they refused to let the reality of their situation – rapid growth – push them into spending large amounts of money on their need for a place to meet.

The very reason why they did this, I believe, was rooted in the way they were called to live in their personal consumption, which was rooted in one word – sharing. They shared everything they had with each other, but also gave stuff away to people who had less. If this was your personal philosophy, it’d be hard to convince you to pour a lot of money into an organizational building.

To really understand why this is amazing, consider where these guys came from – a religion that was focused heavily on the temple and the synagogues. The Jewish religion was very wrapped up in the place to meet. Look at Jesus’ answer to the woman at the well:

“Sir,” the woman said, “you must be a prophet. So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped?” Jesus replied, “Believe me, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father here or in Jerusalem. You Samaritans know so little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews. But the time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way. (John 4:19-23)

In this passage, the woman is asking Jesus who is right, in regards to where the right place to worship is. The temple was a sign of Jewish affluence. More than that, it contained the presence of God, and was the only place where sins could be forgiven. But Jesus turns all of that around, and says it’s not about location. Putting an emphasis on where we worship, and more importantly, devoting large amounts of resources to it, does not have a place under the new covenant.

There’s also an emphasis in the New Testament on contentment. This drives right at the heart of consumption. Of course, you have to eat, you need a place to sleep, etc. There’s a basic level of consumption that we require. But the desire for consumption far beyond that is rooted in our nature of discontent – that no matter where we are at in life, or what we have, we always desire the next thing, the better thing, the bigger thing. This is true in our personal lives, but I’ve also seen it to be true in church.

Yet true religion with contentment is great wealth. After all, we didn’t bring anything with us when we came into the world, and we certainly cannot carry anything with us when we die. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content. But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is at the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows. (1 Timothy 6:6-10)

I don’t think that consumption driven by discontent has any place under the new covenant. I think it is part of our flesh, which we are commanded to renew into the image of Christ.

Jesus’ approach to ministry, and the realization of the early church, went directly against the norms of the Jewish religion (as well as the similar Roman/Greek pagan religions that were abundant outside of Israel). The church continued to be a counter-cultural movement until Christianity found favor with the Roman government and was subsequently polluted and corrupted by becoming the “official” religion of the state.

But the New Testament is clear. We are called to live simply. This is not so that we can give all of our money to the church so that the church can be extravagant. That basilica/cathedral style of religion is simply the Jewish and pagan systems repackaged with a new name. The New Testament example runs counter to all of that. The New Testament reveals a church that shares with each other, and gives to those in need. If we want to address consumption patterns in today’s society, it starts with the individual, and it starts with the church as the example. There’s no better example than the model of church that Jesus’ hand-picked followers used. And there’s no way to truly accomplish it, in our personal lives or in the life of the church, except through the life-transforming power of the Holy Spirit.