Sojourners

Sojourners magazine has arrived and I have just begun to read it. I did make a quick scan through it and found it satisfactory. Jim Wallis is the editor and he is also the author of the book God’s Politics, a book that I’m currently reading. When I say “currently”, what I mean to say is that it is one of 4 books that I am reading concurrently, but reading it I am. (I really need some discipline!)

Here are some excerpts from the first article that attracted my attention…

When Enough is Enough
Why God's abundant life won't fit in a shopping cart, and other mysteries of consumerism. by William T. Cavanaugh

The contrast between consumerism and simple living at first glance seems fairly straightforward: Consumerism is about having more stuff, simple living is about having less stuff…As the old vitamin commercial from the ’80s so bluntly put it, "I want MORE for ME."

Avarice, however, does not really exhaust the phenomenon of consumerism. Consumerism is not so much about having more as it is about having something else. It is not buying but shopping that captures the spirit of consumerism…

What marks consumerism as something new is its tendency to reduce everything, both the material and the spiritual, to a commodity able to be exchanged. Things that no other culture ever thought could be bought and sold—water, genetic codes, names (Tostitos Fiesta Bowl), human blood, and the rights to emit pollutants into the air—are now routinely offered on the market…

Consumerism is a spiritual attitude that is deeply entangled with changes since the Industrial Revolution in the way goods are produced…Most people lived on farms and made the majority of the goods that they needed…
With the relentless pressures on the family farm that continue today, the home as a site of significant production has all but disappeared. We make almost nothing of what we consume. The process of globalization has accelerated this detachment from production. Fewer and fewer of us have any idea what factory work is like, since manufacturing jobs are more and more being transferred overseas. Nor do we have much more than a vague idea of the wages or working conditions of the workers who make what we buy…

We know almost nothing about how products are made and how they end up in our shopping cart…

Consumerism is a restless spirit, constantly in search of something new. Consumerism is typified by detachment, not attachment, for desire must be kept on the move. Consumerism is also typified by scarcity, not abundance, for as long as desire is endless, there will never be enough stuff to go around…

True abundance is never realized by the competition of insatiable desires for scarce goods. It is realized by emptying the small self into the larger reality of God’s superabundant life…

The Christian task in a consumer society, then, is to create economic spaces that underscore our spiritual and physical connection to creation and to each other…

Participation in God also informs how we view one another. Human persons are not only connected to things but to other persons. We are all made in the image of God, and all made to participate in the body of Christ. Such is our close connection that we share the same sufferings and the same joys (1 Corinthians 12:26). It is as impossible to ignore sweatshop labor as it is to ignore pain in our own bodies…

This article made me get my copy of Richard Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline, off of the bookshelf. His comments on Provision are quite clearly challenging, “The Old Testament contains promise after promise of provision. “The Lord your God will bless you in all you produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful” (Deut. 16:15)” and he explains that some have taken this to mean “Love Jesus-get rich.” He goes on to say, “We all need adequate time for reflection, meditation, rest, conversation. The reasons many of us do not have the timeful life are varied, but the root problem is one of failing to live in the Christian grace of simplicity.”

All in all, good reading and I would recommend the magazine