Thankful, not Greedy

As I begin this Thanksgiving Day, I want to stop and reflect on the many reasons I have to be thankful.

• For my wonderful wife, an Eshet Chayil (see Rachel Held Evans' blog if you don't know what that means!), whose talents go far beyond what most people recognize. We've enjoyed a long and memorable journey together and I hope will have many, many more ahead!
• For my daughter, who continues to develop her unique personality and to grow in maturity with each passing year. The time is coming all-too-quickly when she will launch into the world on her own, but she will always be my precious girl.
• For my son, who entered the challenging teen years this year. He's amazingly smart and even as a teenager still at times shows that tenderness of heart that leads him to wrap his father in a hug or cuddle up to his mother.
• For my parents. I am so thankful that we have the opportunity to live close to them and enjoy lots of time together during this period of our lives. I'm thankful that they continue to enjoy good health in their retirement years and have the time and energy to be actively engaged with us.
• For the other members of my family, both near and far. It's nice to have a family that you enjoy getting together with, even if we don't do it as often as we'd like.
• For faithful and dear friends, both near and far. I'm particularly grateful for the friends I've had the privilege of getting to know all over the world, who have broadened my perspective and enriched my life in so many ways. And for new friends who continue to stretch me and keep me growing, especially the many women of valor I know both in person and virtually.
• For the ability to sit here in my comfortable home and write this on my computer to share with all of you.
• For the fact that my refrigerator has food and my cupboards are far from bare.
• That I can open the faucet and have fresh, clean, drinkable water arrive instantly.
• For my own health and for the great doctors I've met this year who have helped me with various health issues.

I could add many more items to the list because God has provided for me and my family in so many ways. I appreciate that my country has chosen to set aside a day to stop and give thanks each year. That's a very healthy and rather unusual practice. Of course we don't want to limit our thankfulness to a single day, but to cultivate an attitude of thanksgiving each month and each day, because the very reasons I just listed for giving thanks continue throughout the year, if I choose to remember them.

It is good to give thanks.

Even as I give thanks this year though, my heart grieves. I grieve because the very culture that chooses to focus today on giving thanks, will then immediately turn around and engage in an orgy of consumption and greed that should shame all of us. Black Friday is bad enough, but now we see the shopping frenzy pushed back into Thanksgiving day itself. I am, frankly, appalled.

But I'm not surprised, because the real god of America is consumption. We pause briefly to give thanks but our whole society is oriented toward getting more stuff. Our economy depends on it. As much as most of us would adamantly deny it, we are greedy people. The stores play on that. We could stop the creep of consumerism into Thanksgiving day by simply choosing en masse to not shop today (and for that matter on Black Friday as well). It's like the old question, “What if they threw a war and no one came?” – What if they threw a big sale and no one shopped? Unfortunately I seriously doubt that will be the case. We're too addicted to getting the next great deal. Does God weep over our behaviour?

Interestingly enough, in all the sermons I heard and articles I read during the recent election on what it means to be a “biblical voter,” not once did I hear someone talk about issues of greed and consumerism. Are these not issues of righteousness as well? Surely they are, but they hit too close to home and to take them seriously would mean we actually have to change our lifestyles. It's far easier to post a statement on Facebook decrying the creep of greed into Thanksgiving day than to choose a lifestyle that rejects it altogether. As I write this I recognize that my finger points back at myself. Although I won't be out this evening or tomorrow engaging in the shopping frenzy, I could choose to buy less and be content with what I have as well. It doesn't mean never buying anything or refusing to engage in the economy, but it does mean changing my attitude, shopping less often and more wisely and turning away from greed.

So on this Thanksgiving day I want to look around me and give thanks for all that I have and not stray into thinking about what I wish I had but don't. If I'm going to wish for anything, may it be that the millions and millions of people in this world who don't enjoy some of the basic luxuries I have (such as clean water and daily food) would have these things. That's a goal worth working toward - are there any stores offering a special on that today?

Power and Surrender

Yesterday I discovered a new-to-me blog, From Two to One, whose author composes well-written, thought-provoking pieces on topics I resonate with. Over the past two days she has written a solid two-piece look at how we turn our worldviews into idols. I encourage you to read what she's written in part one and continue with part two. I think she's very much on target with her analysis.

I agree with the summary her teacher gave of politics: that ultimately it's about power. The citation from Thomas Friedman hits the heart of the issue:

“People with power never think about it; 

people without power think about it all the time.”

This year I have been on a journey, an awakening really, as I begin to understand how much my worldview has been shaped by my background of power. Not that long ago I would have argued that I didn't have much power. Based on some scales I don't. But I come from a privilege class of white men living in the most privileged and powerful countries in the world. I have had the opportunity to live outside of this country for many years, which has helped open my eyes and my mind to seeing and understanding the world differently than most people like me. Now that I'm back in the United States I continue to have my worldview stretched, expanded, deconstructed and reconstructed as I begin to listen to voices that previously I had not heard. It's a challenging, often painful process. It pushes me to change my behaviors, my beliefs and my actions. Sometimes it compels me to be silent where previously I might have spoken out, and at other times it compels me to speak out where before I would have remained silent. It has left me feeling like an outsider and stranger in many of the social circles in which I live.

I feel more and more that the American church, at least the more conservative branches of it in which I have generally been at home, has come to hold to a worldview shaped by a particular cultural lens more than the Kingdom of God. Yet we have managed to blur the two so thoroughly in our theology and practice that we cannot see the difference. We have, as the author of From Two to One argues, made our worldview into an idol, and now we fight viciously and desperately to protect that idol from all threats. In the process we present a false image of Christ, we promote hatred and injustice and all the while claim to be God's ambassadors to our society. Thankfully there are many voices, represented by From Two to One, Kathy Escobar, Caris Adel, Julie Clawson, the Sojourners and others, that strive to speak for the truth of the gospel even though it runs contrary to the worldview idol that many in the American church strive so hard to defend.

What would it look like for the American church, and I'm thinking particularly of the conservative evangelical community, to surrender power and authority rather than fighting so hard to preserve it? What would happen if we allowed God to demonstrate love through us, if we opened our doors to those who are different from us, if we welcomed them not with the goal of “fixing” them but simply with the goal of listening and entering into their stories? What if we stopped fixating on being “right” and admitted that we've been wrong far too often, that we have judged too quickly, that we have far too often caused more hurt than we've healed? Isn't this the model Jesus gave us?

Idolatry

I am an idolator. This painful realization struck me this morning as I read Paul's words to the Colossians. In chapter 3 verse 5 he writes:

Have nothing to do with sexual sin, impurity, lust, and shameful desires. Don't be greedy for the good things of this life, for that is idolatry. (NLT)

On a recent business trip I traveled to the large city where our family lived for more than three years. I had several things I wanted to buy there, things that we needed but cannot find in the city where we currently lived. As I visited the various shops where I could find these items, my eyes were regularly captured by numerous other items on display. I do not normally think of myself as an avid consumer, but seeing all the things around me that are not normally available to me drew out of me a strong temptation to spend far more than I could afford. To my shame I displayed exactly the behavior Paul writes about. I had become greedy for the good things of this life.

As I reflected on this verse this morning I saw that many believers, particularly in America, are very good at concerning themselves with the dangers of the temptations listed in the first sentence. But we give scant attention to that second sentence. We may feel that we are not greedy. After all we are not longing for "sinful" pleasures. But notice that Paul doesn't say "Don't be greedy for the sinful pleasures of this life." He says we shouldn't be greedy for the "good things" of this life. Thinking about the things that tempted me on my recent trip, they were all "good things," things that I could easily argue would be useful for us or simply nice to have. They were not immoral or illicit things. (Can a new propane tank be considered immoral?) But my desire for them indicated that my heart was longing for them inordinately and they had become idols to me.

Paul's words in this passage indicate that God views our consumer mentality and consumer lifestyle with the same degree of anger that he directs toward sexual immorality. A friend of mine who travels regularly to east Asia sees this consumerism growing like a weed in that culture as well, with negative impacts on the society. Yet I don't see that most of my fellow believers in the US really recognize the impact this lifestyle has on us. We don't accept it as idolatry and therefore do not regard it seriously. I am not exempt from this. My experience during my recent trip was quite a shocking wake up call for me as I realized how easily my heart can be pulled toward the things of this world, even good and potentially useful things. But I don't want to be an idolator so I pray that God will help me replace the desires for the things of this world with a desire for the things that will last.