Serve God Save the Planet Part 4 Chapter 6

This time chapter 6 'Too Much Stuff'

On no subject is Jesus more clear than on materialism: a life focused on possessions is a poor and misguided life. Over and again, he urges us to seek a spiritual path and a life of loving one another... Real treasures do not rust, run low on power, become obsolete, clutter up closets and garages, or rack up credit card debt.

Consumer Therapy is the default faith of a good many folks who call themselves Christians. We find more solace in shopping and purchasing, and devote more time and energy to it, than to prayer, devotion, study and worship. If we were to total up hours spent in a practice of faith compared to a practice of consumerism I bet we would be shocked.

I don't say this from a position of moral superiority. I struggle with it too.

I think that what Matthew Sleeth does here is get right to the heart of true Stewardship. In the mainline church tradition we tend to think that stewardship is giving money to the church.

What I have struggled to do in year after year of ministry and sermon after sermon on money and material possessions is to suggest that the simplest stewardship decision is giving money. The challenge is re-shaping our desires so that we are not wasting money on constant consumer actions that affect the environment in production, transportation and then disposal. Our desires will not be reshaped if we are spending more time in devotion to the mall gods by listening to their television advertisements and little to no time in prayer or bible study.

I would further recommend for those interested in this a book by Luke Timothy Johnson 'Sharing Possessions'

Although I disagreed with Johnson's initial argument that Christianity was not an ethic, his exploration of the importance of material goods and biblical survey on the topic was excellent.

I would also recommend William Cavanaugh's 'Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire'

Sleeth challenges the American Consumer Creed which tells us that we have the right to purchase whatever we want and use our money however we desire with this simple and direct statement:

The Christian is not at liberty to do whatever he likes. Christians are constrained by conviction to think about their lives, their actions, and their responsibilities...

How much we have, how we spend, how much we spend, all of these bear greater testimony to our true faith than the God-talk we utter.

So I'm going to do three things

1. Clean out the clutter, getting rid of the stuff I just don't need (in as environmentally responsible way as possible.)
2. Learn to live with less by filling my time with things that last; reading, music, family, service to the community and Creation
3. Observe a sabbath, on consumerism, not shopping on Sundays. Instead, we are inviting folks over for a Sabbath meal, focusing the support of relationships instead of the quick satisfaction of consumerism.

What can you do you pry yourself from the hold of consumerism?

Serve God Save the Planet Part 3 Chapter 8

Television: More Real Than Real

...the average American watches 1,700 hours of television annually, while the average shcool-age child attends only nine hundred hours fo classes a year. by the time the typical person in our country reaches age seventy-one, he will have spent a solid ten waking years sitting in front of a television.

Imagine meeting God and answering the question, 'What did you do with your time on earth?' You are handed a time sheet that details the seconds and decades of this precious gift called life. (109)

Sleeth's point in devoting a chapter on television is three-fold.

First he points out that the purpose of television is to sell us things.
The more things we buy, the more impact on the environment; from the energy to produce and ship the product to the trash that goes in the land-fill, consumerism has an adverse effect on the environment.

Second he points out the amount of electricity we use in sitting in front of the television

Third he points out the spiritual damage. The time we spend watching television is time that could be spent nurturing family relationships, enjoying creation, and serving others.

We watch way to much tv in our house. We have started to turn it off more often. Instead we play games, read, and we have family devotion time that includes discussion and sharing.

Serve God Save the Planet Ch. 4 Technology, Social Networking and Babel Tower

I know, I'm behind the 8 ball as usual. I don't blog on the latest publications, I'm something like 5 years behind getting to this book. Why chapter four? that is where it started to get interesting for me.

'We have forgotten that we have far more in common with the honeybee than we do with our SUV of DVD...Do you know in which direction the Milky Way traverses the sky? As the phases of the moon progress, does the light go from right to left, or left to right? Can you identify a greater number of trees or cars? If the Bible says God knows every flower and bird, why do we spend so much effort knowing the names of man-made items. Maybe we're paying attention to the wrong things.' (60-61)

Matthew Sleeth, MD

Should the church and its leaders be embracing technology, devoting time, energy and financial resource, to facebook pages, websites, twitter and worship services that feature prominently videos and images, OR, should we be presenting a respite from all this technology and an alternative way of being together. I know, I sound like a Luddite.

What I think is beautifully done in Sleeth's book is that he manages to do some really interesting exegesis, as I will show in future posts, give some really creative options for becoming more environmentally conscious, and he also tackles food ethics, consumerism and our technologically obsessed culture. And he shows quite clearly how they all are connected.

In this case our increasingly technologically focused lives are also using more and more electricity, getting less exercise and spending less time with the people and the creation God created us to relate to in order to be fully human (he says, typing on his laptop, while his kids play DS).

I think Sleeth is suggesting that all of our obsession with cell phones, social networking, video games, etc, takes our attention away from the things that really keep us connected to our humanity, such as the world that God created for us to live in. Could all of this technology, social networking, ipod-ing, Word-of-Warcrafting, be a Babel Tower we are constructing, hoping to reach the heavens, when the connection to God we need is right in the backyard?

And if so, is the church really presenting an alternative to this idolatry it if follows suit by using more and more technology in worship, in ministry?

So I again I ask, should the church jump into all this technology or abstain from it? Is there a middle way?