Betrayed

Three or four weeks ago, the church we attend started a new series called Consumed. We were presented with a central question...what consumes you? Christ? Money? Something else?

The opening message centered on Galatians 5: Stand free and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery...do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, serve one another in love...the acts of the sinful nature are...the fruit of the spirit is...

For me the central question became how do you position yourself before God. How I position myself before God and other people communicates my feelings towards them. Everyone tries to present themselves in a certain way, both to other people and to God(even when we know we can't). And for very few (or none) of us is that image that we portray, the image that we see when we look in the mirror. All of this is, I think, usually unconscious. So it is good to reevaluate ourselves on a regular basis, in order to understand our relationship with God. Also it is healthy to try to realign our actions with our mental priorities.

I know that the last paragraph doesn't make perfect sense...you try to compress two weeks of thought into a paragraph.

Anyway...I found the first few weeks at least mildly stimulating...then last week the theme of the sermon was Debt is Bondage. Impressive title I know. But I had some issues with it. Don't get me wrong, I thin kdebt is bondage, and I try to avoid it. I would like to not owe any money on our condo. But the sermon focused on on Credit Card Debt, and ignored everything else. This was the safe choice. In a church as rich as the one we go to lots of people have debt, and most f it isn't credit card debt. Also I have a hunch that the decision was made because the church owes a lot of money. I'm not sure of that, but I would be surprised if it wasn't true.

So that was ok...a little disappointing...but not that bad.

This week the sermon was on Stepping into generosity. Which is a worthy goal...I am not nearly as generous as I wish I was.

But the focus was on giving money to the church...which is ok...but the proposed spending really got me
Special Spending Projects: around 30,000 for a variety of missions projects...and 300,000 for a remodeled sanctuary...in addition to normal costs.

When I realized what this is all about I have to admit I felt betrayed. I felt like I had been led into this series under false pretenses. Because it seems that ultimately the idea behind this series is to use people's guilt about their own spending and materialism to fund a spiffy new sanctuary, itself a manifestation of the very materialism that makes it possible.

So instead of helping people overcome their involvement in materialism...we fuel their addiction...nice

On sports

We went to the UM/OSU football game yesterday. It was to say the least, an interesting experience.

I have to admit, I don't really enjoy sporting events for the most part, or at least I'm beginning to think that I don't. Crowds aren't really my thing. But aside from that, being a spectator really isn't my thing.

I love playing sports. Pretty much any sport. Granted, I'm not very good at any of them, but I enjoy letting my competitive nature free for a while from time to time. But watching sports is the worst. It's like playing, in that if you're not careful you'll become invested in the outcome, but you don't have any control over the outcome. In the case of the game I went to ysterday, I could only sit and watch as Ohio State beat Michigan. Luckily, I'm not as invested in Michigan football as a lot of other people or it would have ruined my whole day.

Over the years I've been to a few professional baseball games, and a few college football games, and even a college basketball game. And they've all been fun, to a point. My best experiences were when I was a child sat in awe at the outsized nature of big time sports. As an adult the chief pleasure in going to a game has been derived from the company. Perhaps I've become inured to the grandiose after 26 years in the US.

Inevitably, at some point during the game I begin to ask myself...what's the point. Why am I here? What is so compelling that 110,000 people would gather in one place? A bunch of young men throwing a ball around? Is that really so gripping, so important that it draws more people than church, or than the symphony, or even than a rock concert?

Besides that I always feel a little a little guilty. For one thing there is an association between big time sports and alcohol. Walking through the rows of tailgaters at 10 in the morning the alcohol flowed freely. Even on the high-school campus every car had a table set up with rows of bottles.
Besides that, there's the money issue. It would be hard to justify the money that goes toward sports in this country if it went towards buying food for homeless people. But as it is it goes to television stations, agents, owners and guys with big guns.

So anyway,

Furthur thoughts

My feelings about Christmas and gifts is the result of years of evolving thought that have suddenly come together in a rash of disgust and horror. But I think I need to make it clear that my feelings about gifts and Christmas are a result of personal conviction, not moral imperative. I know from experience that there are people who can enjoy Christtmas and gift-giving this time of year without the feelings I have expressed. In my first blog about Christmas I was making a gerneral commentary on our culture, and posing a question: Have we destroyed gift giving? In the second, however I was answering that question from a completely personal perspective: emphatically yes, I have destroyed gift giving in my self through my attitudes about Christmas.

There are at least three important factors in my personal musings about Christmas gift giving. First, I see gift giving, unwillingly, in a transactional way: I will give you a gift if you will give me a gift. Second, I see gift giving, again unwillingly in a competitive way: I want my gift to be the best one you receive. Third, I find in myself an insatiable greed and gluttony around this time of year as I wait in eager anticipation to see what new things I will get. Fourth, because of the way our culture is constructed I find myself disappointed because, no matter how many people there are to give me gifts, there's always something I didn't get.

This, I know is not how everyone sees Christmas. I realize that I am confessing to some rather unsettling psychological issues. But I also recognize that ther is, or there should be more to Christmas. It is a celebration of the Incarnation of God. This is one of the greatest mysteries and one of the most sublime truths. God became man. Somehow, I never notice it anymore. My parents certainly raised me to see Christmas this way. But somewhere along the way, as I came of age, I allowed the culture of our times to subvert it.

And that is why I made the request I made. I admit that it is a wrenching thing to ask for nothing for Christmas. But I think that I need a year off. I need to see again the beauty of the nativity. I need to find the joy of the season in celebrating tradition and spending time with family and friends.

What have we done?

Has Christmas destroyed gift giving?

I have long had an unsettling feeling about Christmas. It seems to grow stronger every year as I discover more and more the joy of giving gifts to those I love. Why? It is a hard feeling to describe. It seems like I would love Christmas more and more as I love giving gifts more since it is the season of gift giving. But herein lies the problem I think.

For me a large part of the joy in giving gifts is in the unexpectedness of the gift. When I come home on a random day from the store with flowers for my wife I enjoy it because it is unexpected. It is a pure expression of my love for her unencumbered by any expectations; however, when I give her a gift for her birthday or Christmas, there is an element of obligation. This sours the experience for me. The fact that if I didn't do it I would engender offense and hostility sours the experience somehow.

This I suppose is my problem with Christmas. It institutionalizes giving as a form of even exchange. I'll get you a gift, but if you don't get me one, I'll be offended. This thinking has ingrained itself so deeply on our Christmas spirit, if I don't get you something, I will know you are hurt, even if you don't show it, because I would be a little hurt and wouldn't show it. This is what Christmas does to me. It transforms me from a joyous gift-giver to a shameless transactional givver. It reduces gift giving in me to a set of obligations. How much should I spend on so and so's gift? How little can I get a decent gift for? Can I combine a couple of gifts? This thinking is also related to the cost of giving the number of gifts I am obligated by the Christmas spirit to give. The stress of having to squeeze the budget to meet a huge number of financial obligations placed on me by the spirit of Christmas deadens any hope I might have of enjoying the holiday for what it is.

So now I'm off to the mall to buy all of the gifts I know I have to give and won't enjoy giving nearly as much as if they were truly given so that I can feel at peace about receiving a bunch of gifts that others won't enjoy giving as much as they could so that we can uphold the traditional spirit of the season and not be seen as that scourge Scrooge.

Thinking of Boethius again

He really was a pretty smart guy...


By every measure known to man, this is the best time in history to be alive, and this is the best place to live. Try to argue that it isn't (why does "it's not sound diffrent from "it isn't"?) and you will quickly discover its truth. We are richer, more educated, live longer and healthier lives, have more free time and less work, than any generation in history.

And yet the proper name for our time may very well be "The Age of the Psyhotherapist". We are, in addition to being the best-off generation in history, the most depressed generaion in history. Why?

I think that the two are inextricably linked. For most of human history, substinence has been the rule. Outside of a few individuals, greed has traditionally been a pretty distant sin. It's hard to aquire material wealth when all you have is what you make with your hands. When something is completely out of reach we tend to forget about it. But as our society has produced unparalleled wealth, we have aquired the habit. This is not a fundamental change in human nature, but rather a shift in emphasis. Through practice, our greed muscles have been strengthened to such a degree that they dominate our lives to the point that we can't imagine living without them.

It is importan to point out however, that we don't notice it. It is not, in most cases, an active pursuit. It is a passive process thaat has grown with each generation. I am more tied to material posessions and less likely to wait for what I want than my parents are..

So where does Boethius come in? He arugued rather convincingly that the source of human unhappiness is the pursuit of same in fortunes gifts. In other words, the reason we are unhappy is that we have pursued happiness in all the wrong places. As we have moved from substinence to extravagance we have seen this shift as a goal in and of itself. This increases our anxiety level, because even if we don't admit it, we all know that what fortune has given fortune has taken away. This leads to the rash of hyperanxiety and depression that has swept out culture.

Perhaps we have all become the rich young ruler to whom the idea of surrendering his wealth was such a foriegn concept that he walked away from the Kingdom of God.

Or maybe not, maybe all this material wealth really has made our lives better and depression is just a sign of civilizational decay.

Boethius said

"Anxiety is a necessary condition of human happiness since happiness is never completely acheived and never permenantly kept."

What he meant was that in order to be truly happy you must not be dependant on the whim of Fortune--the vision that appeared to him.

Its truth can be seen around us. I've had a number of conversations lately about the consumer culture we live in. If you hang around a church long enough you will hear it condemned. But technology has made our lives safer, longer and more comfortable. We actually have free time.

So is our consumerism wrong, or right? Is the evil in technology itself? Or does our unease come from equating happiness to material wealth?

Somewhere in the shift from sustinence to extravagance our definition of the good life changed. What is it now?