Thoughts and Ruminations

I’ve been doing some reading for a class I’m taking at Xavier, and in the midst of a wonderful essay by Wendell Berry, I found one of the clearest statements about the present economy and our economic goals. So often, you have to read the words of brilliant writers and thinkers ten times through, looking up their million-dollar words in dictionaries, to finally get their meaning. This writing, however, is clear, accessible, and easy to understand with a little bit of work.  If we apply the same energy to thoughts like these that we do to clearing out our schedule to watch the X-Factor, we might find our intellectual capacities expand beyond where we thought we were previously capable.

Enjoy, chew on this gift from Wendell Berry, and let’s practice this vision of a better economy together!

We live, as we must sooner or later recognize, in an era of sentimental economics and, consequently, of sentimental politics.

Sentimental communism holds in effect that everybody and everything should suffer for the good of “the many” who, though miserable in the present, will be happy in the future for exactly the same reasons that they are miserable in the present.

Sentimental capitalism is not so different from sentimental communism as the corporate and political powers claim.  Sentimental capitalism holds in effect that everything small, local, private, personal, natural, good, and beautiful must be sacrificed in the interest of the “free market” and the great corporations, which will bring unprecedented security and happiness to “the many”- in, of course, the future.

…

The economic theory used to justify the global economy in its “free market” version is again perfectly groundless and sentimental.  The idea is that what is good for the corporations will sooner or later- though not of course immediately- be good for everybody.

That sentimentality is based, in turn, on a fantasy:  the proposition that the great corporations, in “freely” competing with one another for raw materials, labor, and market share, will drive one another indefinitely, not only toward greater “efficiencies” of manufacture but also toward higher bids for raw materials and labor and lower prices to consumers.  As a result, all the world’s people will be economically secure- in the future.  It would be hard to object to such a proposition, if only it were true.

The “law of competition” does not imply that many competitors will compete indefinitely.  The law of competition is a single paradox: Competition destroys competition.  The law of competition implies that many competitors, competing without restraint, will ultimately and inevitably reduce the number of competitors to one.  the law of competition, in short, is the law of war.

This idea of a global “free market” economy, despite its obvious moral flaws and its dangerous practical weaknesses, is now the ruling orthodoxy of the age.  Its propaganda is subscribed to and distributed by most political leaders, editorial writers, and other “opinion makers.”  The powers that be, while continuing to budget huge sums for “national defense,” have apparently abandoned any idea of national or local self-sufficiency, even in food.  They have also given up the idea that a national or local government might justly place restraints on economic activity in order to protect its land and its people.

Unsurprisingly, among people who wish to preserve things other than money, there is a growing perception that the global “free market” economy is inherently an enemy to the natural world, to human health and freedom, to industrial workers, and to farmers and others in the land-use economies; and furthermore, that it is inherently an enemy to good work and good economic practice.“

Sooooooo…..since blogs are supposed to be places where people express their own authentic views on any number of subjects ranging from very personal struggles to big-scale stuff like the cost of tea in China, I guess I should comment on a massive life change in my life (and, because my wife made one of those “lifetime covenants” with me, her life too).

I resigned as pastor of Middle River Church last month, effective May 1st, 2009.  The following is an attempt to put into words the reasons why.

I’m 28, young enough to be incredibly naive, but old enough to know life isn’t a bowl of cherries.  I’m young enough to have dreams for the world, and old enough to know that most older people have given up on dreams as foolishness.  I have chosen to dream, and while I’m sure this dream will run head-on into the harsh reality of the present, that doesn’t negate the power of the dream.

Bethany and I have decided to move intentionally to Cincinnati to live in community with our friends Dustin and Tiffany and Josh.  We will be making a covenant together that involves significant financial sharing, commitment to daily communal worship, commitment to the simple aspects of life together (common meals, working together), and a commitment to being neighborhood-minded in the pursuit of our shared dream.  

People around here try to talk to me about this, and I’ve run into a strong number of blank faces and quizzical faces.  

The blank ones don’t seem to have room in their heads for something like this; I would chalk this up to their being so intimately shaped and molded by our social message of individualism, privatism, and seeking of comfort that the strong desire for community is all but extinguished in them.  Sure, it might express itself from time to time, but is quickly quelched by the person’s fear of the unknown and society’s powerful message of selfishness.  

The quizzical faces also don’t seem to have room in their heads for something like this, but for different reasons. “Community” sounds too much like “communism” to them; it’s not a coincidence that these folks are often my parents generation with Joe McCarthy’s rants and anti-Soviet propaganda ringing in their ears. So that’s a barrier.  Plus, living together with others who aren’t your “natural” family sounds too much like David Koresh to them (remember Waco, TX in 1993 and Janet Reno?).  Some have had the courage to warn me about this, which is a wise caution, I’d say, of how community is easily corrupted by power and personality.

There’s maybe two other big reasons that people are confused by our decision.  There’s a strong current of American conservatism running through the Shenandoah Valley, where churches feed the desire for traditional values; work hard, save, take care of your family, “go to” church (and those aren’t necessarily negative values). But with those values has always been a latent racism, stereotyping of those who are poor, and an elevating of the values of family, tradition, and a middle-class state of mind to a place of idolatry. It is the only way of life folks know, and they cling to it even as they make decisions that shred that sense of shared values over time.  Those decisions (the embracing of spending ourselves into debt, buying bigger and more expensive transportation and houses, escaping life through movies, television, and entertainment rather than working consistently and hard towards real-life goals) come in the name of “change” and “progressive” thinking. That’s the second strong current in our area, a “progressivism” that is, from an eternal perspective, really “regressivism.”  As Os Guinness says,

“We insist on choice, we expect change, we prize relevance, we are unthinking believers in the-newer-the-truer, the latest-is-greatest, and what’s in and what’s out…the result of our casual nihilism is a careless demolition of tradition and the creation of a spiritual, moral, and aesthetic wasteland in its place.”

The Shenandoah Valley is quickly becoming a toxic wasteland of confused conservative/progressives who espouse family values yet get out of marriages because they don’t serve their selfish ends, who claim a Christian faith yet reject the life of discipleship because it gets in the way of watching American Idol or their dream of their child becoming a professional athlete (so they put them on travel teams that pull them away from investing in relationship with others around them).  We don’t know who we are, but we know that the television feeds our short-term wants; to feel significance through reality shows with “normal” people “making it,” to make us think we’re helping make our world a better place through watching (and crying through) Extreme Make-over Home Edition, and to feel athletic by altering our schedules to fit our commitment to watching various sports events.  You could add any number of examples onto those.

It’s a rat race.  Slowly but surely, as I’ve tried to carve out some time to listen to God in the midst of the competing messages and voices (by turning off the radio, but choosing not to have cable or satellite television in our house, by seeking to value relationship over entertainment), I’ve heard God beginning to whisper to me.  The more I’ve paid attention to that whisper, the louder it has grown and the more it has gripped me. At times the voice thunders in my head, stopping me dead in my tracks and making me quake in fear (the healthy kind, mostly).  The voice says something like this, “There is more to life than this.  Listen to me, obey me, and you can be a part of something greater.”  God has been shaping me, and this shaping has sped up the more I’ve worked to listen and act accordingly.  I’m choosing to dream more these days, and to follow the pathways of the dreams to figure out where they might lead.  T.E. Lawrence wrote something that has gripped me, saying,

“All men dream: but not equally.  Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity:  but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.  This I did.”

Bethany and I have chosen to be “dreamers of the day” with friends; working to line up our dreams with God’s dream.  We know that changing the world begins with us, is always focused on the daily life of neighborhoods and communities surrounding us, and includes my brothers and sisters across the globe.  There are already church families in Cincinnati who have been doing this for a while like Vineyard Central in the Norwood neighborhood.  There are already disciples of Jesus who have moved intentionally to economically depressed areas for years like Dorothy Day (and Catholic Worker folks), Tom Sine (and Mustard Seed House folks) and Shane Claiborne (and Potter Street Community folks) Mark Scandrette (and ReImagine folks) and John Perkins (and CCDA folks).  I know these persons would be frustrated with me singling them out, because they’re good, humble people who are a part of communities, not celebrities or Christians unto themselves.  But for the sake of examples, I isolated them.  We will be submitting to them and listening as a community to how their wisdom tempers our idealism; how their struggles temper our vision. We are naive, yet we want more.  This will be hard, but our common commitment will share the burden.  We are not alone in this.

Malcolm Muggeridge wrote his own (joking) epitaph while in college to a friend,

“Here lieth one whose soul sometimes burned with great longings.  To whom sometimes the curtain of the Infinite was opened just a little, but who lacked the guts to make any use of it.” 

Hearing that warning (Muggeridge was a famous killjoy of grand dreams for a long time in his life), I have a couple commitments;

I want to walk the uncomfortable balance of great longings and the ordinariness of daily living.  

I want to have the guts to risk for God while rejecting some twisted sort of heroic quest.

I want to be perpetually restless for redemption without allowing that restlessness to cause me to wander constantly in search of something that is only found in choosing to stay and work somewhere, somewhere to invest in, that has people to love.  

I want to walk in God’s pathways, and I’m grateful to join others in conspiring to lead our world back to Genesis 1 and God saying, “This is VERY good.”  

I love paying attention to these things and knowing that God is smiling, fighting for me and urging me to keep walking and keep striving.  

I get to join God’s story of redemption in our world, to play a role in this drama unfolding for millennia, and to work joyfully in God’s kingdom whether we see “results” or not.  God is making a “new heavens and a new earth,” and my faithfulness to the global scope and the common, daily path of it helps to bring that world to pass.

I just have a couple thoughts in reflection on this change in American politics. Since Bethany says I have a habit of taking the wind out of people’s sails sometimes, I’ll say the positive things first.

1) This is no doubt a major historical moment in America. I haven’t seen the video of Barack’s acceptance speech in Chicago, but from Bethany’s description of Jesse Jackson and Oprah and others weeping, it gave me chills. To think that just over 40 years ago, black students were beaten and jailed for daring to eat at a Memphis lunch counter with whites, and this happened just two days ago? Amazing.

2) Barack is an inspiring figure, and the global celebrations that sprung up from hearing of his election is telling for the integrity of America worldwide. The world is tired of eight years of George Bush’s absurd foreign policy drama of crusading, unilateralism, and machismo. His us v. them and good v. evil policies have caused Islam to become more radicalized and made our world a more dangerous place. Barack will have a different foreign policy presence, to be sure, and the effect of that foreign policy all the way down to daily life in villages in the Middle East would surprise us, I think.

3)The neo-conservative agenda for governance and economics is falling apart at the seams. Alan Greenspan admits it, and not many others. The country heard the McCain fearmongering “Obama’s a socialist” claims and let it slide off our backs like water on a duck. Most reasonable people I’ve talked to believe that the best approach for a just economy is a mix of capitalist and socialist ideas. The days of McCarthy’s “red scare” don’t fly today like they did fifty years ago.

4)Obama has a VP who won’t be afraid to light a fire under him. Whoever else becomes a part of Obama’s cabinet (and I do believe he will surround himself with wise advisors rather than power-seekers or suck-ups), Biden won’t passively knuckle under to Barack. And that’s good.

The negative:
1) Obama talks out of both sides of his mouth on abortion. He claims to want to reduce abortions, spoke clearly of abortion as a moral issue, yet defends Roe v. Wade at every opportunity. I would like to see him navigate a centrist path for Americans on this where we can provide room for abortions in desperate medical situations but remove abortion from being a free, unencumbered choice like whether I get the chocolate or vanilla shake at BK. He claimed in the debates that no female makes that decision lightly. That’s laughable. A number of females treat it very lightly; as a way to remove the unseemly consequence from self-centered sexuality.

2) While I do believe Obama carries some strong doses of wisdom and discernment, he can run the risk of becoming a chameleon and pandering to whatever group he’s speaking to. An example of this is the Israel/Palestine issue. He studied up on the Palestinian people’s plight as an Illinois senator, dining with and listening to an important Palestinian advocate (Rashid Khalidi, whom McCain childishly attacked in his last desperate days), yet when he spoke before AIPAC (the powerful pro-Israel political action committee), he spoke like Israel was the only virtuous and suffering group. Which one is experiencing much deeper human rights abuses on a daily basis, Barack?! It’s clearly the Palestinians! Speak up for them on the world scale, and in supporting them, reject their extremist elements (Hamas) and help Israel and Palestine work towards peace as a gutsy leader. If you’re looking for mentors, call Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu. They’ve got enough guts to call the situation what it is. I’d like to see Barack make some gutsy, polarizing stands from time to time that make people pick sides. I don’t want this all of the time, just some of the time.

I have a video from Ralph Nader that I embedded below here where he gives some stern warnings about Barack. He offers some really important perspectives on Obama that will take some of the luster off the “golden boy” image.

3) Barack is a corporate president-elect now. A whole lot of his money came from corporations, and if you don’t think that came with strings attached, you’re about as naive as George Bush on that carrier in 2003. And if Barack wants to be re-elected, he’s got to get some things done for those corporations over the next four years if he wants to have a shot to win again. This will lead to him compromising significantly, hedging stronger statements by emphasizing both sides, and generally caring for corporations over the common person…that is, unless the people of America unite to force him and the Congress to vote a certain way like blacks did in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act.

So, as you can see, I’m conflicted about this guy. I think he’s the best leader for America amongst the two candidates, I think his VP is the best leader for America amongst the two candidates. If I had my druthers, either one of my two favorite leaders Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich would be in this place. They couldn’t get there because their integrity matters too much, so. *sigh* All is not hopeless, yet all is not peaches and cream either.

I’ll state this and hopefully a million times more in my life; the biggest hope for America is a citizenry that unites around issues of justice and equity and works consistently and passionately toward that end. Our present political system corrupts the very people who have the best ideas; they need you and me lighting a fire under them to make solid change happen. I’m still learning how to do that, but at least I’m trying, right?

This is a series of posts trying to deal honestly with what is true in our world; and who has significant interests in us keeping a naive belief that what we’ve always known is somehow more healthy than other competing options.

Part One in this series:  ”Introduction”

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In this second section, I will attempt to deconstruct a bit of what we consider to be “normal” and “truthful” through a simple illustration.  Maybe it doesn’t work, but it helps bring clarity to some of my thinking.

    Along the lines established by the introduction, there’s an ancient story I have heard of…well…it’s ancient to me because there’s never been a time where I have not consciously known of this story, and the situation seems to be the same with my mother and father, and their parents as well.  And at least three generations makes the story ancient, doesn’t it?  The story has three elements (water, a pot, and a frog) and two different situations (in one the water is boiling, and in the other it slowly heats to boiling).  As the story goes, if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out again (it “knows better” than to stay there; its life is in danger!), but if you throw a frog into a pot of water, then slowly warm the water to boiling, the frog will stay in the water and cook to death (I thought it “knew better” than to stay there; its life was in danger!). 

As a child, I got some sort of sick delight out of hearing that story, and even consciously remember saying to myself, “What a dumb animal!  How could he stay in the midst of something that was killing him?!”  As I’ve grown older and reflected on that story, though, my triumphant description of the frog as “dumb” is much more muted, because in many ways I can now see much of myself and others in that frog. 

     If we expand the story of the frog into a much wider arena than a pithy proverb, it begins to reveal a deeply incisive truth. In the arena of human society, for example, every people group across the face of this world has a unique take on what is “reality,” “truth,” the “good life,” and what is “normal.” 

     As a concrete example, the latter half of the 20^th century was marked by a struggle of two economic systems (capitalism and communism) for global ascendancy.  This struggle became so tense that some people groups developed whole theories (one theory known by a parlor game of black rectangles with white dots) on how to stem the tide of the opposing ideology.  For communists, it was “obvious” that communism provided the best approach for the “good life,” and they had all kinds of reasons why it was “good.”  For capitalists, it was “obvious” that capitalism provided the best approach for the “good life,” and they had all kinds of reasons why it was “good.”  Both sides then proceeded to demonize the others’ systems to the point that they were willing to kill for the sake of what was “obvious” to them. 

     This simple illustration above shows a basic conundrum of life:  how do we know what is really “good” and “true” (what is “reality”)?  Both communists and capitalists seemed to come at their beliefs with integrity.  This illustration, I would suggest, suggests that our belief of what is really “good” and “true” is conditioned by a variety of factors and shaping influences.  Otherwise, how could two different groups of people arrive at radically different conclusions?  At the very least, we must confess that what we assume to be “true” is in fact a result of us being intimately shaped in various ways by our society to pursue certain things, to assume certain things, and to order our lives in various ways.  And the sum total of these beliefs is a life that we and others most like us call “normal” (which then enables us, if we’re lazy or naïve, to look at others not like “us” and call their different approach “abnormal,” because we “clearly” have a deeper perspective on what is objectively “normal”). 

The frog story then truly does have something to say to us here.  If we can imagine the various orderings of society in the story, the greater societal forces that have shaped us have a structure (the pot) and messages the forces disseminate on what is normal (the water); and from the moment we are more than a twinkle in our parents’ collective eye, we are educated, enculturated into a way of life that is “normal.”  These different influences stretch from the wider (global influences, theories on the ordering of goods) to the more specific (parental guidance, everyday experience).  Literally, we are so deeply enmeshed in our societies’ ways of seeing that we often don’t even know how deeply we have been shaped by them.