driving convictions

At the time of my life when I expected to receive the most desirable gifts and accumulate the most unneeded things, I find myself purposefully purging. It's an odd realization, and a little bittersweet because I feel so good about myself for consuming less, but I selfishly still want all the stuff I don't have. But I'm trying.

When I moved a couple of months ago, it was a great opportunity to get rid of unwanted items. The "donate" pile kept growing, and I felt ashamed at how much stuff I had been hoarding. I still had too many boxes while moving, but as I unpacked I kept feeling like I had so little. The new apartment was bare. I needed to fill that empty space! with matching furniture! and more clothes! and more useless things for my shelves! How can I explain that urge? It makes me do dumb things. Luckily, my fiance is practical and encouraged me to wait and be content. If I was on my own, would I have bought those things right away? would I have put it on the credit card and paid much more than it's all worth, just to relieve that urge? would it really have made me feel better about my space?

Well, we've taken the next step. It's a big one for the country and culture we live in, and people look at us like we're crazy, daring, even revolutionary. We're starting our married life carless. Without vehicles. No private transportation. We've got public transit, and we belong to a carshare program. But mostly we walk. Yes, it usually takes longer to get somewhere. Yes, it's usually inconvenient. Yes, we're limited to when and where we can go.

What's funny to me are the reactions we've been getting: it's an interesting thought process to watch. Many of our friends look shocked, applaud us for this choice, then feel guilty for their own choice and consumption, experience a moment of desire to do the same thing, then defensively justify their own situation. We don't even have to say "You could do the same thing." They know it, but it would be too much of a sacrifice for them, so they start defending their over-consumption. Hey friend, something's weighing on your conscience. Just like it was weighing on mine before I purposefully made changes.

Another twist in the plot: I asked my fiance if he thought he would ever want to buy a car again. He looked conflicted. He wanted to say no. His answer was, "Well, when we have kids...they're going to need to go places." More than we need to go places now? I acknowledge that our lives will change greatly when we have children, but why in the world would we change our convictions about consumption? It's a hard conversation to have, even between two people who agree on most things. Why are even noble convictions difficult to stick with?

If you've never heard of What Would Jesus Drive, you should check out the website. Browse and tell me what you think.

Yes, please

Ok, totally know this is not the Consuming Jesus blog, but though y'all might like this article...any article from Sojourners, really, but here's a good one about race divisions.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/01/race-religion-and-the-election.html

Also.....check out this site!!!

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=get_connected.pentecost08&item=pentecost08_main

It's a gathering in DC through Sojourners (www.sojo.net) specifically for training, mobilization, and congregating with others to address political and social issues (specifically addressing poverty issues) for emerging leaders (AKA ---US!!)
Rev. Wallis will speak among others.

There's a group discount for 5 or more and it's in June. If I'm the only one who wants to pee their pants out of excitement, then I will unabashedly do so. :)

Any takers? Or at least entertainers of the idea?

Embark

As we begin work on a new semester, a new year, new friendships, new classes and a new conference I urge us to look holistically at our faith. There is a direct connection between our statements in the past four months; our decisions to live life differently and value things and people differently, and the way we engage the topic of Global Slavery. Watch closely...we seek to alter, modify and make our lives relevant in light of the Gospel, in light of our experience of love in Christ. We do so by changing what we love, what we lust after, what we admire and chase and hold and own and grasp. As we change what it is that we buy, we change too the heart that is bound in the body. There is no way to disconnect our consumption from our understanding of the value of human life, dignity, and love. We transition, yes, to focusing on what the Church must do with Global Climate issues to how the Church must address the Slave Trade and yet these two are not so different. I believe that we as a group are determined to decommodify humanity by both valuing the land and resources which humanity relies upon for its existence and valuing the lives which are bought and sold within it. These ideas go hand in hand. Our ideas about the precious value of human rights, freedom and value overflow into our understanding of the earth and its resources. One should not, as I see the Church tend to do, segregate these issues as though they are not symptoms of the same problem or worse that Christ isn't concerned with them. Is He so small? Doesn't the Bible attest to His jealousy, His want of our devotion in mind, body, soul?

Our solutions to these, our approach, can be largely the same. We continue to control what we buy, what we use, what we waste, because we believe that there is a direct connection between that control and the beating heart of a child whose eyes and hands are tired, whose life seems to be ending and yet has barely begun. The same poverty that forces that heart to work more than I ever will is the same that forces its parents to sell it into slavery. The same consumptive perversion that taints our desire for clothing, food, possessions, pleasure, drugs bleeds over into a perverted demand for sex. Lung cancer or liver cancer will attack any organ, it isn't biased. Companies with inhumane working conditions, slavery, and sex trafficking industries survive because they are fueled, mightily, daily, locally. The sun will continue to rise and fall on those lives and we must determine to see that beating heart as our very own for fear that if we do not we quench the spirit that God placed in it. I look forward to seeing how we grapple with our doctrine.

Lee Harvey Oswald

After JFK's assassination, Bob Dylan was invited to speak at a civil rights meeting, being recognized for the protest songs that he had been singing. At that meeting, he said something haunting: that he saw some of himself in Lee Harvey Oswald.

I believe in a similar ways, we must see that there is some of ourselves in those who would decide to sell others into slavery. If we do not understand that apart from the grace of God we are no different, we will never have the right understanding to fight the slave trade(or any other stronghold).

Immediately as I think of this issue, I want to think about "those bad people" and what I would do if I was left in a room alone with another that commodifies human life. But that is not the fight we fight, rather as Paul put it, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

In some ways this struggle seems more intense then, maybe even more intimidating, but in one place, Paul says "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." And in another "We have not been given a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline." The truth be told, we must be in fear as we engage this issue, and any issue of sinfulness that goes on in the world, but that fear must drive us to go deeper into God's love, and as John the Apostle put it, "perfect love casts out all fear."

This does not mean that we use God as a pacifier, or as “the opiate of the masses.” But rather that the only way that we can engage this issue is through our confidence in the love of God, the presence of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. I am reminded of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus speaks of worries. He appeals to us to look to the birds and the lilies of the fields. They don’t toil in the way we do and yet God provides for them. And whenever I read that it says to me “sweet I can just live the carefree life – don’t worry be happy.” Yet, right after that, Jesus says “But seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and His Righteousness and all these other things will be added to you.” In essence, Jesus is not saying “Don’t worry be happy,” but instead saying “do not let worry keep you from seeking the Kingdom.” Let us grasp that we are loved by God so that we can be pacified and feel that we are okay, but rather let it be that confidence that we are loved by God that gives us the boldness to confront strongholds such as slavery and the sex trade(even at physical risk). It is this “hope,” this confidence that drives the Apostles to continue to bear witness to Christ even when they know it might mean their own death, and it must be this same love that drives us to confront these strongholds today. Let it be that we would be consumed by the love of God, through Christ, by the power of the Spirit!

three thirty

I woke this morning at three thirty, I don't know why or how, I rarely wake up and can't fall back to sleep. As I began to pray I went over the weekend in my head, telling the Lord my fears, my hopes, my new education, my frustration and my desire to see results. We all know that as we approach this great God we draw into the dirty world which He loves and redeems and calls to Himself.
I felt after this weekend as though my eyelids had been torn off. I had kept my eyes closed, my hands to my face, only catching bits of what was going on in the sounds I heard around me, the smell, the stench, the air and cold. But my eyes were shut and He tears them open and I am afraid I won't see Him if I open my eyes any more. I think we all face this; will I see Him if I open my eyes? I prayed and prayed last night, forty five minutes went past, I wanted so badly to fall asleep, to just wake up and go to school and drive my car and get down 82nd without thinking about this. Then I realized as I was praying that I was relieved that I was in no real danger because the sex slave trade isn't happening to me, that prayer scared the crap out of me. Its a lie, a sick selfish, introverted prayer and I took it back immedietly. We're here, we're human and it is happening in us as much as we would like to disengage. As I go to engage these issues, life and death issues, ones that have the potential to rock our worlds and rock our faith I pray continually for a protection on our hearts that as we seek to follow God into lives and hearts, that we would find Him, powerful, sovereign, majestic and beautiful. We have turned this world, our resources, ourselves and others into possessions to be had, traded, bought, sold and terminally exhausted. And it isn't that we are blessed so we get to stay detached, or even that we can handle it and set things right as I had prayed last night. I was wrong. I can't handle, I can't set it right, we will not break into the global slave trade or our churches and Christ will tag along for fun. He's there! We go where He is not vice versa and it will touch us. I will have to engage this, as lucky as I may feel or as much as I believe that I can sit and talk about it and somehow cover my heart from life here on earth, I cannot. One of the most painful things I have learned is Christ is like a car wreck. We're called to get closer than is really comfortable with others, with the world, with Christ and when we do we are scarred, repaired, redeemed and set free. We crash into one another, dinged and dented over and over, rusting and cracked in parts. We cannot as Christians expect to enter His world, find roses and walk along. If we believe He is all in all, and the begining and the end then we follow Him there, to the end to it all. Gotta be honest I'm scared, doesn't happen often. I find myself praying for our protection as we deal with the issue more than for the issue. Let us seek to continue to integrate our life and our doctrine, pray that we find God in every form that takes, that we seek Him because we are confident He is all in all. Finally I will add "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account." This is what has happened to me, to the very bones, joints, marrow of my being and its what we strive to do in the world for, because and in Christ. It is our hope and our fear as we are laid bare and the world is laid bare, we have confidence in His power to do so.

This might be the toughest time for me with our little covenant.

Admittedly, most the time buying new things is not a problem for me, but I think that is more because I'm used to not having the money to spend anyways. Today, however, was a different story.

My sister was in town and needed to buy some stuff so she needed to go to Target, and obviously, I took it upon myself to go with her to make sure she found it.

It would have been quite easy for me to buy something while I was there, and admittedly I was quite tempted to. I was able to talk myself out of it. But I did buy some long johns. I hope that it was an acceptable buy, because to be honest, the idea of buying used long johns just seemed a little too much for me to handle.

Anyways, it has been really interesting to continue in this. I hope that everyone over break has been having a nice break and has not felt like a complete outcast with what we chose to do.

Blessings everyone, I hope you have a great New Years! See you all in a couple weeks.

Check It!

Six startling factoids I discovered in an article recently submitted to Cultural Encounters. I think we have all seen these before, however when read again, all at once, they cause quite an impact.


1.) Roughly 21% of our world lives in poverty.

2.) The gap between rich and poor continues to widen. The wealth of the world’s 387 billionaires equals that of the bottom 45% of entire human population.

3.) On top of this, though comprising only 5% of the world’s population, America consumes 40% of the world's gasoline and more paper, steel, aluminum, energy, water, and meat per capita than any other society on the planet.

4.) Recent scientific estimates indicate that at least four additional planets would be needed if each of the planet's 6 billion inhabitants consumed at the level of the average American.

5.) On average, Americans shop six hours a week and spend only 40 minutes playing with their children.

6.) In 2005, over 2 million families declared personal bankruptcy, credit card debt reached new heights, and the personal savings rate fell to the lowest level since the Great Depression.