Thoughts on Living Faithfully

Andrew Benson recently posted about living life in a way that was faithful to the gospel and not capitulating to the consumeristic world in which we live. His real question was how one may go about this. I think this is the question we must struggle with. (To see Andrew's blog, which is great, link to AP's blog from his comment somewhere on this page and then go to his links and you will see Benson and link from that - if I knew how to link, I would post it but I don't.)

I am convinced that finding a way to live that is faithful is impossible. There is not one faithful way to live. However, what one must begin to do is to ask the question, "how should I live?" It is in asking the question that we can begin to see the opportunities in our lives to live more faithfully. It is in asking the question that one can begin to see those things that are definitely unfaithful and to stay away from them. I also think that asking the question opens one up to God's guiding in that it can be very prayerful and can help one to commune with God.

What follows are some ways that my wife and I have chosen to live faithfully in our lives, in Chicago. (An aside is important here - it is easier for us to make some choices and harder for us to make others because we live in Chicago. I think that it is incredibly important to begin to evaluate where one is living and the status of one's family and to try and live faithfully in light of that situation.)

First, we have chosen to use public transportation as much as possible (in fact, today was the first day I drove my car in a week). We really take it all over the city. We do this for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is expensive to drive. Gas is not only expensive, but then we must find a parking spot (and usually pay for it). It is also expensive to keep the maintenance up on the car. Also though, we realize that by buying oil, we support some pretty terrible people. If we think about it, most of our oil is produced in the Middle East under very oppressive and terrible rulers. They mistreat women, commit human rights abuses, and do some very terrible things. Oil gives the money that gives these people the control. We have problems supporting that.

Another thing we do is to buy fair trade coffee. Very simple and a little more expensive (but I can afford it from the money I save on gas). However, in buying fair trade coffee, we are buying a product that we know someone is getting a fair price for along with education and health care. We know that we are supporting a community that we have the means to support. It also means that more major coffee producers must begin to reconcile the fact that they are completely unethical and take beans from people that they barely pay and essentially abuse. We don't deal well with that.

Lastly, but I think most importantly, we give to our local church. But we also involve ourselves in the local church to make sure that what it is doing is faithful to God. We want to make sure that the church is working to overthrow some of the sinful structures that we participate in daily. We want to make sure that the church is giving to the orphans and widows, that it is making sure people are fed and that others can find the services. It means being an active part of a community that lives to reconcile the world to Christ in spiritual and physical ways.

Overall, we are just doing a little part to overcome some of the problems in this world. We hope to encourage others to remember those who have not, the poor and the weak and to prayerfully consider them in our everyday lives. However, we also realize we are by no means perfect (we bought a condo in Chicago that forced multiple out of their homes) and are always looking to become more faithful. This is how we hope to grow in the grace of God.

So, any suggestions on how to live a faithful life in all aspects of one's life? Please, help.

Consumerism and Christianity

Well, I got back from presenting my paper at the Conference on Christianity and Consumer Culture. It was an overall great experience and I got meet and talk to some great people.

The conference was an attempt to get practitioners (read: pastors) together with professional theologians to try and work out what must be done about the infiltration of consumer cutlure and Christianity. A lot of the ideas for the conference came out of the work of Vincent Miller, specifically his book Consuming Religion.

Hearing Miller talk was quite a thrill and quite a lot of fun. He talked about the commodification of spirituality. Basically, he started his presentation with a meditation on the IPOD. For him, what the IPOD does is to pull things out of context. No longer do you have to listen to an album, but you can hear just one song from the album. Songs no longer fit in their context - in their place in the album. In fact, the IPOD has now become the person's own personal album. He then went onto talk of how this has happened to spirituality. Essentially, spirituality has now become de-contextualized. Spirituality no longer develops in and through a tradition, but is a personal, "me" thing. Spirituality is commidified into something that makes money and is no longer part of a much bigger tradition, whatever tradition that may be. It was very interesting. I like it thoroughly. (And Tim, I am not sure that he would disagree with my paper).

I also got to hear Ron Sider and Sondra Ely Wheeler speak on what the Bible says about wealth and poverty. Both came to very similar conclusions. The fact is that the Bible does not speak with one unified voice on wealth or poverty, but that there are a multiplicity of voices. They also both said that being wealthy does not necessarily negate one from the tradition. However, to be wealthy and continue to promulgate the sinful structures that keep the poor poor is to participate in sin. A lot of their discussion was taken out of the Gospels and Amos, along with Proverbs. It seems that Sondra Ely Wheeler's book is a good introduction to this. Overall, though, they best said that the Bible has no ethic as to how one must act (funny since Wheelers is a Christian ethicist), but that the Bible calls people to wrestle with the issues and struggle with what one must do.

Really, what I took from the whole conference is that we must begin to ask the questions as to how we live in a world where the structures of society necessarily oppresses people and keeps people in captivity. How do I particpate in these structures and how can I go about stop participating in the structures? Or, in realizing that these structures do exist, how shall I then live?