Modern Life is Rubbish

I have spent most of my adult life feeling removed form the world around me. I looked at the messages and expectations of the dominant society within United Kingdom and I just said to myself, “no thanks”. Apart from a very sad period of about 2 years when I was seduced by the idea of wealth and success (and failed fairly spectacularly!), I found the whole way of living in the modern world so removed from what I see in the gospels.

The thing is, I don’t want to make peace with the world because, as Damon Albarn so eloquently put it, Modern Life is Rubbish. If my life is based around the concept of get a job, get a house, get married/live together, get a bigger house, get a conservatory, get a new kitchen, remortgage to pay off the credit cards, get a pension, retire, die, then kill me now – I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE LIKE THAT. I have tried to reason through some of this and find a balance, but in the last four years it has got even more clear that balance can be enemy of change, that balance can just be a synonym for accommodation – I do not want to accommodate the corrupt, selfish, blinkered, shallow and debauched value system that I see around me. So – here are the things I am working through:

What’s the big deal with property and consumerism?

Because of a whole series of circumstances, we do not own a house. This used to freak me out – I bought into the idea that I needed to own property (or actually rent it from a bank until I hoped my endowment could pay it off in my 50’s), and that I was in trouble because I didn’t. About 2 years ago (just as house prices were going through the roof), my bank begged me to take out a £220,000 mortgage – they even sat me down and offered it to me without me asking them. Looking back, the payments and house value would have left us in a terrible situation, adn I am thankful I didn't take up their offer. I would have been working to pay the mortgage and bound to it – not free to make the right decision for my family. Everything would have been coloured by the need to pay the mortgage.

The problem is that our economy is based upon the need for continual consumer spending, and the main driver of wealth creation for the last 16 years has been property. People would find equity in their house and either see it as a pension and put less into a plan, or release it to enable spending directly. Either way, our economy is now seizing up because of the lack of house sales.

I do not accept the premise of the consumer economy. If our society needs retail spending to grow then the system is wrong. I’ll repeat that – THE SYSTEM IS WRONG. I do not want to accommodate the consumer society – I want to change it. I want to live differently, and to raise my children to live differently as well. I will not conform to this. I will find a better way to live – one more in harmony with the teaching of Jesus – principles of justice, mercy, righteousness, truthfulness, generosity, sacrifice and mutuality.

But won’t you look a bit weird if you try and not live like the rest of society?

Yes.

End of paragraph.

But seriously – SO WHAT. Since when has ‘fitting in’ ever convinced anybody that there is a better way to live. If I can learn from others who are exploring this, and if I can start to live in a way that embraces the value above, I have to. I feel an imperative not to let these feelings drift until I get to my old age and regret living in-between worlds, feeling the tension of rejecting one set of values but not fully embracing another.

I know that the logical end of what I am suggesting looks very different from the individualistic way that we live now, and that it challenges the roots of our society. That both repels and attracts me in equal measure.


So what does it look like?

I don’t know. I look at some of the excellent examples that have found a different way to live, such as The Simple Way in Philadelphia, USA and the Northumbria Community in the UK and rejoice in what they do. But I want something that works here and now in Shrewsbury, Shopshire, with the people I know. I want something that I can do now.


This is just the start of my conversation, but I will continue to blog and work this out.

The New Conspirators - a book review

A new Tom Sine book is one of those publishing events that, even with working in the industry, I find myself getting excited by. Tom is perhaps best known for his books The Mustard Seed Conspiracy and Mustard Seed versus McWorld.

With The New Conspirators Tom wanted to chart the rise of a number of new Christian movements, as well as try and plot some of the future direction (his speciality). He identifies four main new streams:

• Emerging church
• Mosaic, multicultural church
• Missional church
• Contemporary monastic movement

The book is divided into five ‘conversations’

• Taking the New Conspirators Seriously
• Taking the Culture Seriously
• Taking the Future of God Seriously
• Taking the Turbulent Times Seriously
• Taking our Imaginations Seriously
  
  

The first section is a superb overview of what is happening – mainly in the United States and the United Kingdom, but also including some interesting stuff in other commonwealth countries, from inner city churches, social action projects to new forms of community. The stories are inspiring and really practical – a refreshing change from what you often see (heavy on theory, lacking on how to actually do it!).

The next three sections are all analysis of where we actually are as western culture – from religion through to commerce and society. The sections on the global village, the global mall (a phrase I first heard in the wonderful Colossians Remixed) and the imbalanced lifestyle of the west are helpful and provoking. After this, when discussing global poverty it starts to get a bit bogged down in detail and loses some of the inspirational impact.

The final section, Taking our Imaginations seriously, is far better, and much more engaging. It allowed me to feel the breadth of opportunity and possibility that exists when the messages of our culture are no longer limiting the way we might live and the impact we can have.

Overall a great book that is a useful addition to the whole discussion of where the church is going and what it can do.

Resisting the Empire

There is an interesting tradition within Jewish biblical interpretation call the Targum. This phrase, originally taken from the Aramaic translations of the Jewish scriptures and still used in this way, came to mean the blending of interpretation, translation and application of scripture.

In their book Colossians Remixed Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat apply this principle to various passages of the book of Colossians. Their main thesis in the book is that Paul wrote this letter to encourage believers to not be seduced by the values of the Roman empire and all it stood for, and that we should also do the same now with whatever worldly 'empire' dominates the ideas and practices today.

Their argument is that the empire we live under is that of global consumerism, and that the imperial nature can be seen through the oppression, commodotization and brutalization of people and the world. From this starting point they create a targum from Colossians 2:8 – 3:4. Here is a selection from that, bearing in mind that this is a blend of translation, interpretation and application:

Make sure that no one takes your imaginations captive through a vacuous vision of life rooted in an oppresive regime of truth that parades itself as something other than mere human tradition, as if it somehow had access to final and universal truth about the world apart from Christ.

...

In him you find your legitimacy, your entrance into the covenantal community, because in relation to himyour real problem – a deeply rooted sinfulness manifest in violence and self-protective exclusion – is addressed and healed.

...

Don't forget that you were once dead too – dead in the dead-end way of life that characterizes our cannibalistic and predatory culture. But now you are dead to that way of life, and God has made you alive with Christ by dealing with the real problem through radical forgiveness. You see, when the idolatrous power structures that bolster this oppressive regime nailed Jesus to the cross and poured out their fury on him, all of your debts were nailed there too. All of the ways the empire of death held you captive and robbed you of life – the exhausting and insatiable imperative to consume, the bewildering cacophony of voices calling out to us in the post-modern carnival ... the masturbatory self-indulgence of linguistic and societal games .. all of this is nailed to the cross.

Let's not beat around the bush here. What is at stake in this conflict at the cross is indeed a power struggle. And Jesus takes precisely the principalities and powers that placed him on the cross – the idols of militarism, nationalism, racism, technicism, economism – and on that very cross disarms, dethrones, conquers, and makes public example of them.

...

If all of this is true then, don't allow the front-men of these vanquished powers to tell you what to eat and drink. Don't buy into the simulated grocery stores made to remind shoppers of an era when shopping was more integral to community life. Don't be duped by advertising that tells you that various products are indispensable to constructing certain images and personas. This is all crap. They are still trying to captivate your imagination, to suck you into a globalistic regime of homogeneous consumption. Resist this McWorld nightmare with all the strength you have! Avoid the Disneyization of your consciousness. This stuff has no substance to it, no being ... but in Christ we find substance

...

If with Christ you died in your baptism to the principles of autonomous consumerism that still hold the world captive, then why do you live in a way that suggests that you are still in iron grip of its ideological vision? Why do you submit yourselves to its regulations to consume as if there were no tomorrow, to live as if community were an impediment to personal fulfillment, to live as if everything were disposable, including relationships, the unborn and the environment? ... Don't you know that copulating with the idols of this culture is like climbing into bed with a corpse that is already decomposing?