Tag: Jimmy Carter

Inhabiting — Chapter Four — Habitats For Humanity

This was a sermon preached at City South Presbyterian in 2024. You can listen to the podcast here, or watch it on video. Some of the block quotes were on screen and summarised but have been included in full.

You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. In July, rumours of the death of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter circulated, leading to an outpouring of grief for the 99 year old some months before his actual death. Carter was an interesting guy if you watch the horror show that is U.S. politics; he seems to be universally loved — and one of the reasons he was loved, was because of his work with the charity he helped make famous, Habitat for Humanity — it is a charity that builds houses — habitats — for humans.

It exists in Australia as well — and it is built from the recognition that we need a home; a habitat to survive and thrive, as we inhabit time and space. The spaces and places we call home — their rhythms and rituals, the furniture and the people who fill them — form us.

Back in week one of this series we were in Athens and we imagined the shift facing Damaris and Dionysius — these two people who believed the Gospel (Acts 17:34) — from the architecture of Athens and its idols to the rhythms we saw in our reading from the start of the church — both the rhythms of meeting together with other Christians — a new household — and of meeting in a very different sort of sacred space — the home (Acts 2:46–47).

This is the architecture described in the New Testament as the first habitat for this new community, the church, which we saw last week is called the household of God; a kinship network that teaches us how to be human — the church and our households within it — as we wisely build our lives — and we saw the way the New Testament uses the metaphor of building a house for this process.

The physical spaces we live in, where we meet together and eat together, structure our lives. And to live in the household of God means changing the furniture — these structures — the architecture of our lives as our habits change.

And so I wonder, first up — if you think about your house — what are your physical spaces geared towards; what are they producing in you? What about your workspace or other places you spend time habitually — what about church?

What are the rhythms and rituals in your habitat? Who lives in your habitat with you?

What changes can we make to our habitats to become the humans God is inviting us to be in his household — and so we offer the hospitality and transformation of his household to others drawn in to this ecosystem?

How is your home shaping you?

I want to acknowledge up front that many of us are living in non-ideal situations; not where we imagine for ourselves, and we are already at the limits of what we can afford in the current economy — interesting if you remember last week that is a household word — we are finding the household management of the world pretty unbearable.

And so what I am not saying is move — change in ways we cannot afford; but maybe there are changes to how we live in our spaces — whether at home or in shared spaces that we cannot afford not to make — especially because we will see this idea as we explore our two readings is about both our habits and who we are habitually connected with.

Anyway. Here is a tour of our house — I took these photos when there were dogs around, but fewer humans than normal — and this is not me saying our house was well designed to form us — it was a mix. The photos are our house as it was — since preaching this series we moved out and conducted significant renovations.

When you walked through our front door there was a hallway, and on the wall there were pictures our kids have made hung on a string.

On the left of the hallway were our bedrooms — there were three of them for five of us — we added another bedroom to minimise fights between the residents who share — the kid ones — and to provide a little more space away from each other — I will not show you pictures of the bedrooms both because they are pretty much just bedrooms, and because of privacy and mess.

Bedrooms are for sleeping — although there is a desk in our room, and bedside tables covered in books, that are also where we charge our devices. Which means they are on hand as we go to bed or wake up in the morning.

Our living area is open plan — we like this because it means we can see what our kids are up to. We built these desks into this set of shelves so kids would work there and not take screens into their rooms.

We really love our kitchen where there is a big communal island bench, where multiple people can prep food together — and breakfast bar — there is a fruit bowl in the middle to encourage us all to eat fruit, and some flowers because they are beautiful, and mess because we are a family and both parents are working pretty much full-time jobs and we still had not cleaned up fully from Growth Group a couple of nights before.

There is the coffee machine that keeps me sane — one that is great for firing up to make coffees for more than one person at a time.

A dining table in the corner crowded in by the dog crates — and our couches, which are both pointed at the TV so that when we collapse onto them once the kids are in bed we are inevitably drawn in to the screen.

The next biggest thing on our wall is the clock — well, it is maybe the painting — but in the morning we are ruled by the clock; racing against time to get everyone out the door in chaos.

Out the back we have got another table — with more clothes and toys — and a pizza oven in the corner so we can have people round, and play equipment for the kids because we want them to be habitually active.

This is the habitat shaping our household — it is built for chaos and hospitality — filled with marks of conflict, and mess, connection and distraction — and there are good and deliberate bits built around eating together and being together, but other bits that rule us more than they should; the screens on our wall and on our bedside table — part of thinking through our architecture means curating what is on our screens; and where our screens are — both the TV screen and all the stuff you are paying for to stream distraction into your life, and the stuff on your phone and in your browser.

What does your habitat look like? Are there ways you have set it up to make certain practices repeatable and easy? As an expression of your values — or just as something shaping them by shaping your habits?

Most of us spend lots of waking hours at work — like I said last week, my workspace tends to be my couch — or the desk in our room — or the dining table — when I am not working from a café or meeting people — but I used to work in a cubicle, and so I wonder how your workspace is set up…

Maybe you have a cubicle — what pieces of “flair” — the idea made famous by Office Space — is expressing your personality but perhaps even drawing your eye and prompting your thoughts when you have a moment in your cubicle? What is on your screen?

What your space looks like is going to vary widely based on what sort of job you do — you could drive heaps where your only real decision is what you listen to on the road, or if you hang something from your mirror that reminds you to pray, or something like you will often find in a car driven by someone whose religion involves more icons or images.

How have you structured things to aid your work? Or your formation? Some of this is silly window dressing, but changing our habitats can shape the way we work. Carpenters in their workshops use these things called jigs — deliberate structures they will turn to for repeated tasks that make them faster and more automatic.

The author Matthew Crawford is a motorbike mechanic and philosopher — he is all about keeping our heads and our bodies connected. He reckons we could all learn from carpenters and have jigs that produce the repeated habits we want to see more effortlessly; where our habitat assists us automating our habits. He defines a jig as:

“A device or procedure that guides a repeated action by constraining the environment in such a way as to make the action go smoothly, the same each time, without having to think about it…”

— Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head

This fits with the brain science we have been looking at a bit this series; the idea that we think about things in one part of our brain, but have this automatic set of processes on the other — one of the guys who made this brain-system thing popular, Daniel Kahneman, says we form the fast side of the brain the way we learn skills with our body — through repetition; habit — and the best way to fast-track that is to set up our environment — our habitat — to produce the behaviours we want to repeat.

“The acquisition of skills requires a regular environment, an adequate opportunity to practice, and rapid and unequivocal feedback about the correctness of thoughts and actions.” — Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow

We will find these jigs — this environmental organisation — working to form us in ways we do not notice in stuff designed to addict us, to automate harmful behaviours — and in things like weight machines at gyms as opposed to free weights that guide our motions along a repeated path to help us develop a muscle.

So what about this habitat? Where we repeatedly come together — habitually — how are we being shaped as we walk through these doors and sit in rows — learning not to look at each other eye to eye, which we saw last week is super important — but to stare at and listen to people up the front — and some of that is feeding into the slow-process part of our brain — the rider of the elephant — and this is important. The rider’s job is to steer things around and decide what skills to develop and how to do that — we focus on hearing from God’s word; and we participate in habits with our bodies — standing and sitting to sing; engaging in prayer, sharing communion — breaking bread together up here, and then eating together downstairs.

But what are our jigs? The structures that guide our actions in church life? The pews… the pulpit… the communion table… the baptismal pool… the coffee machine… the tables where we eat together downstairs?

The architecture of this space works to produce behaviours that we repeat that work to produce us.

I wonder how this architecture could shift — or how we could think of our movements through this space — so we are working not just on knowledge but on attachment and joy and skill development — learning the skills of loving others intuitively because we love God intuitively; because we have learned that intuition through practice.

And who are we gathering with? Who are the people forming our habitat? Our household?

If we want our habitats to be jigs that help us learn a skill; set up to make repetitive right action shape us, we want to make sure both the context and the content of what we are trying to form in ourselves — who we are trying to be, with a picture of how we are going to get there — like a trainee carpenter — an apprentice in a workshop, or someone working out in a gym — it helps to have teachers around too. Examples who are part of the furniture; the habitat, and who are teaching us and correcting us as we practice our humanity.

I reckon that is what we see in Acts, as these believers whose hearts are being reformed to be directed to God are devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to time with God in prayer while eating together in houses in this new community. And in Hebrews, the writer is building on this idea that we are located in God’s house now — behind the curtain in the Temple, as we saw last series — we are living in holy space; this is our habitat (Hebrews 10:19–20). We have Jesus as our holy personal trainer; the master builder who is the priestly head of the household of God (Hebrews 10:21), and we are caught up in this exercise of coming to God (Hebrews 10:22) — this is the practice that will shape us most, knowing our hearts have been cleansed; our sins have been forgiven through the blood of Jesus, and we have been cleansed so we can come close to God — and the writer of Hebrews pivots from this to say “OK — the goal is drawing near to God” to the call to “hold unswervingly” to this hope. This is an active thing — a directed thing — “hold this hope” (Hebrews 10:23). This is a practice. Practice hoping because God is faithful.

Our habitat should be jigged up to teach us this skill of hoping; knowing that God is faithful to his promises — and what else? To ‘love and good deeds’ — we spur one another on — encourage one another towards practices that shape us as God’s children. “Love and good deeds” — the stuff Jesus taught and calls us to practice (Hebrews 10:24).

And how do we do this? We stay in the habit of meeting together (Hebrews 10:25); we habitually enter habitats that will shape us in a certain way in our practice of meeting and our practices together — especially the practice of encouraging one another. And why — well — because of where we are going — towards this Day. Now. I almost stopped here. This would have been an easy thing to apply, and to talk about — but the passage keeps going. Verse 26. It is a doozy. I reckon the hardest verse in the New Testament to balance against our understanding of the Gospel.

“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” — Hebrews 10:26.

It is a warning to persevere — to keep building wisely rather than turning away from the foundation that is Jesus; those who are saved will be those who stick at it, those who do not stick with Jesus will — the foolish builders — well, the storm that will hit and test our house is not just suffering in this world — it is the testing of God’s judgment. This feels weird coming hot on the heels of a claim that we should come to God with full assurance…

But this is a theme the writer of Hebrews has banged on about all the way through the letter; the way to have assurance that you are part of God’s family (Hebrews 3:16), his household, is if you are hanging on to hope that God will be faithful, because Jesus is faithful, and we have just read about the practices that will keep you there — the practice of sinning, rejecting Jesus, will stop you being faithful to Jesus (Hebrews 10:29). I do not know about you, but I can forget that hope, or feel it slipping in moments when I turn to sin — and that is a pathway that leads to bad places.

There is a particular warning here against finding life in Jesus; building on him, and then deliberately, habitually, rejecting him and turning away. To do this would leave us especially deserving of punishment — knowing the holiness of God and treading him through the dirt. The writer of this letter is making a pretty strong case to choose life and joy and God’s love in the face of this Day, rather than the alternative. And the point of this rhetorical move, like in Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, is to choose life, not death; blessing, not curse; and to build habits that will prepare you for that Day so that you can endure all the other days between now and then (Hebrews 10:32) — and any conflict or suffering — as people of joy and hope — connected; not alone. In The Other Half of Church the authors talk about that connected joy we looked at last week, where we are together with people who are glad to be with us — reflecting God’s delight to be with us — being vital for growth — it is also vital for surviving suffering.

“Our identity is built and formed by joy-bonded relationships. The identity center in our brain grows in response to joy.”

— The Other Half of Church

It protects us from trauma; which they reckon happens when we suffer alone; without joyful security and people to process with.

“Suffering turns into trauma when we are unable to process our suffering with God and other people.”

— The Other Half of Church

The writer of Hebrews does not want people suffering alone; or suffering without having habitually built the relationships that might protect you from traumatic harm. They say “remember how just after you trusted Jesus you endured suffering” (Hebrews 10:32); being publicly insulted, persecuted… being side-by-side with those suffering and being persecuted (Hebrews 10:33) — suffering with those in prison — hoping together (Hebrews 10:34). This is a picture of occupying a household together; a habitat — they even had property confiscated and stayed joyful because their true home is in God’s presence… and holding on to our hope; our confidence — persevering — habitually — leads to being home with God.

Drawing near to God.
Holding on to and professing their hope.
Spurring one another on toward love and good deeds.
Meeting together habitually.
Encouraging one another.

You imagine they are doing what the Acts 2 church did too — praying. Studying the teaching of the apostles; the Gospel. Breaking bread — communion and eating together — in houses. Learning by heart the skill of hope and perseverance and joyful connection to God and each other.

Our habitats matter — who we fill them with matters — because our habits matter; cultivating habits of perseverance in faith and hope; drawing near to God through Jesus is how we exercise our faith and how we are formed; how we hold on to rather than throwing away Jesus (Hebrews 10:35). This is what persevering looks like; and persevering is what forms us as we draw near to God (Hebrews 10:36).

We are formed in this habitat for our new humanity; as we learn skills by heart; as we automate this perseverance by habit. And we form habits — getting in the groove of godliness — by structuring our environments and repeating our actions in loving environments. So it becomes easier to repeat right actions than wrong ones, and so we limit our freedoms to choose badly.

We will find these jigs — this environmental organisation — working to form us in ways we do not notice in stuff designed to addict us, to automate harmful behaviours — and in things like weight machines at gyms as opposed to free weights that guide our motions along a repeated path to help us develop a muscle.

This might mean keeping your phone out of your bedroom — or screens away from places where you know you are likely to engage in bad habits when nobody is around — it might mean turning couches towards each other, or eating at the table, or all sorts of things — it might mean reaching for God’s word in the morning, whether that is in a physical Bible or an app, before you reach for or hook into an algorithm; it might mean not being ruled by the clock — it might mean adjusting how you redeem the time in your car or your cubicle or the little visual prompts you use that remind you who you are at work, where things get stressful…

It might mean changing how we approach church so it is not just a place where we sit and look forwards and hear one or two people speak, but a community where we gather together to look at one another and direct each other’s gaze to the throne room; encouraging one another.

People are part of our habitat — perhaps the most important furniture in our lives — so tweaking our environment involves making sure we are connected to God’s household in a real way — that joyful and connected way we talked about last week — and this is not just about meeting together where safety and joy are the end point; those things are the soil that enables transformation when we encourage one another towards our goal; our hope.

This also means choosing not to meet together with God’s people is a choice to be formed by a different habitat — to not be encouraged by God’s people, or to encourage God’s people as we do this for one another. To risk not persevering.

So what is this encouragement thing — really — I reckon sometimes it is the “keep going” idea — where we suffer together and say “keep going,” “hold on,” “remember the destination”… stay faithful… prodding each other towards perseverance… holding on to the hope we profess — but part of this will be about calling folks back to holding on. Back to hoping. Back towards love and good deeds; towards being and becoming the sort of people Jesus calls us to be (Hebrews 10:25).

I reckon we are comfortable working at being a joyful and connected community — even with eye contact (which we “practised” at communion and in singing together the previous week) — one where we want people to be included and feel safe and maybe hear some good stuff or sing some good stuff to each other — I am sure we can get better and better at noticing the good things people do as part of cultivating joy and gratitude — being glad to be together — but I reckon some of this encouragement stuff is actually about saying hard things to one another — calling one another back to being who we are meant to be — and our habitat needs the sort of people who teach us skills by telling us when we get things wrong — and by showing us how to be who we are learning to be.

I am not sure we always have the relational security or the joyful attachment we need for that sort of speech to happen well — and then I am not sure we have practised this encouragement and spurring one another on when the pressure is not on, so that we are able to do it when it is real…

After joy and hesed, this is one of the practices suggested in The Other Half of Church for forming this side of our brain; forming our character. The authors talk about building a habitat of relationships in terms of forming group identity and calling each other to live together in this community — now — the book warns about how this can go wrong in cults and abusive contexts, we should not be naïve about this — but I reckon those of us who have experienced abuse and trauma — abuses of power or authority — can respond by rejecting all authority and just trying to do our own thing — which is another way of being formed but one that leaves us alone, or just with peers, or people we have got authority over like our own kids, or people we are teaching in various contexts.

I know I have struggled to work out what authority is and even if it can be used well, without harming others. I have found this part of my job the most difficult bit; because I recognise the harm done to so many of us through bad authority, and I do not want to compound that, but this fear — driven by love — pushes me — and others — away from hard and necessary conversations.

This is not who we are invited to be for each other. It is not who we say we are for each other. One of the values of our church is that we speak truth in love to one another in vulnerability and honesty. This love bit involves that security and joy — but this speech bit can be hard. Scary.

“We are vulnerable and honest about our own sin and brokenness, living and speaking the truth to one another in love, and welcoming to those not yet trusting Jesus.” — City South Presbyterian, Mission, Vision, Values

And while there might be a role for spiritual parents or those in authority to have these conversations, this is a one-another job — we are to spur one another on as we meet together — and the authority we are trying to point to is Jesus’ authority, not our own; we are part of his household, not our families of origin or our ideal communities, and so this sort of conversation involves discernment.

Anyway — the book talks about how important it is not just to talk about beliefs but about values; the sort of people we are and who we want to be, not just what we think — and about the need to proclaim these values habitually.

“One way a community can build a strong character identity is by speaking regularly to each other about what kind of people we are.” — The Other Half of Church

They say some traditions recite doctrinal statements — like we do with the creed — but we have also got to learn the vocabulary for how we live; our shared values — the commands of Jesus — so that when we are not being consistent we have a framework we can use to call people back to love and good deeds.

“Some traditions recite doctrinal statements as part of their Christian practice. We also need to do the same with how we live. We need constant reminders.”

— The Other Half of Church

This kind of correction is hard because it involves shame, inevitably — when we are told we are doing something wrong — but when there is genuine love and joyful connection, shame does not threaten our relationship or isolate us, knowing we are loved and secure helps us regulate that shame response and direct it towards growth — when this speech is genuinely encouraging it spurs us not just away from wrong action, but towards a correct path.

“Without hesed, shame will push us to isolate and hide, which naturally sinks us into unhealthy shame. Our hesed helps us regulate the emotional energy of shame.”

— The Other Half of Church

They talk about a template for this sort of conversation — a skill to develop as we seek to help one another be transformed by the renewing of our minds; as we proclaim the Gospel to one another to build hope and to persevere together — their template involves a reassurance of the hesed — the love — that connects us to God and each other, and by saying “I believe you did this,” not “you did this,” invites a conversation and listening.

“I love you but believe that you stopped acting like yourself. Let me remind you how we act in this situation.” — The Other Half of Church

Framing the “spur” or prod as a recognition of where we have stopped acting like who we are, with an invitation back to shared values and action, does not cast out — like bad shame — but invites closer; prodding; spurring; encouraging. It is a terrifying idea, right?

This sort of speech takes real love; and real agreement on shared values for it to be helpful.

We will not always get this right; and sometimes someone might raise something with you, in love, where they are wrong — that is an opportunity for more encouragement, and perhaps to invite spiritual parents — those more mature than us — into the mix if it feels like it is going wrong.

Our habitat will shape us not just when we structure our physical environments right, but when we fill them with people filled with God’s Spirit — God’s household — who love us and direct us towards Jesus.

Minimalism and the danger of replacing one idol with another

Robyn and I watched Minimalism: A Documentary About Important Things on Netflix last night. And now I want to throw out all my stuff.

The doco follows the two guys behind The MinimalistsJoshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, on a speaking tour around the United States, interspersed with little interviews and vignettes with people who’ve adopted the minimalist philosophy including popular atheist philosopher/neuroscientist Sam Harris to Project 333 founder Courtney Carver, to a few Tiny House dwellers, to Colin Wright who lives his life from two bags while travelling the world, with plenty of other people thrown in the mix. It makes the compelling case that we need less stuff; that we should disengage from the modern default of pursuing happiness through consumption, because, in the words of Fight Club’s narrator; the things we own, end up owning us. It challenged me to think about my consumer habits as a Christian, and where they might reveal what I treasure, it gave me some fun ideas, but it also left me wanting more in terms of a solution to the problem it recognises in modern western life.

“We spend so much time on the hunt. But nothing ever quite does it for us. And we get so wrapped up in the hunt that it kind of makes us miserable.” — Minimalism: A Documentary About Important Things

It’s a bracing reminder of what our consumption does to us, to our brains, and to our world and of the perennial dissatisfaction that comes from life lived vicariously through our possessions.

“You have this thing that you were obsessed about, but then the new version comes out and now you no longer care about the one that you have. In fact, the one you have is a source of dissatisfaction.” — Sam Harris, in Minimalism: A Documentary About Important Things

The diagnosis of what is wrong with a consumption based approach to modern life is spot on. My favourite quote of all in the documentary, from a speech by former U.S President Jimmy Carter titled Crisis of Confidence, explains a little of my uneasy relationship with Minimalism (even as I plot a widescale decluttering of my life, and a continued changing of my consumption habits).

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

Carter’s diagnosis — which Minimalism endorses — is on the money. Modern consumerism isn’t just a behaviour; it’s about our identity. It’s about worship. From the Bible’s insight into our humanity it’s about how we feel the void left by our departure from God. It’s idolatry.

I thought Minimalism was spot on both in its diagnosis of what’s happening in our hearts, and thus in our culture, and of the damage our consumption does to us, the planet, and to others. Sadly, I’m not totally sold on the solution they (and those the people they featured) offer. Their solution was about a change in identity, a change in lifestyle, a change in consumption, and ultimately a change in worship. And while the gods they chose to replace ‘stuff with’ might make them better people to know and love, and give them more satisfaction, they’re still ‘idols’… it’s still ‘stuff’ just less of it, or less tangible stuff in the form of relationships and experience. The solutions offered in Minimalism still involved essentially defined by ‘stuff’ — sometimes just by its absence (whether in a tiny house or via meditation/stillness). The various minimalists spoke of pursuing something like asceticism, or simply a more self-controlled (no less self-indulgent) approach to consumption. I felt like most of the ways the minimalist alternative to maximalist-consumption driven living were built on an approach to life that is still built around being a consumer; but consuming more carefully by pursuing things of value. There’s a sense to that the idea that we should focus our ‘ownership’ on things that we love, that do give us pleasure, that this is actually just consumption with a modified philosophical aesthetic. I look at the sparsely furnished rooms and carefully curated piles of possessions and think ‘there’s beauty there’ and wonder how I can work my way towards achieving that particular way of life.

“There’s nothing wrong with consumption, the problem is compulsory consumption. We’re tired of it. We’re tired of acquiring things because that’s what we’re told we’re supposed to do” — Minimalism: A Documentary About Important Things

This approach reminded me of a bit in C.S Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters where the character, Screwtape, writes on gluttony — and our possession based, greed-driven, over-indulgence is very much like gluttony. Screwtape wants his apprentice Wormwood to know that the most pernicious type of gluttony actually comes with the appearance of self-denial; because it’s actually ‘self-interest’ that makes gluttony or consumption so harmful (Carter was right!). My concern is that the solutions offered in Minimalism (though perhaps not the ones modelled by the Minimalists on their journey of self-giving, and by some of the other people interviewed who’ve simplified in order to maximise generosity) fall into the trap of replacing one excess with another kind of gluttony… And there’s a danger in my own heart, and my own desire to correct my excess, that I’ll go the same way.

“My dear Wormwood,

The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance. One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled by it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient’s mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example. She would be astonished—one day, I hope, will be—to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile ‘Oh please, please … all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast’. You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, ‘Oh, that’s far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it’. If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.”

If you want a really radical antidote to consumerism — one that might help you avoid both gluttony of excess, and gluttony of delicacy, one that might do something more to kill consumerism in your life and replace it with an alternative, one that might bring a truly meaningful solution in community not just individuals… the answer might not be to listen to a bunch of millionaire businessmen and people who tasted worldly success telling you about their conversion to a newer, simpler way of life. The answer might be to listen to a bloke who swore of this way of life from the beginning because, well, he was perfect. Jesus has some pretty profound things to say about humanity, consumption, and the pursuit of meaning.

He says life as humans is ultimately about the pursuit of treasure. This is because somewhere in our DNA, we pursue meaning through worship

Jesus said ‘where your treasure is, there your heart is also’ he said this having said ‘store up for yourself treasures in heaven’…

We are, by nature, worshippers who look for identity in what we treasure. The Bible’s answer to this is not to find the right thing to treasure, but to treasure Jesus… to pursue treasures in heaven. And this provides us with some guidelines not just for approaching the good stuff in this world with moderation (without worshipping it), but for understanding that the best way to approach consumables isn’t fundamentally about self-interest, self-indulgence, or self-control (though it will produce this), it’s about the other. Jesus models the pursuit of treasure in heaven when he lays down his life for the sake of others. He comes back to this theme of ‘treasure’; or consumption, and our desire to find meaning in controlling and possessing as much as possible, in a slightly indirect way when he challenges us to be givers not consumers; sacrificers, not killers. To follow Jesus is to adopt a life not of self-denial, but self-giving from a place of knowing God gives us everything.

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. — Matthew 16:24-27

This does involve a radical approach to our stuff; you might remember the story where a rich young bloke comes up to Jesus to ask how to be part of God’s kingdom — how to have treasure in heaven, and Jesus tells him to give away everything to the the poor, and to come and follow him. This approach to stuff is what taking up your cross ultimately looks like — and it’s a death to self that I’m still working on in my own life. The bloke can’t do it, and Jesus says those famous words:

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven…”

Now. Giving away everything doesn’t actually get you into heaven; there is grace even for my inability to totally kill my idolatry of my stuff and my comfort. Part of the point of the stories about Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel up until the crucifixion are to show that Jesus is the only truly faithful law-fulfiller. The Sermon On The Mount is first about him, and its an exploration of what it looks like to fulfil the humanly impossible Old Testament command to “be holy because I (God) am holy”… When the disciples are blown away by how big this command sounds and ask “who can be saved” if this is required, Jesus says:

“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

What he calls the rich man to do is what he did when confronted with temptation, and what he did in his whole earthly life, up to and including the Cross. And that’s what makes following him the way; this means both following his example (discipling ourselves to become like him, or ‘worshipping him’) and relying on him as the one who actually achieves the righteousness God commands.

Following Jesus means changing who we worship — where we look to for identity and satisfaction — it means shifting our eyes from the things of this world to the one seated ‘in his Father’s glory’ — and having that change the way we live. It means ditching our old habits and consumption, and switching it for something else; not just mastering our vices but taking up virtues. Idols don’t just get killed they get replacedMinimalism offers a compelling picture of a replacement for the idol of worldly physical treasures, only it replaces them with other worldly things; one guy they interview says his whole approach to life is built on the idea that this is all there is, and our time is all we have. When Paul reflects on what it means to become a ‘new self’ with new worship in Colossians 3, he does something interesting that parallels Jesus’ call to pursue treasure in heaven by talking quite concretely about how we live here on earth. He starts by connecting us to Jesus promise that the “Son of Man” would come into his father’s glory:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

And he uses this to call us to put to death the idolatrous parts of our ‘earthly nature’ — our default patterns of looking for meaning through consumption and stuff… to ‘put on the new self’ which is being ‘renewed in the knowledge of the image of its creator’ (and from Colossians 1:15, that’s Jesus, this is about being a disciple, it’s about taking up our cross). Then he gives us this new pattern of living; one not built simply on being more appropriately ‘self-indulgent’ but rather built on putting others first.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Looking for meaning in consumption — the hunt for identity in buying or not buying things — is a vice. It’s destructive; not just for hoarders, but for minimalists as well. If we believe we’re living a good life simply because we’ve adopted simplicity we’re still missing the heart of true worship. The opposite of greed — or the virtue that combats the vice — is not frugality (or minimalism), but generosity. Just as the opposite of gluttony is not abstinence, but hospitality. Generosity and hospitality require a particular approach to stuff that means not finding meaning in it, and not holding on to it — and there’s plenty of great stuff in the habits and philosophies put forward by the people featured in Minimalism that’ll help me (and maybe you) embrace a more generous and hospitable way of life; so long as my approach to stuff is profoundly ‘other-centred’ because my treasures are in heaven. That’s where love kicks in. Which is interesting, because the closing words of Minimalism which is something of a slogan for the Minimalists:

“Love people, use things. The opposite never works.”

The Minimalists have some fantastic stuff to say in Minimalism, but really following Jesus is the way to do this right.

Letters of note

I think this is currently my favourite blog. A veritable treasure trove of missives significant and otherwise. I could spend all day reading through these letters because they satiate both my curiosity about people’s perspective on historical events and my voyeuristic deviance. The letter truly is a window to the author’s soul. Here are some of my favourites…

I think I have posted this Mark Twain one before – so I won’t redo it – but it is, without a doubt, the best complaint letter ever written…


A piece of 2×4 sent to Jimmy Carter by a builder
.

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Dear Jimmy

The general economy may be in a recession but housing is in a depression. Immediate action must be taken to assist our industry – it equals 5 Chrysler Corporations. Thousands of jobs and companies are being lost along with the tax dollars plus added costs i.e. unemployment compensation. Available and affordable funds must be made available now – a good start would be Brooke-Cranston. Where do you expect our children to live? This piece of 2×4 is not wasted if you get the message and then put in your wood burning stove.

L.W.McKENZIE SR. VT.

A letter sent by a disenfranchised Tasmanian pupil to his teacher.

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Mr Broome

Dear Sir

I write this letter for the good of myself and other boys. Instead of you teachers making school a pleasure you make it a perfect misery to those who happen to be a little backward. Referring to myself, I can say that I never did like school but since I came to Rockdale I have just dreaded the thought of school. This, may I say, has all come from your sneering and poking fun at those who are not quite so well on as others. If a boy happens to have a few mistakes instead of you trying to help him in his difficulty you look over his slate, you either cane him, or spell out aloud his foolish mistakes before over 100 boys who are always ready to make fun. This is why there are so many boys who are always ready to play the truant. And therefore instead of me looking forward to school days I just long for the time when I shall receive a sitificut saying that I may leave school. And as manhood draws on I shall look back on my schooldays as a period of misery instead of a period of happiness.

A Margett

Scholar at (Inferior?) Rockdale Public School

Thomas Edison congratulating a fellow engineer on his ingenuity.

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From the Laboratory of Thomas A. Edison

Orange, N.J., Nov. 27, 1926

Mr. W. L. R. Emmet
General Electric Co
1 River Road
Schenectady, N.Y.

My dear Mr. Emmet:-

I want to thank you for your letter of the 23rd, with its enclosure, and at the same time to extend my congratulations to you on the successful outcome of your ideas.

The worst is to come, for it takes about seven years to convert the average man to the acceptance of a solved problem.

With all good wishes to you, I remain

Yours very truly

Thos. A. Edison

TAE:O

And possibly my favourite of all – a conspiracy theorist warning J. Edgar Hoover about the perils of Elvis Presley. I’ll post the whole thing, even though it’s long. Because it is brilliant.

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May 16, 1956

Mr. J Edgar Hoover
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington 25, D. C.

Dear Mr. Hoover,

Elvis Presley press-agented as a singer and entertainer, played to two groups of teenagers numbering several thousand at the city auditorium here, Monday, May 14.

As newspaper man, parent, and former member of Army Intelligence Service, I feel an obligation to pass on to you my conviction that Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States.

Although I could not attend myself, I sent two reporters to cover his second show at 9:30 p.m. besides, I secured the opinions of others of good judgment, who had seen the show or had heard direct reports of it. Among them are a radio station manager, a former motion picture exhibitor, an orchestra player, and a young woman employee of a radio station who witnessed the show to determine its value. All agree that it was the filthiest and most harmful production that ever came to La Crosse for exhibition to teenagers.

When Presley came on the stage, the youngsters almost mobbed him, as you can judge from the article and pictures enclosed from May 15 edition of the La Crosse TRIBUNE. The audience could not hear his “singing” for the screaming and carrying on of the teenagers.

But eyewitnesses have told me that Presley’s actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. One eye-witness described his actions as “sexual self-gratification on the stage,” — another as “a striptease with clothes on.” Although police and auxiliaries were there, the show went on. Perhaps the hardened police did not get the import of his motions and gestures, like those of masturbation or riding a microphone. (The assistant district attorney and Captain William Boma also stopped in for a few minutes in response to complaints about the first show, but they found no reason to halt the show.)

After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley‘s room at the auditorium, then at the Stoddard Hotel. All possible police on duty were necessary at the Hotel to keep watch on the teenagers milling about the hotel till after 3 a.m., the hotel manager informed me. Some kept milling about the city till about 5 a.m.

Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls (of whom I have direct personal knowledge) whose abdomen and thigh had Presley’s autograph. They admitted that they went to his room where this happened. It is known by psychologists, psychiatrists and priests that teenaged girls from the age of eleven, and boys in their adolescence are easily aroused to sexual indulgence and perversion by certain types of motions and hysteria, — the type that was exhibited at the Presley show.

There is also gossip of the Presley Fan Clubs that degenerate into sex orgies. The local radio station WKBH sponsors a club on the “Lindy Shannon Show.”

From eye-witness reports about Presley, I would judge that he may possibly be both a drug addict and sexual pervert. In any case I am sure he bears close watch, — especially in the face of growing juvenile crime nearly everywhere in the United States. He is surrounded by a group of high-pressure agents who seem to control him, the hotel manager reported.

I do not report idly to the FBI. My last official report to an FBI agent in New York before I entered the U.S. Army resulted in arrest of a saboteur (who committed suicide before his trial). I believe the Presley matter is as serious to U.S. security. I am convinced that juvenile crimes of lust and perversion will follow his show here in La Crosse.

I enclose article and pictures from May 15 edition of the La Crosse TRIBUNE. The article is an excellent example of the type of reporting that describes a burlesque show by writing about the drapes on the stage. But the pictures, to say the least are revealing. Note, too, that under the Presley article, the editor sanctimoniously published a very brief “filler” on the FBI’s concern for teenage crime. Only a moron could not see the connection between the Presley exhibit and the incidence of teenage disorders in La Crosse.

With many thanks, and with a prayer for God‘s special blessing on your excellent and difficult work for justice and decency.

Sincerely yours,

(Signed)

This is just an hors d’oeuvre there are more than 200 letters posted so far. Brilliant.