Saturday, October 23, 2010

Economics as the Possession Not the Pursuit of Happiness

Being ConsumedBeing Consumed by William T. Cavanaugh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cavanaugh argues that globalism is a counterfeit of the church. Consumerism is the worldview that drives the structures of globalism and it is a direct challenge to the Christian faith. Cavanaugh writes:

Consumer culture is one of the most powerful systems of formation in the contemporary world, arguably more powerful than Christianity. While a Christian may spend an hour per week in church, she may spend twenty-five hours per week watching television, to say nothing of the hours spent on the Internet, listening to the radio, shopping, looking at junk mail and other advertisements. Nearly everywhere we lay our eyes -- gas-pump handles, T-shirts, public restroom walls, bank receipts, church bulletins, sports uniforms, and so on -- we are confronted by advertising.
Such a powerful formative system is not morally neutral; it trains us to see the world in certain ways. As all the great faiths of the world have attested, how we relate to the material world is a spiritual discipline. As one corporate manager frankly put it, 'Corporate branding is really about worldwide beliefs management' (47-48).


Consumerism seeks to exploit our restlessness, while Christianity seeks to cure our restlessness. St. Augustine, Cavanaugh's primary discussion partner and guide, once "confessed," "Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee."


Thus the worldview of consumerism and its quasi church of globalism with its sacraments of technology are  idols meant to replace Christ, his universal church, and the sacraments of bread and wine. Cavanaugh shows that as we consume we become more "detached" from the things we consume. Because consumerism is based on desire for desire instead of the object that is desired, we constantly throw away what we consume as we move on to our next purchase.


But in the Eucharist (the Lord's Supper/communion) we become consumed by what we consume. Instead of detachment, we experience greater attachment to Christ and thus satisfaction in Him. Cavanaugh points out that in consumerism possession kills desire, but in the Eucharist possession transforms and satisfies desire. This is because God made us for himself. We were created to know God and enjoy him forever (Westminster Confession of Fatih), but we worship and serve the creation instead of the Creator (Romans 1).


Cavanaugh expertly diagnoses the problem but he also gives solutions, at least on the individual and local level. Cavanaugh is not as ascetic who is trying us feel guilty about consuming materials. He wants to reform our view of what we consume. Every created object contains traces of the Creator. When we use created things we should be enjoying the Creator. Created objects don't satisfy us when they are treated as an end in themselves. The satisfy us when we use them to point us to their source in God. Thus, the things of earth don't go strangely dim, as the misguided hymn says, but they grow, as one of my friends likes to say, "strangely alive."


Cavanaugh brings in Hans Urs von Balthasar for a philosophical discussion of how we see the universal and the particular united in Christ. In globalization we see only particulars unrelated to anything universal or as mere interchangeable stand-ins for the universal (as in the liberal idea that all religions lead to God so it doesn't matter which one). Thus particulars are dispensable. But in the incarnation of Christ, we see the universal Son united with the finite Jesus. By becoming man, God makes room for every particular. Every material object, just like Christ's humanity, can be set apart for God's purpose.


God created us to create under him. Thus we should consume what we produce and produce what we consume. Cavanaugh realizes that we can't produce everything we consume, so he says we should consume locally and get to know our producers in order to make God-glorifying choices.


We don't realize that our clothes, coffee and other consumables are produced by poor people in third world countries who are being exploited by businesses feeding our consumption. Do we know how our God-given cows are being treated? Cavanaugh does. He buys his beef from a local farmer who feeds his herds healthy, naturally produced food instead of drugs meant only to bulk them up. The cows are clean and not penned up in their own muck. Does the meat cost more? Definitely, but a little less beef goes much farther in terms of satisfaction. Adam Smith could not have been more wrong when he said that the market provides all the knowledge necessary for the consumer to make rational choices for the common good.


Cavanaugh argues that Adam Smith's and Milton Friedman's definition of freedom as the absence of coercion, actually leads to a coercive capitalism. He argues for a return to Augustine's definition of freedom as the ability not just to choose but to choose the Good. We must choose the Good as defined by God who created human nature. Without the Christian understanding of the chief end of man, nothing remains but lust for power through profits.


Cavanaugh compares the Mandarin Co. who outsources jobs to El Salvador with the Mondragon Cooperative Corp. in Spain who hires locally. The Mandarin Co. widens the gap between employer and employee by forcing workers to put up with substandard pay and working conditions. If the workers protest, as they have, the company simply threatens to leave El Salvador for cheaper labor elsewhere. The workers aren't coerced. They have a choice, but few options, and they can't afford the consumables they are producing.


A priest founded the Mondragon Co. on Distributist principles, which means that the employees are owners and the highest paid in the co. only makes six times more than the lowest paid. Compare that to the average CEO who makes 300 times more than the lowest paid worker in a modern corporation. Mondragon is a multi-billion dollar company who has created a healthy, educated local community with low crime rates. "Which has promoted human freedom?" asks Cavanaugh. Neither group is coercing its employees to work there, but one of them as enabled human flourishing and the other is oppressive.


What Cavanaugh doesn't address, and this is probably the major weakness of the book, is how to restructure the state, national, and global economy along the lines of Augustine's definition of human freedom and the principles of Distributism. Distributism seeks not to redistribute wealth through taxation but to distribute ownership to as many people as possible. G K. Chesterton did address how to implement this at the national level, and he needs to be heard along with Cavanaugh.


View all my reviews

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Faith, Works, and Scissors

According to the Bible, works aren't the basis of our relationship with God, but they are a test of whether we believe in that God. If someone said I believe in Christ, but I don't want to be baptized, we would question whether they actually believe. Thus our relationship with God is by faith alone, but if we refuse to do the good works he commands we don't have the faith we think we do. We are Christians by faith but without Christian works we are not Christians.

Thus C. S. Lewis quipped that arguing whether faith or works is more important is like arguing over which blade of the scissors is more important.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Risus bellum!

Spurgeon wrote:
The man who serves his God with his whole heart is apt to forget his surroundings, and to fling himself so completely into his work that the whole of his nature comes into action, and even his humour, if he be possessed of that faculty, rushes into the battle (Eccentric Preachers, pp. 75-76).


I got this quote from Doug Wilson's blog. Risus bellum (Laughter is warfare).

Monday, October 11, 2010

An Artist with a Prophetic Voice

Click on the post title to read a letter to North American churches written by Makoto Fujimura. He is an abstract impressionist with a prophetic and learned voice.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

What a God, What a Gift!

When the Greek men thought of an Almighty god, they created a lightening wielding, womanizer whose every seduction resulted in a pregnancy. Zeus fathered at least 100! God equals ultimate virility.

When the Hebrews received revelation from the one true God, he was "holy, holy, holy," and sex was his gift of one-flesh union to married couples. This loving union participated in the creative ability of God's own love. Out of the loving union of the Trinity, flowed creative acts that created people in his image ex nihilo. Out of the loving union of the married couple, flowed a creative act that produced children in the image of God. What a gift, what a God!!

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Let's Talk About Conversation

Conversation: A History of a Declining ArtConversation: A History of a Declining Art by Stephen Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Miller traces the history of the "conversible world" of friends and acquaintances who discussed the big ideas of their day and how they shaped their world. The ancient world gets short shrift, but the 18th c. British  coffee houses get their due. Miller covers the likes of Samuel Johnson and David Hume and their discussion partners and contrasts this golden age of conversation with the lack of meaningful conversation happening today. Miller argues that the conversible world has shrunk. People no longer visit coffee houses for conversation but to use the wifi. We prefer friends at out fingertips rather than face time for important issues. Contrast this with the world of Johnson and Hume who made face time with friends one of the greatest joys of their intellectual lives.  


Johnson and Hume work well as about the only value they shared in common was a love of conversation. It would have been quite a spectacle had they ever met for coffee. Hume was the consummate skeptic who despised people who thought they were the most interesting topic of conversation. Miller agrees as he makes Rousseau the villain of this history. Rousseau thought his life worthy of a "Confessions" not written to God, like Augustine's Confessions, but to his fellow man. Rousseau's audience was evidently supposed to think that Rousseau's Confessions were some sort of anti-septic for all his questionable deeds.


Johnson sought out conversation to cure his melancholy. Recent research (not from Miller) has shown that it is a natural drug more helpful than any anti-depressant, though the anti-depressant can help get you out of the pit and back into the coffee house. Johnson and Miller like raillery and badinage instead of preoccupation with the self. Raillery is the jocular intellectual dueling that isn't underhanded but usually so over the top that it's just good clean fun for those who don't take themselves too seriously. Badinage is playful conversation that is usually refined by intellectual and experiential knowledge. It reminds me of GK Chesterton's tremendous trifles.


Miller's book is never dull, despite what other reviewers have said on Goodreads, and is a veritable gold mine of wisdom for learning the ropes of good conversation. If you want a practical guide for avoiding boredom and conversation stoppers and stimulating community then Miller's book is a great place to start. From a worldview perspective, Miller is a secularist who values religion for the issues it raises for rational discussion. He finds his religious friends, even those who accept the authority of the Bible, to be great discussion partners.


Miller however, never addresses the challenge that secularism poses to substantive conversation. Secularism promotes the idea that people must check their ultimate commitments at the door of public debate. This is the real conversation stopper and the greatest weakness of the book. Miller's work does serve as a good reminder that curiosity is born in conversation which demands a conversing community of honest intellectuals. This is a declining ideal.


View all my reviews