It has to be anticipated
Then, it has to be imagined.
And then enacted.
And then, after a little while, it has to be re-evaluated and re-imagined and re-enacted. It really is going to be a way of life. A full-time job, if you will.
Our First Anticipation?
Well it starts with an evaluation of the state of things: in certain ways, we are afflicted with affluence.
Accosted by our clutter.
Our freedom of choice has made it for us such that every desire is just as valuable as every other. This is nihilism. Everything has equal value, so nothing has any value. This is as true of our material possessions as it is of our responsibilities and commitments. We’ve got lots of stuff and we’ve got lots of stuff going on. The more we get, the less meaningful any particular thing is. We’ve got an abundance in quantity, but a poverty in quality.
So, we anticipate a way of life that has quantitatively less, but qualitatively more.
We’re pretty sure that in order to make it in the Wilderness and live this Kingdom lifestyle, we’ve got to do so with less. Less money. Fewer obligations. Less stuff. Fewer distractions. With what’s left, we’ll hope to give (and get) more. More time. More attention. More effort. More love. We want a simpler, but richer, life.
Quantitatively less, but qualitatively more.
In practice, this will be hard for people to understand. We will get less done. We’ll reach fewer people. We’ll make less ‘progress.’ You just can’t achieve very much this way.
However, we’ve been discovering, as we grow up more, that doing things well, doing things right, requires time and attention, patience and perseverance. I’ve learned this concretely in my stay-sane-in-graduate-school hobby of baking. If you rush, you’ll screw up your measurements. If you don’t set out enough time, you’re bread won’t rise correctly. If you skimp on the quality of your ingredients, things won’t taste right. If you don’t make the same recipe again and again, lovingly examining your results each time and being honest about the product, you’ll never get that really transcendent muffin. That remarkable chocolate chip cookie.
The Empire doesn’t reward this. It’s inefficient. The American Empire, after all, is the civilization that brought us the Twinky. Cheap. Mass produced. High volume. Flavorless. And really, really bad for you.
No, we don’t want fast, cheap, plentiful and busy. We want intentional, rich, selective and deliberate.
We want to do and have less, more richly.
In order to make “doing and having less, more richly” work, we’re going to have to do it together. In fact, if we have one beef with how John the Baptist did his thing, its that he went out there alone. Maybe he was just a more robust guy than the two of us, but we know that if we went out there alone, we wouldn’t last a second. We’d be slinking back through the gates of the city, a little embarrassed and with a couple of good stories, but we’d have left Abundant life out there in the woods. It’s just too much to do alone, especially when the Empire’s store rooms are full of sugary Twinkies and Tempur-pedic mattresses and cool cell phones.
This has practical concerns. We can divide costs. Those who are thriving can support those who are struggling. We can fill some of the gaps created by our retreat from a frantic complexity into a richer simplicity. There are spiritual concerns as well. God, for us weird-o Christians is a community: the unity of three persons. If we want to come to be more like God, it means we have to come together into loving communities. Paul understands this when he talks about the church as the Body of Christ, which shares the Spirit but is diverse in its gifts.
So, just to review: we’re seeking to live with less, more richly, together.
A note: What we’re talking about is not just asceticism. We’re not looking to sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake. Sure, some things will have to be sacrificed, but for an ulterior purpose, whether to make space for richer things or because they are incongruent with the story we’re trying to live. Yes, Jesus told the rich young ruler who was obedient in other respects to sell all he owned, give it to the poor and follow him. But that same Jesus praised the woman who “wasted” a bunch of really, incredibly expensive luxury perfume on his filthy, desert-walking feet. The same Jesus made really, really good wine for a bunch of wedding-party-ers already so drunk that they probably didn’t even notice.
When Jesus promises abundant life in the kingdom, he warns about its cost, but he also offers an easy yoke, a light burden and probably more than a couple really excellent all night dance parties.
Okay, I don’t know where he promises dance parties, but if they happen to break out after we eat some godly, eucharistic, sharing, communal meal, I think Jesus would be down.
Do us a favor? In the comments, day dream with us a little about what, if you tried to live with quantitatively less, but qualitatively more, what sort of stuff you’d sacrifice? And then, more importantly, what sort of thing(s) would you focus on, deliberately and abundantly?
Godspeed.
Next Time: What’s the structure of our “togetherness?”
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