Less shopping

I've been preparing to preach the first couple of chapters of Micah at CCC, to kick off our advent series.  One of the things that is unavoidable in the chapters is that amongst the sins for which Samaria and Jerusalem are condemned - which include idolatry and a rejection of God's word - is the sin of greed, and oppression through greed.

They covet fields and seize them,
and houses, and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house,
a man and his inheritance.

Of course this goes together with the rejection of the true God and his word.  Either you trust him, or you seek to establish your own security.  One way to go about that is to ensure that you have more of everything than anyone else.  Then again, if your delight is not in him, you will find it in your stuff, and because stuff is not actually that satisfying you will need to be constantly topping up your stuff.

It's really easy to condemn our society along these lines.  We have built an economic system which relies on persuading us that we need more things, and even that we ought to be prepared to go into debt to get them.  In the US, there is the bizarre phenomenon of a day dedicated to giving thanks for what people have and enjoy being followed directly by a day dedicated to getting more stuff; in the UK, we are cursed by having retailers try to persuade us that 'Black Friday' is an important shopping day, even though we don't even mark Thanksgiving!

But one of the striking things about Micah is that complaints which one might expect to find directed at 'the world' are in fact directed at God's people.  I think that's how verses 2 through 5 of chapter 1 work.  Verses 2 to 4 use characteristic imagery to describe God coming in judgement from his temple - no doubt this would get a cheer for Micah's audience in Judah.  But then in verse 5 it emerges that it is Israel and Judah's sin which has drawn forth the judgement.  They are the targets of God's wrath.

So we in the church have to ask ourselves: how have we been different?  How, in particular, have we resisted consumerism?  It strikes me that this needs to be more than just standing against the particular excesses of acquisitiveness.  We are not, on the whole, ostentatious.  Just comfortable.  But is 'just comfortable' sufficiently different to really witness to the world that our delight and trust are in God and not in stuff?  If we were in the presence of alcoholics, we might restrict ourselves from an otherwise totally legitimate drink, as a witness and as a help.  I wonder if, given our society of shop-aholics, if we ought not to restrict even legitimate purchases.

This is a rebuke for me.  I am not by nature a thrifty person.  But I am going to try to do less shopping - especially on Friday...

Homo Economicus

Here is some cheery analysis of the subordination of human beings to economic techniques, from Jacques Ellul, writing originally in 1954:

The bourgeois morality was and is primarily a morality of work...  Work purifies, ennobles; it is a virtue and a remedy.  Work is the only thing that makes life worthwhile; it replaces God and the life of the spirit.  More precisely, it identifies God with work: success becomes a blessing.  God expresses his satisfaction by distributing money to those who have worked well...  This attitude was carried so far that bourgeois civilization neglected every virtue but work.

Sound at all like the Conservative Party Conference?

For the proletariat the result was alienation...  It might be thought that the primacy of the economy over man (or rather the possession of man by the economy) would have come into question.  But unfortunately, the real, not the idealized, proletarian has concentrated entirely on ousting the bourgeoisie and making money...  For the proletariat, as for the bourgeoisie, man is only a machine for production and consumption.

Sound at all like the modern Labour Party?

The counterpart of the necessary reduction of human life to working is its reduction to gorging.  If man does not already have certain needs, they must be created.  The important concern is not the psychic and mental structure of the human being but the uninterrupted flow of any and all goods which invention allows the economy to produce.

In summary:
Money is the principal thing; culture, art, spirit, morality are jokes and not to be taken seriously.  On this point there is once again full agreement between the bourgeoisie and the Communists.

Here's the thing - modern life is not characterised by the conflict between right and left.  That just sits on top of a very substantial agreement over ends and means.  The end is the efficient functioning of the economy, and the means is the efficient marshalling of human capital and the efficient exploitation of natural and artificial resources.  If there is some difference as to how these means are to be established, they are relatively trivial.  Capitalism and Communism are both examples of economic techniques which dehumanise man and turn him into a machine - and therefore each individual into a very small cog in the machine.

How is one to fight against this?  Surely not by planning a better economic or political life; this is just to replace the current technique with another.  We must refuse the invitation to be inhuman, even if that means refusing the invitation to be wealthy and comfortable.  We must live for other things - really live for them, not just use them as distraction and refreshment around the edges of our work.  For Christians and for churches, I think it means resisting the encroachment of technique in the Church.  We are not there to be efficient, or to utilise people, or to complete the plan, but to know and enjoy the living God.

And that is revolutionary.

Economical with the truth

I am not an economist, or the son of an economist, but I have spotted a few aggravating untruths which are being either assumed or actively preached in much of the current debate over the British economy.  Rather than allow my annoyance to build up to levels where I am in danger of bursting every time I watch the news, I thought I'd vent here.  Thanks for listening.

1.  In the normal course of things, we can expect to get continually richer.  This has left- and right-wing versions, although increasingly they sound pretty similar.  The gist of both is that if only the other guys hadn't done something wrong - fiddled with the market, or failed to fiddle with the market - then the good ship capitalism would be sailing along quite happily providing more and more wealth to more and more people.  This is twaddle.  There is no guarantee that we will get richer - no "British promise".

2.  There has been a catastrophic failure in the system, but we can fix it.  The system hasn't failed.  What we are going through is a painful market adjustment, which is what the market is meant to do.  If something is over-valued, even if that thing is the whole of the British economy, then eventually the bubble will burst.  This is the system working.  Maybe we don't like the system - you're welcome to propose a better one - but let's not pretend that this is some sort of aberration.  It is business as normal.

3.  We are poor.  No, we're not.  In the grand scheme of things, I imagine everyone reading this is stupendously rich by global standards.

4.  People in the public sector are paid less than people in the private sector.  There is no evidence that this is true.

5.  You have to allow people to be paid stupid sums of money or they will take their business overseas.  There is no evidence that this is true.

6.  The rich don't pay enough tax.  Actually, the top 1% of earners pay a whopping 27% of all income tax.

7.  We can have it all.  No, we can't.  If we live longer, we have to pay more.  If we want more money, we have to work harder.

8.  Wealth will make us happy.  And that's the big one.  The whole debate is predicated on the idea that becoming more wealthy is the goal.  Theologically, this is the idolisation of money, but even putting this to one side it's pretty stupid, and yet utterly pervasive.  Money won't make you happy and it won't fix our social ills.

Here endeth the rant.  That feels much better.

Cuts and Motives

So, here comes the budget.  And here come the cuts.  It's going to hurt.

But permit me, for a moment, to delve into something which I think is important: the motives for these cuts in public spending.  A lot of people I know have already started banging the 'evil old Tories' drum - you know the one: the Tories love the rich, the Tories hate the poor, the Tories want to protect the privileged whilst grinding the worker into the dust.  That sort of thing.  I find it painful to listen to, and I want my friends to understand this. I believe in these cuts.  That doesn't mean I think they're going to be great.  Some of them I think are a good idea, like tightening up the welfare system and making sure it pays more to work than it does to claim.  Others I think are an unfortunate necessity in the economic climate, like not building a visitors' centre at Stonehenge, or cutting arts funding.  And I understand that for many people - including people I know and love - these cuts will mean personal hardships and even tragedies.  I get that.  But I think it is necessary for us as a nation to spend less - much less.  There it is.

Now, I wonder whether my friends think I hate the poor?  Maybe they do.  If that were so, that would make me a rubbish Christian, and, let's face it, a pretty awful human being.  But I promise you it isn't the case: I genuinely believe that this is better for all of us in the long run.  Of course, you may think I'm wrong.  But do you also think I'm evil?

I hope not many of my friends think that I am evil.  In which case, I want to ask them to hold off on assuming that Dave, George and co are necessarily evil.  If, just for a moment, we assumed that the people we disagreed with might have good motives, wouldn't that lead to a more constructive debate about the way forward?

To put it another way, it would be very easy for me to write off all my leftish friends as people who hate success, are driven by envy, and desperately want to take away economic freedom.  That would, of course, be facile and frankly idiotic analysis.  I don't think that.  I think my leftish friends are wrong; but I think their motives are good.  It would be nice if the compliment were extended in the opposite direction.

End of rant.  As you were.