According to William Cavanaugh, the world we live in doesn\u2019t promote freedom but isolation. There\u2019s nothing \u201cfree\u201d about a market that promotes \u201cautonomy\u201d as it\u2019s highest goal. Freedom is found in deep human connection, not in isolation. In his concise book, \u201cConsuming Religion,\u201d he makes four simple points: 1. In our free market society, we are actually not free, but addicted; 2. We severed the connection between production and consumption; 3. In a globalized society, \u201ceverything is available but nothing matters\u201d; and 4. Those who live with abundance lack concern for those who live in scarcity.<\/p>\n
What I will focus on for the purpose of this post is how Cavanaugh, by identifying the problem of consumerism as a problem of isolation, the author is offering a theological corrective to the Western world\u2019s embedded belief regarding the fundamental human problem. What I will begin to argue is that the consumerism of the free market society both arises out of, while continuing to re-enforce, the theological fallacy that the fundamental human problem is death.<\/p>\n
Cavanaugh argues that consumerism is not about buying, but about shopping. It\u2019s not that we are a culture of hoarders\u2014although, my father who owns mini-storage facilities throughout Southern California might suggest otherwise\u2014but a culture of buyers. We dispose of things. We get rid of them so that we can buy something new. Of course, this becomes an addictive habit like gambling or pornography, that if taken all the way, can lead to homelessness, or as Cavanaugh would argue, isolation. He writes, \u201cIn the ideology of the free market, freedom is conceived as the absence of interference from others. There are no common ends to which our desires are directed. In the absence of such ends, all that remains is the sheer arbitrary power of one will against the other.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n Cavanaugh does well to point to Augustine to establish a biblical eschatology that interprets human freedom and desire, in order to \u201center into particular judgments of what kinds of exchanges are free and what kinds are not.\u201d[2]<\/a> He further argues with Augustine, \u201cFreedom is being wrapped up in the will of God, who is the condition of human freedom. Being is not autonomous; all being participates in God, the source of being.\u201d[3]<\/a> Not only this, but all being participates in relationship with others. As Desmond Tutu would say, \u201cI am because we are.\u201d A heroine addict cannot free himself, and therefore, \u201cautonomy\u201d has little to do with freedom.<\/p>\n Where Cavanaugh comes up short, in my estimation, is his lack of discussion on the relationship between death and consumption. One could argue that every human fear finds its origin in the fear of death, and consumerism is basically our attempt to overcome this fear through the practice of avoidance. Every item we purchase is, in one way or another, intended to improve life. In this way, we are constantly trying to separate ourselves from our immanent death. How many billions of dollars are spent every year in the \u201chealth and beauty\u201d industry so that we can proclaim to the world, \u201cLook everyone, I\u2019m not dying!?\u201d<\/p>\n As Christians, we transfer this into our biblical imagination, and we offer (perhaps like a product, according to Miller) eternal life for those who surrender themselves to the way of Jesus. Therefore, both shopping at the mall and going to church are not all that different in their promotion of death avoidance. Traditions that choose not to observe Good Friday are perhaps the guiltiest of us all. We sell Christianity as a get-out-of-death-free card. Most evangelical Protestants would agree that Jesus came to save us from death. The embedded belief, then, is that death is our fundamental human problem that God has come to fix. Consumers try to overcome that with shopping, and Christians, with prayer. But neither the Bible, nor the teaching of the Church throughout history, ever claimed that death is our fundamental problem. In fact, death is the portal to new life! A prerequisite!<\/p>\n The Church has always taught us that the fundamental human problem is not death, but isolation.[4]<\/a> Living in isolation for all eternity is an image of hell, not heaven. This is why John\u2019s Gospel goes to great lengths in the Prologue to remind the readers that first, Jesus was with<\/em> God in the beginning, before the creation of the cosmos, and then that God came to be with<\/em> us in order to save us from our isolation from God, self, and all creation. The fundamental problem addressed by the Gospel, therefore, is not death, but eternal isolation.<\/p>\n While Cavanaugh understands that consumerism is problematic because it creates isolation, he misses the underlying problem, namely, that consumerism is our continuously failing attempt to overcome our fear of death. In other words, Cavanaugh seems to be only addressing the symptoms of the problem. The deeper issue is that we have misdiagnosed the fundamental problem that \u201cfree market capitalism\u201d seeks to address.<\/p>\n Christians, therefore, ought to be working to shift our understanding of the fundamental human problem and God\u2019s response, as the lens through which we consider both our spending as well as our liturgical practices. Cavanaugh knows this intuitively though he fails to name it as such: we\u2019ve got to get over our addiction to shopping as a way to avoid death; we have to re-establish our connection between the products we buy and the ones who produced them; and we have to be concerned for those who live in scarcity. Cavanaugh\u2019s discussion on scarcity and abundance alludes to the human fear of death, but until we take seriously the fallacy of this misplaced fear, the isolation that comes from consumerism will continue to force it\u2019s way upon the world.<\/p>\n But if Christians see our core problem as isolation, then we have a deeper basis to address the problems of \u201cfree market capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> William T. Cavanaugh,\u00a0Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire<\/em>\u00a0(Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2008), 2.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Ibid., 2.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Ibid., 8.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Samuel Wells, \u201c’We Are Never Alone’,\u201d\u00a0Faith and Leadership<\/em>\u00a0(blog),\u00a0Leadership Education at Duke Divinity<\/em>, February 8, 2009,\u00a0https:\/\/www.faithandleadership.com\/samuel-wells-\u2018we-are-never-alone\u2019<\/a>\u00a0(accessed February 15, 2018).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to William Cavanaugh, the world we live in doesn\u2019t promote freedom but isolation. There\u2019s nothing \u201cfree\u201d about a market that promotes \u201cautonomy\u201d as it\u2019s highest goal. Freedom is found in deep human connection, not in isolation. In his concise book, \u201cConsuming Religion,\u201d he makes four simple points: 1. In our free market society, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16480,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16479\/revisions\/16480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}