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<\/p>\n<\/p>\nOur plane had just begun to approach the Island known as Hispaniola.\u00a0 This large island located in the Caribbean is home to two very unique and distinct nations.\u00a0 On the eastern side of the island is the nation of the Dominican Republic.\u00a0 On the the western side is the country of Haiti.\u00a0 On this particular trip our destination was Port Au Prince Haiti.\u00a0 Our trip was to include playing soccer in remote villages, running Bible school for some local children and helping to landscape a newly built school for a village.\u00a0 What we didn’t know would be included was becoming first hand observers on some of the most imbalanced consumption which has ever happened on the planet. As our plane flew over the border between the two island nations, I was startled by the contrast of the two sides.\u00a0 On the Eastern side, The Dominican Republic was green, luscious and a fully functioning paradise. On the Western side, Haiti was brown, desolate and void of almost any vegetation.\u00a0 Due to poor education, lack of infrastructure and poor conservation habits, what was once a tropical paradise is now an island dessert garbage heap.<\/p>\n
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This past week while reading The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society<\/strong> by Murray Jardine, I was was riveted to the theory that modern day consumerism is not sustainable.\u00a0 Though there are three main theories suggesting this demise, first ecological, second “winner takes all” and third the logic of expressive individualism, I would suggest that each have similar tendencies and effects when one in each of these categories take more than they receive.\u00a0 It looks a little different for the wealthy stock trader on Wall Street living in New York City as compared with the poor migrant worker tending to their trade in the fields of Haiti.\u00a0 However, when either decide to take hold of the resources around them and use them in such a way as to not be restorative they have broken an old commandment known as stealing<\/strong>.\u00a0 At the heart of stealing is to take something which is not yours.\u00a0 Or, as I heard a valued mentor say to me one time, to take more than your share without giving in return.\u00a0 The following are three areas where this value plays itself out in relation to consumerism and its potential imbalance.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n Sustainable Planet…<\/strong> In the book of Genesis, the human race was given the responsibility to care for and sustain God’s work in creation.\u00a0 In a consumer, “winner takes all”<\/strong> culture, many decisions are made from a position which simply doesn’t care or take consideration for the broader ramifications or effects of such actions.\u00a0 In the west I am reminded of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Cutting corners to squeeze a little more financial profit out of an oil rig killed 11 men and left an environmental disaster of epic proportion. In an underdeveloped country such as Haiti, poor education, the burning of trees to produce coal, has left an entire country deforested and without natural resources.<\/p>\n Sustainable Living…<\/strong> Our lives are to be the very expression of our faith.\u00a0 Yet so many of us today live lives of hurry.\u00a0 Ultimately running a pace which leaves our bodies tired, marriages raged, families distant and friendships of convenience.\u00a0 Consumption being the opposite of sustainability we steal from our bodies, marriages and friends.\u00a0 To sustain, we need to pause, slow, be present, with God and others.\u00a0 There may not need to be one more book written about “Changing the Church” if we simply slowed, lived sustainable lives, and stopped taking from God.\u00a0 If we lived this way, I sense those who saw would want to know what brought such balance and peace.<\/p>\n Sustainable Spirituality…<\/strong> If you’re anything like me, i find it easier to take care of others before taking care of my own soul.\u00a0 Often, I find myself depleted, and in need of soul care.\u00a0 Yet, when I excessively serve I am stealing from my own soul!\u00a0 Subtly over time, excessive giving without balanced Sabbath rest drain our very souls.\u00a0 Once drained and out of the\u00a0 very healthy rhythms our spirituality becomes unsustainable.\u00a0 Silence, solitude, rest and play, all extremely significant in creating a sustainable spirituality for your own soul.\u00a0 Remember, in 2013, no person, organization or religious institution will do this for you.\u00a0 You must create it yourself.<\/p>\n A Society of Unlimited Potential. <\/strong><\/p>\n We have the ability to restore or destroy. The planet, our bodies and our souls are all sustainable if we learn how to balance what we give and how much we take.\u00a0 I am reminded of the these extremes in the Disney Pixar movie named WALL E.\u00a0 WALL E is a robot created by humans for the purpose of cleaning up waste left by their hyper consumeristic society.\u00a0 Here is a clip from Wall E where the extreme, if unchecked could happen to our planet, lives and souls.<\/p>\n The extremes between wealthy western consumerism and underdeveloped poor consumers seems drastic, yet the result is the same.\u00a0 When we take more than we give, we are not being care takers the way God intended.<\/p>\n How are you caring for God’s Creation?<\/strong><\/p>\n How are you caring for your physical body?<\/strong><\/p>\n How are you caring for your soul?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our plane had just begun to approach the Island known as Hispaniola.\u00a0 This large island located in the Caribbean is home to two very unique and distinct nations.\u00a0 On the eastern side of the island is the nation of the Dominican Republic.\u00a0 On the the western side is the country of Haiti.\u00a0 On this particular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"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":[2,6],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-jardine","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}