{"id":9,"date":"2014-07-14T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T09:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=9"},"modified":"2014-08-11T20:34:28","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T20:34:28","slug":"everyone-sing-it-with-me-consumption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/everyone-sing-it-with-me-consumption\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyone sing it with me…”Consumption, Consumption…What’s Your Function?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog post is being driven from reading William T. Cavanaugh\u2019s Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire<\/em> and Vincent J. Miller\u2019s Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture<\/em>.<\/p>\n

However, I have recently written another blog post on a related reading dealing with economics, socio-political interaction and faith.\u00a0 I engaged Max Weber\u2019s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism<\/em> in that post.\u00a0 Weber\u2019s text written over 100 years ago (1904\/1905; translated into English, 1930) remarkably shines through in both of the texts that I am focusing on now.<\/p>\n

Both of these texts do an excellent job showcasing the powerful need for positive alternatives being offered to the 24\/7\/365 inundation so many of us are experiencing of negative economic orientations.\u00a0 As well, both texts, offer some helpful guidance in this area of positive alternatives.<\/p>\n

I like how Cavanaugh discusses not simply eschew the idea of \u201cfree market\u201d just because it has not met expectations.\u00a0 Instead, Cavanaugh queries what it would take to make a market truly free?[1]<\/a> I further appreciate that he doesn\u2019t settle for an answer of negative freedom; for example, just being content with a lack of state intervention.\u00a0 Rather, Cavanaugh encourages exploration into what would be a robust sense of freedom, a flourishing, life-giving sense of exchange.\u00a0 He encourages us to search the Scriptures for these examples and then courageously begin to live into them.\u00a0 He notes that this will not be primarily a top-down approach \u2013 though there is a place for this \u2013 but instead, we need to begin enacting the principles we see the Scriptures calling us to in the here-and-now where we currently reside.<\/p>\n

This enacting of principles in the here-and-now sounds loudly in Cavanaugh\u2019s discussion of Hans Urs Von Balthasar\u2019s notion of the \u201cuniversal Body of Christ\u201d overcomes the superficiality of the \u201cuniversal gaze.\u201d\u00a0 We are able to healthily appropriate the universal in the Body of the Christ in each of our particular\/local interactions.\u00a0 However, our focus on global identity (on globality), often turns our \u201cuniversal gaze\u201d into \u2013 in my term \u2013 a \u201cuniversal glaze.\u201d\u00a0 This isn\u2019t always the case.\u00a0 There are ways around this glazing to become more rooted at the same time as broadening one\u2019s horizons, but it is a strong tendency and negative examples abound.<\/p>\n

Miller\u2019s text sits well in conversation with Cavanaugh\u2019s.\u00a0 Miller is concerned with the idea of commodification throughout the text and how this leads us to unconscious acceptance \u2014 through habitual acts \u2013 of what amounts to essentially contextless material to us.\u00a0 We know little to nothing often about where it came from, what it\u2019s really made of, the process whereby it was produced, the person or persons involved in the process, various entities to which our monies are going to in relation to our buying the product, etc.<\/p>\n

It is safe to say in the eyes of these authors that we are first and foremost not consumers.\u00a0 For that matter, we are first and foremost not even producers.\u00a0 First and foremost we are simply human.\u00a0 We are image bearers of the identity of God that have worth above-and-beyond any particularities of action in which we engage.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t meant to lessen responsibility and consequences for actions, it is instead meant to allow for the free-choosing of better actions due to not feeling inordinately driven by unhealthy existential pressures.<\/p>\n

I highly recommend these texts as materials to assist in the grappling of living well on the face of this wonderful planet that we are meant to care for as a creation of the God we serve.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t always done so well at caring for the Earth all around us, but I\u2019d like to think that the more that we stop focusing on what we don\u2019t have and more on the amazingness of who we already are and the miracle of our Being the more likely we\u2019ll be freeing ourselves up to live well for God, for ourselves, for others and for the sake of the earth all around us.<\/p>\n

What would it really mean for us to believe that God will supply all of our needs, that God really does care for us like the sparrow and the grass of the fields, etc.?\u00a0 How might that kind of trust transform our lives and the lives around us for the better?<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> William T. Cavanaugh, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Grand Prapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), x.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog post is being driven from reading William T. Cavanaugh\u2019s Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire and Vincent J. Miller\u2019s Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture. However, I have recently written another blog post on a related reading dealing with economics, socio-political interaction and faith.\u00a0 I engaged Max Weber\u2019s The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"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":[2,9],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-millercavanaugh","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","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\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1325,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/1325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}