End Times Preaching and Love
August 11, 2011 § Leave a Comment
I’m struggling lately as reports of economic failure and mob violence fill the news with the knowledge of how a portion of the Christian community is going to interpret these events. I grew up in a theology I think all too common that these are the “end times” and involved predictions of apocalyptic chaos and meltdown just on the horizon. Such fear-mongering talk was generally used as an incentive to combat “sexual immorality,” by which I mean sex , particularly sex outside of marriage and non-heteronormative sex, and to see economic collapse and chaos as God punishing our society. To ease our terror, preachers who frequently gave this sort of “doomsday” preaching would invite people to repent and feel protected in drawing closer within a conservative religious view. I’ve actually read very specific plans for hording food in small urban apartments, though to be fair, the stress was put on sharing resources when possible and dependence on God in this book.
I am distressed by the combination of clarity and confusion represented in such preaching. The awareness of something amiss, of a society on a track that leads to disaster coupled with a vague moral analysis that creates a sense of dependence and also separateness and moral superiority to a collective of sinful others, usually the same scapegoats repeated in history especially sexual “deviants”, seems to first draw increased consciousness to the surface then provide a ready escape from self-awareness and the taking of personal responsibility. This sort of paternalistic guidance towards awareness and resulting fear then into the relief of a comfortable compartmentalization even more heavily defended by the authority of religious rhetoric seems to be part of a massive tendency towards denial in our society. So much work and feeling goes into maintaining a willed ignorance and inaction , while the problems underlying so much suffering in our culture continue to be veiled and unmet with creative solutions.
To my mind, it does not take a prophet to look at American society or the global economy and say disaster is coming. The meltdown of capitalist consumerism has been predicted since it was invented, not so very long ago. Anyone maintaining some rational or intuitive awareness in this culture can see and feel for themselves how much untended suffering and rage, bitterness and despair there is permeating our society and see the devastation to life caused by our practices of gathering materials, manufacturing and consumption. Consumerism fosters an ethic that is essentially the antithesis to a love ethic, cultivating ever-increasing dependence and strategically intensifying dissatisfaction as a method of making us vulnerable to manipulative marketing. The goal is to increase our consumption without alleviating our desire to consume, to keep us empty and unfulfilled.
It does not take a prophet to recognize a distressing reality, but to see within it a vision of what could be instead and how to get us there. I believe what we really need, especially in our spiritual leaders, are people who are aware of the reality of our culture and name it for what it is, see its genuine roots, and who can urge others towards the pain of self-awareness and taking responsibility, and yet keep them from resulting despair by offering also a vision of alternatives. We need to see our current culture for what it is, yet also to envision a society truly founded on a love ethic, in which spiritual growth and autonomy are valued and supported and human needs both basic and spiritual are consistently and abundantly met to replace the exploitative ethic of consumerism we have now.
Riots in England, The “Consumer Society” Riots
August 10, 2011 § 1 Comment
I’ve been reading up on the riots in England. Despite all the coverage, I had to dig around for a while to find any assessment of what is happening on a human level. I only found a few small assessments, including one reference to the riots as the “consumer society riots.” I did some of my own thinking about it and thought I would post it here.
What upsets me most in the representation of the rioters as countercultural. Descriptions seem to cast them as outliers, completely random and terrifying to the status quo – the idea that someone would do violence without empathy and do so specifically to get at consumer goods as unprecedented and shocking. Yet corporations, advertisers, and a large majority of everyday people do exactly that within a carefully structured ideology. Through a careful balance of compartmentalization, they show every sign of these allegedly shocking, psychotic tendencies as they lack empathy for the suffering caused by their lifestyles and actions for the sake of monetary gain, that is, to get at “stuff.”
Wendell Berry has pointed out that there is no true distinction now between peacetime and wartime, as the ecological catastrophes and suffering that mark times of war are now everyday norms. In that same vein, there is no true distinction between good citizens and looters. They’re not opposites – the blatant and disorderly violence and robbery taking place should mark flashpoint of increased consciousness for how thinly our coat of morality paints modern society. I see the major thing that distinguishes the rioters from other people is that being held off from an unethical society’s rewards has built up enough rage in them to push past the overarching mentality of fear that is the thread holding the fabric of our supposedly moral societies together.
I don’t think it’s really genuine to condemn, or to honor, the rioters as countercultural. They aren’t breaking down the system by emulating its mentality in a less controlled way. A lot people with the will to do violence, the willingness to kill will never change the way things are. What we need is a lot of people with the will not to do violence and to die, the rebirth of a narrative of cultural critique entwined with a vision of an authentically alternative society forged by a love ethic and for this to be spoken by people all over the place. I think the riots should come as no surprise, and urge us onwards towards self-awareness, to look at the value systems underlying our everyday actions and whether they are authentic and satisfying to us, and to teach ourselves and one another to have the creativity to imagine new ways of being and the boldness to make them manifested in the world.
