I wanted to thank you for putting this together [the Lent 2012 Consumer Detox] – and how very appropriate this is for the times we live in. It seems to be the focus of many people, including those outside the church, to de-clutter their lives. I receive emails from Daily Good and two have really stood out so far: one included a link to this blog http://zenhabits.net/ who is currently dealing with removal of clutter (very practical), and http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=130 which gives some amazing statistics relating to the fact that working longer hours contributes to carbon emissions and unsustainable living.

This year I made 2 new year resolutions:

•  to buy only food, and to make, bake or create everything else.
• to clear out the junk and unused clutter from my home, piece by piece, every day – and yes, we have lived here, with our 5 children (now grown up) for 20 years so this will take me a year!

So far, I have kept them both, and am feeling quite liberated by them. Clearing space frees the mind for other things. Not going shopping is wonderful – I have even discovered that Ocado deliver free to my area on a Wednesday lunch time, so I am saving petrol, time and greenhouse gas emissions! Wonderful!

Thank you so much for your inspiring writing. God bless you on your journey.

Jefferson Bethke

The night Jefferson Bethke, 22, posted his “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” video on YouTube, he made a bet with his mates about how many views the video would get by morning.

The highest bet was 6,000.

By the time Bethke woke up the next day, the video had more than 100,000 views. Eight days after the video was posted, it had been watched more than 14 million times. The number continues to skyrocket.

The video, Bethke said, was an attempt “to write a poem against legalism, self righteousness, self-justification and hypocrisy”. It contains catchy lines like: “The problem with religion is it never gets to the core / It’s just behaviour modification, like a long list of chores” and “I’m just saying quit putting on a fake look / Cause there’s a problem if people only know you’re a Christian by your Facebook”.

The video has been discussed by both religious scholars and armchair theologians. Some point out that pitching Jesus against all religion is too sweeping: Jesus, after all, was a religious Jew. Bethke himself says “You have to get back to my definition of religion. Jesus was coming to abolish self righteousness, justification and hypocrisy.”

In fact, the New Testament’s definition of Jesus’ kind of religion is pretty punchy: “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you” (James 1:27, NLT).

Defending and helping the defenceless, the marginalised? Refusing to swallow the lies of the surrounding culture? That’s the kind of religion Jesus taught and modelled.

Revolutionary religion like that means selling possessions, living simply, sharing with those in need. It means opening your heart and life to others. It means refusing the lie that says “Live for number one”.  It means going beyond the pain barrier, learning to love, committing yourself to working for justice and sticking at it over the long haul.

For me, it meant giving up my own home and sharing it with others, and not having a penny to my name because I share my cash with others, too.

For Jesus, it meant dying for what was right. He calls us to follow Him.

I believe there may be a sequel waiting to be made: “I Love Jesus And I Love The Religion He Loves” – to lay down my life for the marginalized and see through the lies of the mainstream.

Anyway, there’s a great interview with some SERIOUS philanthropists here. There guys have earned millions and given away millions, and I for one am deeply grateful to see that kind of generosity. It’s a 5 minute radio interview and I think there’s lots of great insights in it. ‘I don’t want to be the richest guy in the graveyard’ is a particular gem. So is the moment when he was told ‘it’s not your money, really’. Good stuff.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9669000/9669043.stm

But listening to the clip also made me think that we can all be philanthropists. We can all love others; we can all give. In fact, Jesus was spectacularly unimpressed by the donations of the wealthy in his day. The real giving he was interested in happened quite unnoticed: two small coins into the temple treasury (Luke 21:1-4). But Jesus said it was more than all the other gifts he’d seen (and he’d seen some big ones). Note: he didn’t say ‘guys, do you know what, this widow gave too’. He doesn’t say ‘in a funny way she gave as much as they did. He said ‘she gave more’. So really, truly, think of yourself as a philanthropist. Especially if you give sacrificially.

The radio interview mentions setting a target. If that’s what millionaires can do, maybe that’s what we can do, too. The greatest teaching I ever heard on giving was a guy who simply decided to give the greatest percentage of his income away that he could. Sometimes it was 25%, sometimes 40%, sometimes 30%. The point is that he had an ambition, a target. He’d learned to love to give (does that make him a philophilanthropist?). May it be the same for us.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 29,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Thanks to Edward for these thoughts, but also for agreeing to their being published (in slightly shortened form):

1. Vaccines – Is mass production bad? (Edward to Mark):

I’ve just come back from the vaccination plant that makes millions of vaccinations for children and prevention of some horrible crippling diseases. You will never know who made the mass produced, disposable, obsolete products but they may already have saved your life. Thank goodness for mass production Regards Edward

2. Accelerated obsolescence (Mark to Edward):

Hi Edward,

I think your basic point is a good one: mass production should not be vilified just because of its size; industrial development brings unquestionable benefits for humanity. It is important that any questioning of consumerism take this into account. The poorer nations of the world, I would agree, often need more mass production, not less.

However, just because a system has benefits doesn’t mean that it cannot be improved. Obsolescence is one example of this. I’m not sure that a vaccine qualifies as ‘built to be obsolete’, as I think what Dave had in mind was accelerated obsolescence (can vaccines be continuous-use?).

I, too, am grateful for the many mass-produced things that benefit my life. But I agree with Dave that it is harder to receive such things as a gift. Do you know of people who find it easier to receive such things as a gift? Is your home full of mass-produced, cheap and deliberately short-lived products which you know have been unnecessarily designed to break so as to give you only a marginal use of them? Mass production can be good. But is it always a good in itself? Could we be close here to the meaning of ‘Better a little with the fear of the LORD than great wealth with turmoil’ (Proverbs 15:16).

The debate should continue. But thank you for raising it in such clear and compassionate terms.

God Bless Mark

3. Challenging Questions (Edward to Mark)

Hi Mark Thank you for your thoughtful reply

– I do agree that the original point being made is not fully addressed by the example I gave of vaccines – which aren’t deliberately obsoleting. Thank you for being gracious enough in answering so thoroughly. I goes without saying that mass produced things can a) alienate the maker (a Marxist idea), b) offer little of the ‘giver’ who is also alienated in the production/provision process (your point) – we all know that from our Christmas presents – no one wants plastic or mass ones. I think that there is a sizeable minority of Christians and secular who aren’t just endlessly looking for ‘more, faster’ – in a way Breathe’s view is rather mainstream, rather than outsiders!

A much more challenging set of questions which I would love to have you answer are:

a) The entire premise of your, my material existence, as it is today is based on mass production and automation – your use of the internet, your being able to write books as a normal person and yet eat and sustain a family, your use of marketing techniques in your logo and strap-line……. is underpinned by wealth creation, marketing and production processes which are not honoured or credited by theologians and academics – without it (i.e. the “mass world”), a small elite would still live those lives, but the vast mass would be engaged in back breaking struggle for physical survival (ie. history of man since the beginning of time except last 100 years). My strap line as a business person would be ‘stop kicking us, we’re feeding/connecting/protecting/providing/housing you all’.

b) We are past the point of return on the mass world we live in. The type of agrarian life (hugely attractive), that Breathe may slowly encourage, is not possible in a world of 7 billion people, or 70 million Brits – we need mass to keep us alive. Where are you leading us? Isn’t this a spiritual journey not a physical one?

c) We all want to lead the lives you suggest, “less things, more time” etc etc. However most of us have to work hard in a process/mass economy to eventually afford the lifestyle that would allow us to grow our own food/spend less time working and live lives less dependent on the ‘machine’. Arguably the richest in our society live closest to the Breathe model. It is the poorest socio-economic groups that are most dependent on mass production, plastic and MacDonald’s etc. There is evidence to support this (obesity levels are higher in the poor, because they eat mass presented food).

I am really engaged in the discussion that Breathe is creating, thanks for this. I am yet to be convinced that it is based in life’s realities. Regards Edward

4. The Good Life? (Mark to Edward):

HI Edward,

I think there’s a lot in what you say. Let me respond a bit more to your points :

- I agree that most people are looking for something other than ‘more, faster’. In this good sense I hope that Breathe is indeed mainstream.

- One of Breathe’s key themes has been, and continues to be, thankfulness. We should be thankful for vaccines, rawl plugs and big macs, just as much for sun, moon and stars. I think you are right about the need to credit this, and those involved in the process. Obviously more than that is going on at the present time. What sometimes passes for wealth creation is not always such. There are legitimate debates about the structure of the economy, the extent of financial legislation and the morality of salaries. One could argue precisely that those who feed, clothe and house us all are the migrant workers, industrial labourers and fruit pickers who can get such rough treatment at the hands of the global economy. Thankfulness extends to them, also.

- Breathe does not, and should not, encourage an agrarian life as an ideal. There may be things we can learn from the past; there may be new syntheses of rural community and urban vitality (rather than just embracing everything ‘modern’ as perhaps we see in the case of 1960s architecture!). The question is: what kind of urban life should we live?

- So I would want to resist the idea that Breathe is promoting ‘the good life’ and certainly not the easy life one sees in magazine features – the kids playing on the lawn, I gave up work so I could grow my own veg and read the paper, etc. People may have plenty of time or not enough – the question is how we spend it and how open to God’s gifts we are in the midst of it. People may have high income or not – the question is what we do with what we’ve been given. Breathe is about transferable values: generosity, thankfulness, building community, finding sustainable ways to live. Yes, it is easier for the middle class to ‘buy green / fair trade’. But it is easier for the ‘working class’ to get to know their neighbours. So it’s about how we live ‘within the system’ wherever we find ourselves; and it’s also about transforming the system so that it works better (obesity being a perfect case in point).

5. Hating the tree you’re sat on (Edward to Mark):

Dear Mark

I would like to strive to be committed to 2 things: one is following Christ (most importantly), the second (a subsection of the first) is a truthful and clear understanding of what unpins the lives that we lead in the here and now.

It is the second point where my thoughts and challenges have focussed.  Namely that we exist in a capitalist system (we are in the world, even if not ‘of’ it) and that the lives and wealth and space/peace that we enjoy are a strange fruit of an amoral (rather than immoral) system.  On that basis, bankers (for example) are simply working within a system that exists, and any attack on them is like hating a tree (capitalism) and rather than trying to uproot it, simply ripping the fruit off it and stamping on it in  a temper – it would be a superficial response. Christians are often as wise and gentle as doves.

In a way, I think it is about our “response” (thankfulness, thoughtfulness, local caring, not seeing individuals just as economic units, knowing what matters [knowing the value of everything rather than the price of everything]) – to the world we live in that is where Breathe could impact us to live more Christ-like.

Please carry on stirring us up to live lives worthy of our calling in Christ

Best Christmas wishes

Edward

Some reflections: Mark

It’s a good while since these emails were exchanged, but reading them now they seem as relevant as ever. It was good to be challenged about the purpose of Breathe. It was good, too, to try to get beyond shooting at easy targets to a genuine discussion of our lifestyle today.

At the end of the day, I still want to resist the idea that the system we live in is ‘amoral’. Complex, yes. Amoral, no. To call it amoral might in fact lead us to shirk the hard work of disentangling the good, the bad and the indifferent elements of consumer capitalism. When Jesus told stories of rich farmers who lived in luxury while the poor died at their gates, he didn’t express a view on exactly how the wealth was made. Merely to possess the wealth made it a moral issue. Old Testament law also contains plenty of economic legislation which suggests that keeping Christianity ‘in our hearts’ or even simply ‘in our communities’ is not enough.

As we enter 2012, has the banking system earned back the trust it has recently lost? I don’t believe so. Now, still, we need to hold the debate open. We need to hear the difficult questions about our lifestyle; but we must also be free to ask the difficult questions about the businesses that (should) serve us and our planet.

Thank you Edward for a gracious dialogue.

This is a great new video from the guys at New American Dream. It features powerful research about the way media exposure and materialistic values affect our life satisfaction and shape us as hyper-consumers.

What about the suggestions the video makes? Can better coping strategies and different economic models save the world? On their own, no. We need a better ‘dream’ than just a renewed american dream. Jesus called it the kingdom of God. But though the kingdom is bigger than the ‘nice’ life of psychological balance and economic sustainability, it certainly includes much of what new american dreamers are striving for. To truly know God is a great antedote to the anxiety that drives our consumer habits, if only we could experience this more in our churches and homes. And the revisioned economics of the kingdom should certainly cause us to question our devotion to current ways of measuring growth.

The kingdom is God’s dream for the world he made and loves. One day it will become reality. Today though, God is still looking for dreamers to join him…

Hi there, Last Saturday was Buy Nothing day. As a retailer, we know the last Saturday in November is one of the peak shopping days of the year. I bumped into Buy Nothing day via an interesting interview with Buy Nothing founder, and the man who started the Wall Street protest, Kalle Lasn, in the Independent a week ago.The thinking behind Buy Nothing day is pretty deep, and very much of the moment.Kalle says: “We are going to try and take back our Christmas season from the commercial forces that have hijacked it,” and suggests other options instead, such as a Buy Local, a Buy Fairer, or a Buy Indie, Christmas, or giving a “gift exemption” card to friends and family (instead of a gift voucher).

I gave Buy Nothing day a go, and bought nothing on Saturday. (See twitter.com/nigelsecostore)

It wasn’t that difficult as I was at home, pulling up the living room floor. But then it hit me that we didn’t have enough nice food for both lunch and dinner, and had to dig through the lentils and barley at the back of the cupboard to find something to eat for lunch. It didn’t take long, and was more healthy anyway. There were a few other purchases that I didn’t make that ordinarily I would have.

Buying nothing made me think about what we buy. (And, by association, where it comes from, what it’s made of, and how much it will be used.) Often we don’t stop and think about it.As a retailer it’s easy to get seduced by the idea that our job is to sell more stuff. And Buy Nothing day is, at first look, an uncomfortable idea for us because of that.But as a resourceful eco retailer, we have to get our priorities right and make sure we’re not adding to the stuff and the tat, and the things we don’t really need. For our Christmas campaign and January sale we’ll make sure they’re focussed around usefulness and resourcefulness and buying less.

We’re not alone in this.Sustainable clothing brand Patagonia are telling consumers to buy less of their new range. They make apparel that costs more, but they want you to buy quality that lasts. And they’ve set up a second-hand shop on their site.

There’s also signs that we’re all buying less. The UK reached ‘peak stuff’ this year and that makes me optimistic. If it’s true, ‘peak stuff’ means “it’s highly likely that we are now using fewer materials than at any time on record”.So this Christmas, buy secondhand (Ebay), buy handmade (Etsy), buy something resourceful like Sugru that allows your friends and family to hack, customise, make better, fix, and improve the stuff they already have. If you haven’t already, have a Buy Nothing day before Christmas.A friend of mine has suggested that next year we close the site down for the day to make the point….Nigel

PS we wrote a guide to Christmas a couple of years ago. It’s been popular and if anyone wants a copy it’s available for free as a pdf: Click Here

Treasure in the Fields is a conference run by our friends at Christian Ecology Link, and Breathe is contributing a worshop on ‘consumer detox’. Here are some details, with more on the CEL website here:

Treasure in the Field: Spiritual capital, sustainable living

CEL Conference, Saturday 10 March, with Jonathon Porritt and Tim Gorringe,

Stoke Gifford (near Bristol Parkway station).

Workshops led by Tim Gorringe, Chris Sunderland (EarthAbbey), Jeremy Williams (Breathe), Mark Letcher (Climate Works) and Jonathan Essex (Greenhouse think-tank).

£15  (£10 early-bird price before end January). £5 for young people under 25.

Details and booking form: www.christian-ecology.org.uk/treasure

“Thanks. It used to be my sister’s”.

This is my regular retort, so overused and worn that I ought to have it printed on a t-shirt, or perhaps tattoo it on my forehead. Here’s the pattern: my sister gives me her reject clothes, I wear them, people compliment me, and I have no choice but to come clean. After all, I can hardly take the credit for clothes I neither chose or paid for. Other than these donations, I tend to wear clothes I’ve owned for far-too-many years, clothes from charity shops and more recently, castoffs from my daughter’s friends… and she’s only thirteen! So this is me. No sense of fashion. No one ever says: Annie, I saw this and just had to buy it for you… it’s so your style. Never. Because I have zero style.

But before you text Gok, pleading with him to ‘sort me’ by taking me clothes shopping and parading me semi-naked on a shopping centre cat-walk… please hear me out. What I’m after is a new look. I’ve recently started my teaching training. Forget potato-printing and nativity plays though, it’s only those aged sixteen and above that I’ll be attempting to enlighten. And herein lies part of the problem: I’m almost thirty-seven, but unfortunately look considerably younger. A month or two ago I got asked for ID in ASDA, when attempting to buy wine (Fair Trade, of course). Yes, I ought not to be complaining, but when I finally qualify I want to be able to ooze authority and ‘teachery-ness’. I don’t want it to be assumed that I’m only a couple of years older than those I’m teaching. Thus, I want a ‘teacher’ look. Not too frumpy, not too daring, not too ‘young’… not too much to ask for, is it?

So when I finally have the money, inclination, motivation and time to purchase this new wardrobe, in which direction shall I head? Charity shops? Maybe, but whereas tops usually work out quite well, I’ve often found that it’s bordering on the impossible to buy charity shop trousers/skirts that fit me properly.

My ‘living simply/ethically’ ethos directs me next to fairly-traded clothes. The main suppliers are generally via catalogues or online. This is a pain as I then can’t try on clothes before buying them (which is never wise). Also, they cost a fortune. I don’t have a fortune to spend – not even half a fortune. I’m not a teacher yet, remember.

Marks ‘n’ Sparks? Perhaps. They do stock some fairly-traded clothes, but not enough that I’d be able to select several complete outfits, especially so if you consider footwear. Also, I’m not sure I’m affluent enough to ‘Per Una’ myself (M&S’s trendier women’s range, in case you weren’t aware).

Primark? Much easier on the wallet, it has to be said. But such cheap clothes freak me out somewhat. Just glancing at them makes me see children in sweat-shops. No purchase is worth supporting unfair-trade, especially something as non-essential as new outfits. However, since Primark was ‘trashed’ via various TV documentaries a couple of years ago, it has pulled its socks up. It doesn’t claim that its socks, or any of its wares, carry the fair trade logo, but it does purport to be an ethical trader  (http://www.primark-ethicaltrading.co.uk/).

High profile companies (such as Primark and McDonalds) boasting such cheap goods, have come under so much pressure to change, they could hardly fail to respond. I wonder if it’s the ‘middle-market’ stores that we ought to be avoiding – ones that lack strict ethical standards, but which aren’t so cheap that they’ve come under enough scrutiny as to be exposed, and forced to change. Or is this simply self-delusion? Attempting to convince myself that it’s acceptable to shop at Primark, just because I can get more for my money?

Who knows? Well, I expect God knows, to be fair. My best bet is probably to pray before I finally set out on my image-altering shopping expedition, and to take it from there. That, or just to hope that my sister buys herself several new ‘teachery’ outfits in the near future, and soon tires of them.

(Annie, who hangs out here: www.annieporthouse.com )