Caring for your Eden and your neighbour’s Eden.
To follow Christ is to follow his great command expressed in these words:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[c] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
The last few years I’ve been intrigued and drawn into better understanding economics and our monetary system. You might be thinking “Alan, stick to your station, you’re a pastor, not a economist”, but bear with me as I briefly share its relevance to our life with God.
Our dominant view of economics is to pursue endless growth and with that comes the desecration of our sacred creation. The more we consume the more the creation is affected and therefore our neighbour.
Our Western, dualistic worldview which sees ourselves as separated from creation has led to the sacred creation being on a path of annihilation and with that our neighbour suffers and our love of God becomes a mere abstract idea.
Much of the West is on an endless treadmill of finding ever more ridiculous reasons to extract value from creation for their own gain and often at the expense of our neighbour.
Our God is Holy, and his holiness is seen so beautifully in his creation. Our neighbour’s habitat is their Eden, their place of connection with God. We’re called to care not only for our Eden but also our neighbours.
To be a disciple is to recognise the authority of Jesus Christ and become aware that Christ is in all. He is in every inch of creation. Everything is created in Christ, through Christ and for Christ so the destruction of creations dishonours Christ. We cannot separate ourselves from creation or Christ. We are inseparably connected to both God and his creation.
We cannot love our neighbour effectively when we are turning a blind eye to our participation in systems that lead to climate breakdown. Our love of neighbour is impotent if we don’t consider how economics and consumption affects them.
Countless people are being impoverished in affected environments whether it is droughts or floods killing of a harvest or the rainforest being destroyed so we can can consume more and more and more.
Closer to home we can see the consumption of goods is unsustainable, the throw away culture is horrid, the fast fashion is a disgrace, governments create more debt so the cycle of consumption only increases, all while the material creation is purged and abused our love for neighbour wanes.
The problem is that we often can insulate ourselves from our consumption and the economic system that supports it. When we do this, knowingly or not, we are working against justice and the love of our neighbour.
How do we respond to God’s call to our love God, our neighbour in the context of the economic capitalist system we live in?
In John Mark Comer’s book The ruthless elimination of hurry he summaries 4 ancient Christian practices that might help us.
Slow down
Sabbath
Solitude
Simplicity
Do you need to slow down? Overconsumption relies on a pace of life that drives us to need more, want more at the expense of creation and those who create the good and services we demand.
How do you Sabbath? A day off is a sign of resistance to creating status and significance from our work and those who work to provide goods and services to us. I grew up going to church on a sunday, never shopping, a quiet day with family and friends. It was fun. Not everyone can do this, but can you?
Thirdly, when do you have a period of solitude? To overcome the systems of injustice we partake in requires getting alone, getting head space and engaging with scripture and God’s view of the world. Jesus showed us this.
Finally, how could you simplify your life? The infinite growth agenda requires us to consume more, buy more, eat more, drink more, do more activity, more more more for us, our children forever. By simplifying our lives we are aligning ourselves with God’s word that we are enough, we are his beloved, we can be content, joyful in the present because we have a mystical union with Christ. We don’t need more stuff.
”The Lord is our shepherd , I shall not won’t. he makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul”
Let’s simplify our lives around Christ, his kingdom, the covenant relationships we have and reject more more more for the sake of creation, our neighbour for the glory of God.
