I’ve been pondering compassion, justice, generosity, and the American dream lately. It makes me think of the old sesame street song: ” One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong! ” Trying to live differently in America is like swimming upstream. And I am not a swimmer, even going downstream.
I resonate so much with this word from a favorite author:
I love being an American. I love this place in which I have been placed – its language, its history, its energy. But I don’t love “the American way,” its culture and values. I don’t love the rampant consumerism that treats God as a product to be marketed. I don’t love the dehumanizing ways that turn men, women,and children into impersonal roles and causes and statistics. I don’t love the competitive spirit that treats others as rivals and even as enemies. The cultural conditions in which I am immersed require, at least for me, a kind of fierce vigilance to guard my vocation from these cultural pollutants so dangerously toxic to persons who want to follow Jesus in the way that he is Jesus. – Eugene Peterson
I want to live differently, yet struggle to know exactly how. I’ve always attempted to not be a big consumer, not get sucked into the world of materialism, not sell out to finding meaning in stuff. Yet I find myself living right in the middle of the American way, abundantly blessed with a beautiful home, two cars (they are old, but hey) a dog, a good retirement account, and enjoying what living in the city of Madison provides. Money is so easy to spend. Things are so easy to want and to get.
I don’t want to define success as getting to the top, being smarter, better looking, more fit, having more influence. But I know deep down, that’s my definition. That’s what my world tells me, so that’s what I believe.
I don’t know exactly how to move against the flow, or what it might mean for this season of my life, but I do know that I can’t follow Christ upstream alone. In community with others who desire the same, struggle to know what it means, and want to make choices that are against the cultural flow is the only way I’m going to be able to make progress. Honestly, I don’t even know what that type of community looks like!
If you have ideas, or have had success in any of this, share them! Indeed, I have a hunch that to live differently would result in becoming more rich.
