This is another post in a series of responses to Father Stephen Freeman's The Violence of Modernity, in which Freemen offers his ten-point response to the question, How should we live?
I've been taking his ten answers one at a time and mulling them over here. The first six "mulls" are:
Father Stephen's 7th answer to the question is this:
cultivate contentment rather than pleasure. It will help you consume less and free you from slavery to your economic masters.
Am I content? I don't know for sure. As I've grown older I've become less anxious about many things, and I suppose "less anxious" is in the vicinity of contentment.
What keeps us discontented? Father Stephen seems to think it's our desire for more stuff. Our "economic masters" have created a population of insatiable (never satisfied) consumers. Have we always been such wanting machines?
It's a dangerous place to be. "You desire because you do not have, so you kill," wrote James to some ostensibly good Christians. Wait, did he say kill?
I suppose a whole range of dysfunction might grow from a little discontent, with killing at the far end of that spectrum. But don't assume it's not common. Sometimes people call the USA a Christian country, but for sure it's one of the killingest countries around. Perhaps things have not changed so much since James' time.
Me, I'm sitting here writing a blogpost on my back porch. It's a breezy summer day and the lilies are blooming outside my window. I've got a nice ale beside me, and I'm pretty content. But what if you took it all away? What then?
It puts me in mind of something William Blake wrote:
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity.
And yet, what we have in America is a citizenry living in the tents of prosperity but still not rejoicing. Still not content. Not even remotely.
I suppose that contentment is not only the absence of fretting and anxiety, but a positive trust in the providence of God. Whatever my circumstances, whether in plenty or in want, to trust Him still. This is something the Apostle Paul only learned with time.
I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength. [Philippians 4:12-13]
I hear people say encouragingly, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me," but "all things" is not what the passage says or implies. What I can do, according to the Philippians passage, is learn to be content, like Paul, no matter the circumstances; but I can only do this "through" Jesus.
It is Christ Jesus who strengthens me for contentment. There is no other source of lasting peace. The flowers fall, the ale runs out, and the weather turns cold. You can bank on it. I can't change any of this by worrying about it. The only thing I can do is "seek first the Kingdom of God." When I do that, I will be like Paul, able to keep my balance in every adverse wind, able to stand when the earth is shaking. For shake it certainly will.
No comments:
Post a Comment