My good friend Wendell Berry just published a new book of essays entitled What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth. He’s not necessarily saying anything new but several of these essays were written since the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of the current recession, giving his argument for a sustainable, land-based economy a lot of potency.
Wendell has been saying for decades that our industrial economy, which rapes the land and destroys agriculture (the whole culture of land, including agrarian communities and small diversified farms), is not sustainable. It simply is not possible to maintain an “authentic economy” without recognizing the primary value – even pricelessness – of land, water, and air. Our present economy, on the other hand, seems to be based on a doctrine of limitlessness, and any suggestion of living within the limits of nature is treated as heresy. This doctrine is fantasy. “An economy cannot grow forever on limited resources. Energy and food cannot stay cheap forever. We cannot continue as a tax-dependent people who do not wish to pay taxes. Delusion and the future cannot serve forever as collateral” (What Matters, p. 26). Our current economic crisis demonstrates rather plainly that we are up against our limits, but we continue in our delusional state, believing that, with the right government policy, or with faith in free enterprise, “the American way of life” will prove indestructible. “We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves” (p. 41).
Far be it from me to make Wendell’s argument for him. I do feel qualified, however, in asserting that learning to live within limits is an entirely biblical principle. The doctrine of limitlessness has corrupted freedom into selfishness, and has turned consumers into idolaters – we have made ourselves gods. We believe it is our “inalienable right” to be always upwardly mobile. (I am quite certain that Jefferson’s “pursuit of happiness” bore absolutely no resemblance to modern consumerism. Jefferson was an agrarian who found happiness in the freedom to own land and use it well.) Only when we live within the limits of the created order do we create a sustainable way of life that can go on forever. When we live as if we have no limits, we create the prospect of an apocalyptic end to our economy.
The Bible states plainly that the earth belongs to God, not to us (Psalm 24:1). When the children of Israel were led into the Promised Land, they were equipped with all the instruction they needed to make sure they used the land responsibly and treated each other respectfully. The Law of Moses, faithfully observed, ensured a sustainable economy. The entire vision of the covenant rested on the understanding that the land was God’s gift, and life would always come from this Promised Land so long as it and its people were tended responsibly.
Jesus of Nazareth (and other reformers of his day) rejected the notion that God’s covenant was based on one geographical piece of earth. Jesus also rejected the perversion of the Law of Moses that protected the power of one class of people to the impoverishment of the whole community. Modern Christians have misunderstood Christianity as the “spiritualization” of the Law of Moses, such that material land has nothing to do with Christian faith. In reality, the early Christian movement claimed the whole earth as Promised Land, meaning that it is possible to live by God’s covenant anywhere. To live in covenant is to live within limits – not in confinement or under tyranny but under God, knowing that we are accountable to God for all that we have and all that we are.
We cannot expect land to perpetually produce food if we don’t take care of it. In the same way, we cannot expect communities to persist if we do not abide by commitments to one another. Take marriage, for instance. A marriage cannot be sustained if either or both spouses refuse to recognize the limits their mutual commitment places upon them. Within the covenant of marriage, neither husband nor wife is free to have romantic affairs with whomever they choose. Nor are they free to spend their time without any thought for each other. That’s the reality in a community of only two. The more people are involved, the more complex is the nature of the covenant necessary to sustain the community. And community cannot stop with just human beings. It must also include everything else we depend upon for our survival – which brings us back to land, air, and water. Community is economics. Good economics is ecological in scope.
In earlier generations, church communities reflected and maintained the community values that more or less existed all around them. This was not all to the good. At times, churches failed to challenge the worst tendencies of their larger communities, such as racism, sexism, and classism. Nevertheless, people generally had a basic understanding that we do not live in isolation from one another and therefore have to honor certain customs, traditions, and history in order to get along in life. Today, churches carry the burden of demonstrating what community looks like. In a sense, we are witnesses to the blessings of limitation in a world deluded by limitlessness. We gather to worship. That is, we congregate on a regular basis to remind ourselves that we are responsible to and wholly indebted to God, and we can never escape this condition. But we do not worship in resignation. We celebrate that it is precisely here within the limits of covenant and commitment that we experience life at its fullest.
Because the work of community has become so remedial, a lot of churches get stuck going over the same basic lessons of how to manage conflict and how to respect one another, just as we are re-learning the faith practices, tradition, and history that form the basis of Christian community. But ideally, church communities ought to be following the advice of Hebrews by “leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ…not laying again the foundation” (Hebrews 6:1) and moving on toward the more complex issues of sustaining the abundant life made possible by Christ. It is not at all outside the realm of Christian community to ask questions about physical health, diet, how we relate to our food, how we shop, and what kind of economy our personal habits promote. God, after all, has been promoting good economy since the beginning, and the Scriptures promise us that God’s “plan” (literally “God’s economy”) for the fullness of time is to “gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:10). Surely, then, communities based on God’s covenant are called to gather up “all things” where we are and bear witness to the kind of economy God seeks for creation.
Copyright 2010 by J. Mark Lawson
I like this very much. Well said Pastor Mark!!!
Posted by: Larry Boyer | 08/03/2010 at 04:50 PM