Guest blog post by Diane Clarke
"22 We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now. 23 And it’s not only the creation. We ourselves who have the Spirit as the first crop of the harvest also groan inside as we wait to be adopted and for our bodies to be set free."
(Romans 8:22-23, Common English Bible)
For the last two years I've been part of a group of fellow Christians working together on our relationship with money, and specifically our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors around our wealth. This group, which we named, "Enough for All," grew out of an experience I had ten years ago, when I heard theologian, activist, and author Ched Myers speak on "Sabbath Economics," a biblically-rooted vision of stewarding our resources so people and creation can thrive. Challenged, I tried to look more critically and biblically at self-serving ways I thought about and used my wealth. But I was doing this largely alone, and even after eight years, practical behavioral change was slow, small, and spotty. I really needed companions to witness and support the radical changes I was trying to make. As previous contributors of this blog have affirmed, profoundly countercultural work such as this is "against the current." We need to hold hands and do it together. I shared about Sabbath Economics with others in my faith community, and six of us decided to meet quarterly to work together on these issues. When we meet, we each share about our particular work, our stuck places, our longings, and our laments and concerns. I think this helps us renew our courage and commitment to this radical, transformative work.
In wealthy western countries like ours, we've deeply absorbed malformed, individualistic beliefs and behaviors around money that, collectively, have led to gigantic wealth gaps and scandalous, abject need in vast swaths of our country and world. In fact, we're so deeply immersed and implicated in this way of thinking that we think of our wealth as our own, as something we've earned. This is in stark contrast to the consistent biblical witness that everything we have is unearned, a part of God's generous provision for everyone, owned by none of us.
I've been deeply shaped by this milieu. For me, a fundamentally important element of our meetings has been the permeating atmosphere of communal confession. It's a safe place to talk honestly about my struggles with idolatry around wealth (i.e., habitually turning to wealth to boost my sense of security and well-being -- a tragic quest, since this is something that wealth can never do). While each of us in the group has their own specific challenges under the status quo, I think we all share a common hunger to "figure out what God's will is -- what is good and pleasing and mature" (Romans 12:2). I've found that our work together helps unmask the empty promises of wealth our culture purveys, diminishing their deceptive power. I believe this communal, truthful setting is progressively liberating each of us to better hear and follow the gospel in our relationship to our wealth.
It's a long haul. Ched compares the challenges of this work to 12-Step recovery work -- needed because we are in the grip of an addiction to "affluenza." I like the AA analogy, because AA identifies alcohol as "cunning, baffling, and powerful." The cunning part of affluenza for me is its ability to "fly under the radar" in my life. On the path of recovery, our group finds it necessary to saturate ourselves in scriptural views about jubilee justice and redistribution. This immersion in God's vision prophetically confronts our blind spots around our wealth so we can respond and change our attitudes and behaviors. Ched quotes Jesuit theologian John Haughey, who sums up our basic challenge, lamenting, "we read the Gospel as if we had no money, and we spend our money as if we know nothing of the Gospel." Our group came together for encouragement and support in this dilemma, so we could start working in practical, impactful ways toward God's vision of enough for all.
Key Elements of Sabbath Economics
Ched's basic framework is laid out in his book, The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics. Specifically, he summarizes Sabbath Economics in three axioms:
1) the world as created by God is abundant, with enough for everyone -- provided that human communities restrain their appetites and live within limits;
2) disparities in wealth and power are not 'natural' but the result of human sin, and must be mitigated within the community of faith through the regular practice of redistribution; and
3) the prophetic message calls people to the practice of such redistribution, and is thus characterized as 'good news' to the poor.
Our Work Toward Recovery: Practicing the Household Sabbath Economics Covenant
In the spirit of addressing our "actual (as opposed to our professed or idealized) economic and spiritual values," Ched developed a practical guide, "Experimenting with a Household Sabbath Economics Covenant". Our group decided to use this guide to help us work "where the rubber meets the road." We're actually one of many groups throughout the country that have formed to "work" this Covenant, which focuses on our own specific household behaviors around surplus capital, negative capital (debt), giving, environmental and green living, consumption, solidarity, and work/sabbath. Different members of our group have worked on each aspect of the covenant at different times, as the Spirt has led.
Examples of Our Work So Far
I want to share a few examples of work our members have done, and some comments they've shared about the work so far. A number of us have felt strongly led to work on surplus capital. One couple has moved a percentage of their surplus capital into "community investment notes," managed by Calvert Impact Capital. Calvert puts this money to work with partners around the world who focus on affordable housing, microfinancing, environmental sustainability, community development, sustainable agriculture, and gender equity, among other needs. This couple said, "It is so good finally to be taking responsibility around our privilege, and to know that some of our surplus is being used to meet the needs of others, instead of just accruing interest in a CD. We plan to increase our community investments as we work toward simpler living."
Another member finds himself focusing deeply on attitudes, saying, "I long for a life characterized by gratitude, generosity, and simplicity . . . . Simplicity can be complex, in Richard Foster's phrase, and I think gratitude and generosity toward God and others have to be my first priorities." He added, " It’s been good to be with others who are similarly committed and to hear their ideas and struggles, journeying together on this path. We are very different in our approaches and understandings, for which I am grateful, since the perspectives of others challenge me."
What Time is It?
Because I've been meditating on Paul's letter to the Romans during most of the time our group has been together, I've often thought about what we're doing in light of Paul. Specifically, Paul rightly challenges us to be aware of "what time it is" -- i.e., to realize that we are gospel people living between the cross and the eschaton, the "now and not yet" of the Kingdom of God. What is our role as disciples in this "in-between" time? In Paul's framing (quoted above), in the current age we are to be willing to suffer "labor pains." But this is actually wonderful news, because these sufferings are literally the birth pangs of the Kingdom. As the Spirit of the resurrected Christ helps each of us do this transformative work around economic justice, we are participating in the blessed work of bringing in the "not yet" of God's heavenly kingdom. All of us in our group groan in some way under the status quo of gross injustices and the vast suffering of those who don't have enough. As each of us in the group faces their own complicity and specific challenges in the work, we're aware that this is a critical, costly part of our lifelong path of maturing together in Christ, of helping to bring in what we groan for -- the heavenly jubilee.
Ched Myers and Elain Enns live and teach "radical discipleship" in their nonprofit ministry, Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. Besides Sabbath Economics, they have done extensive work around environmental and indigenous justice and solidarity, all rooted in the gospel vision of shalom. To learn more about their work, visit https://www.bcm-net.org. Additional helpful resources can be found at the Faith and Money Network, https://faithandmoneynetwork.org.
If you're interested in discussing Sabbath Economics work further, or want to explore organizing a support and accountability group of your own, feel free to contact me at dmclarke@omsoft.com, or Ched and Elaine at inquiries@bcm-net.org.