Consumption v Contentment

Sunday 9/8/2013 7:12 AM

This is the first year in twenty-five years that Jaci has not worked outside the home.  She always worked part time so the income she generated was not enormous but it always helped to fill the gaps in our budget or to help pay for unexpected emergencies.  Now that we no longer have her check coming in I find that I become more concerned when I find that she has gone shopping and bought something that I had not been expecting.  She has always been a frugal shopper, buying things on sale or at a discount store, but now I find myself wondering if we will be able to live the way we lived before while continuing to give a significant portion of our income away.

These words from Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster, are good words for me to hear today.  “… Freedom from anxiety is characterized by three inner attitudes.  If what we have we receive as a gift, and if what we have is to be cared for by God, and if what we have is available to others, then we will possess freedom from anxiety. … What we have is not the result of our labor, but of the gracious care of God.  When we are tempted to think that what we own is the result of our personal efforts, it takes only a little drought or a small accident to show us once again how radically dependent we are for everything.  To know that it is God’s business, and not ours, to care for what we have is the second inner attitude of simplicity.  God is able to protect what we possess.  We can trust him.  To have our goods available to others marks the third inner attitude of simplicity.  Martin Luther said somewhere, ‘If our goods are not available to the community they are stolen goods.’  The reason we find these words so difficult is our fear of the future…. But if we truly believe that God is who Jesus said he is, then we do not need to be afraid.”

After reading what I wrote in the first paragraph I noticed this phrase, “… if we will be able to live the way we lived before…”.  Perhaps if I were not so concerned with living like I did before this would not be such a big issue.  Hans Küng addresses this in his book On Being a Christian.  “… the Christian message can make something clear which is apparently not envisaged at all either in the economic theory or in the practical scale of values of the modern consumer- and efficiency-oriented society, but which perhaps could have a part to play: replacement of the compulsion to consume by freedom in regard to consumption.  In any case there is some point in not constructing one’s happiness on the basis of consumption and prosperity alone.  But in the light of Jesus Christ it also makes sense not to be always striving, not always to be trying to have everything; not to be governed by the laws of prestige and competition; not to take part in the cult of abundance; but even with children exercise the freedom to renounce consumption.  This is ‘poverty in spirit’ as inward freedom from possessions: contented unpretentiousness and confident unconcernedness as a basic attitude.”

I have always felt that I did a pretty good job of recognizing that it is God who provides for my needs by giving me my health, my abilities, my job, my work ethic, etc.    I think I really need to ask God to change my attitude toward consumption, to create in me an attitude of contentment.