Notes from my Knapsack 10-15-20

Notes from my Knapsack 10-15-20

Jeff Gill

 

Changes in processes & preferences

___

 

Everyone who hates change sure loves 2020, because at the very least they've found they have company.

 

Forget about face coverings and social distancing. Never mind about half capacity restaurants and bars, or aisle arrows at the big box stores. Dismiss the new numbers on the news about infection rates and test positivity.

 

We all knew that there was a push on to move towards a more paperless, wireless, online and app oriented economy. But now, it's not just here, it's the whole ball game in many places.

 

Younger people already rarely carry what us olds call "money" and checks are turning into a near curiosity as we move towards cashless everything. And a few of us who intentionally avoided using taps on our phone home screen to pay for items are now finding that's about the only way we can conduct certain transactions. I've heard people say "I'm just not going to use any business that tries to force me that way," but while I wish them a certain defiant luck, I doubt that history is moving their way.

 

My wife and I were credit card holdouts for a very, very long time, far past most of our peers, age-wise. But we reached a point where if we wanted to travel at all, we needed to get one. We did, but committed to using it sparingly, and thoughtfully, and I think we did well to be as careful as we were . . . but now we have two, and we buy groceries and gasoline with them. Travis McGee in John D. MacDonald's wonderful series of largely Florida-set mysteries speaks near the end of his run (with the author's death in 1986) about having to get a credit card and feeling the net come down across his elusive and vagabond lifestyle, and that's only become more true in the decades since.

 

Yet I think I speak for my wife and many others when I say I really don't miss having to trudge into the gas station or mini-market to pay and then pump. It simplifies things (especially when it's raining), but now the whole business model changes for how to sell stuff to us, and you get little TVs on the pumps and ads on the hoses.

 

Elections are a process just like economic procedures. I never imagined I'd not get up and go to a polling place to vote. That's how I was raised, that's what I've done, and frankly I've enjoyed that visceral thrill of throwing the lever over to . . . ah, but now we tap and click and whirrrrr (the levers have been gone for years) and so why not by mail or downtown on a day preceding Election Day? And how soon will some kind of a validated app on our phone become our polling place? Yes, it changes the whole process, but it makes some new opportunities open up as well, even to encouraging new participants.

 

None of this is about loving change, but from elections to economics we've gotten an opportunity this year to figure out how we want to approach the steamroller of change, and steer it as best we can, rather than fight it fruitlessly as it simply rolls over us. We can't stop it, but we can shift its direction into a better road, less traveled or no.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still ambivalent about credit cards. Tell him how you adapt to change at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 10-3-20

Faith Works 10-3-20

Jeff Gill

 

Knowing when enough is enough

___


Sufficiency is an old-fashioned theological term not much in everyday use, but it still has a place in our spiritual reflections.

 

It has to do with the idea in Christian belief that Jesus is all you need, without anything or anyone else necessary for your satisfaction and salvation.

 

Sufficiency says "Jesus is enough."

 

Many of the tales through the ages of religious conflict have to do with our persistent tendency to make our heart's ease and soul's security dependent on "Jesus plus," or "You only need Jesus, and" let alone "Jesus has a list of additional criteria." Anything plus Jesus is likely to be too much, whether in personal or churchly terms. God has a lot going on in this world, but in terms of sufficiency, Jesus alone is enough. Anything else is extra, and too much extra is . . . well, I'd say something about a tasty, well made cupcake and too much frosting, but I worry that might just confuse some of you.

 

Because to be more than a bit theological about practical matters, I believe the doctrine of sufficiency applies to not just spiritual redemption but earthly happiness. Which is what brings us back to where I left you last week, with piles and piles of stuff.

 

I know, some of you might be saying "Jesus is not enough if you're hungry, or broke, or homeless." Yes, that's right, sufficiency is not quite a recipe for diet or budget or household economics, but it's part of the superstructure that allows even those aspect of everyday life to work in a whole and healthy way.

 

Let's go back to that cupcake. Okay, frosting lovers: will you concede that there's a point at which it's too much? Where is your enough? An inch? Two inches? A foot?

 

Biology is teaching us that sometimes we can't just trust our physical, evolved instincts alone to know when enough is enough. The economics and biochemistry of scarcity means that our taste for sweets and sugars, fats and greasy good, is larger than is good for us when there's plenty available. Our body alone doesn't always know when it's enough, and we keep going. Choices are needed, to slow and even to stop ourselves, including the placement of frosting, the pouring of ranch dressing, the ladling of cheese sauce.

 

And economic science along with practical politics ask us if our consumption of too much stuff, piled high and shoveled deeply, is actually depriving others of their basic needs. Not that every financial transaction is a zero-sum game, but do we even ask ourselves "if I get this, does it mean someone else can't get that?" Especially when we are piling up stuff (attention Matthew 6:19) far beyond what we need, what we will ever use, what can reasonably be called "enough."

 

And as a spiritual discipline, just like learning to focus our attention on God, and noticing what it is that most easily distracts us and making that an area of extra attention and effort to set aside: the stuff we either most pile up, or least want to get rid of, usually is telling us something. About unresolved anguish, personal pain, deeper doubts which we're trying to cope with through stuff. There is a false spirituality at work in the joy of shopping, the illusory ease in your heart from purchases, the fake satisfaction of knowing you have that stuff . . . somewhere.

 

When your stuff is what gives you peace, but only for a moment, I can say to you with certainty: it isn't enough. And this is what we Christians mean when we say "Jesus is enough." And where some ask a non-trivial question about buying or keeping stuff about whether or not it gives you joy, as a believer myself I would suggest that, at least for some of us, we could even more usefully ask if our stuff is an idol, a replacement for Jesus, a substitute certainty or replacement satisfaction that says to us we can find a better connection to the Divine, to the Eternal, than through Jesus.

 

None of this says we have to throw everything away and live as wandering hermits, though as Jesus said to a person whose stuff was weighing him down, "maybe you should think about it." That's my theological take on all this; I'll offer some slightly more practical counsel about it all next week.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still got plenty of stuff to sort out, none of which he will take with him. Tell him how you are getting your idols put into storage at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.