Christian Simple Living - Archived Posts

Is Eating Well Only For the Rich?

My wife and I made a commitment a while back to eat mostly organic for all the well-known environmental and health reasons. We knew at the time that it would cost more but thought it would be worth it anyway. We also discussed the fact that the majority of the world's people don't have the luxury of making that choice. When you’re poor, eating organic usually isn’t an option.

We’ve been eating primarily out of local organic food stores and farmer’s markets, and my wife is a wonderful cook who loves to cook fresh foods from scratch, so we have been able to avoid all kinds of additives, unhealthy ingredients, badly processed food, and of course the pesticides that we all have grown to love. But then we finally hit the cumulative ‘organic cost wall’: that point at which you realize the weekly increased cost of eating organically adds up to more money than you have.

We are far from poor (although living in the high-cost Washington, D.C. area sometimes makes us feel like it), but also far from rich, unless you ask someone from Bangladesh. But I was blind-sided by the cost difference and was really upset that it looked like we wouldn’t be able to afford to eat so much of the right stuff.

I have really grown to love the good stuff. It doesn’t have any of the ‘overs’: over-salted, over-sweetened, over-cooked, and over-processed. When you cook it yourself, all the fresh veggies and whole grains look, smell, and taste wonderful. And we buy as much of it either fair-traded or from local merchants as possible, adding our little bit for economic justice.

And now we find that even we, in this very affluent part of the world, can’t afford it. We’ve cut back on as many other expenses as we can, but we still had to go back to the local chain store to buy some of those things we could no longer afford at the food co-op.

That’s an ugly experience. The stuff is cheaper, but some of it tastes really bad in comparison. So bad that we sucked it up and went back to the co-op for a few things we thought we’d have to ditch – hmm, maybe we don’t need to pay the mortgage after all. It’s depressing and we’re not quite sure what we’ll do about it in the long run, but here’s the real issue:

Once again, is it only the rich who will be allowed to eat what all of us should be able to eat as a birthright?

And of course there is the big question: if it costs so much, is it really something we can consider integral to living a simple life? ‘Simple’ implies not extravagant or unnecessarily expensive, but organic food is most certainly not simple in terms of our budget. I don’t think there is really an issue that eating organic should not be in our way of life, but it certainly raises the question for people too poor to afford it in our country today.

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21st Century Addicts: Fat, Sick, And Broke

Kicking my consumer habit turns out to be a whole lot harder than I thought. I have even worked in addiction treatment and prevention programs, and I’ve still got this monkey on my back. Maybe it hurts too much to go cold turkey. Maybe I was abused as a child. Maybe my mother dropped me on my head. Oh crap, I just don’t want to stop!

Fortunately (or unfortunately) I’ve got lots of company, because most Americans are addicted to the consumer lifestyle to some extent. But just like the heroin addict, we are addicted to a lifestyle that is killing us.

We’re get so deep into our addiction that, like all addicts, we sometimes don’t see it, and we go into denial when someone points it out. As they say in addictions treatment programs, you never stop being an addict - for the rest of our lives we are merely recovering. That's certainly true for me despite being deeply committed to living more simply, not polluting, and working for justice.

An addiction is a vicious circle in which we drink, smoke, or shoot-up to feel better. Then we need more and more to keep feeling good, then we feel better for shorter and shorter periods of time no matter how much we use, and we can’t do without it because it hurts too much. We look around and see that we have blown much of our lives and money supporting this vicious circle … and as much we ache to get out of it, we can’t – without some help.

Fat, salt, sugar, starch, the remote control, the car, automatic washers, microwaves, and the couch – a recipe for life-long addiction, chronic illness, and early death.

Hyperbole? Not a chance. Our culture has got us by the (pick a body-part) and it has no intention of letting go because business and industry has too much money invested in the machine. This is our U.S. Cali drug cartel.

In the addictions world, there are pushers who sell us the stuff for an exorbitant profit, enablers who, consciously or unconsciously, support our addiction: “Oh come on, it’s a party! Have a drink, it isn’t going to kill you!” “Oh, come on, it’s the holidays, a little cheese cake isn’t going to kill you!” “You know, you really deserve a new car, do something nice for yourself for a change.” “Take a break – have a grease burger!”

And then of course there is ‘us’, the users.

We are caught in an inexorable, vicious circle:

We are over-eating and under-exercising – all in the name of modern comfort and ‘efficiency’.
Our addictive need for larger houses, more cars and lots of other stuff, requires two-earner families working longer hours with less time to cook, eat well, or spend time with our families that need personal nurturing.
We then buy exercise programs, diet plans, and health spas that we really can’t afford in order to counteract the effects of our poor lifestyles.
Our poor health exponentially raises the cost of our health care and creates an under-class that can no longer afford health insurance or a doctor.
And we go into deep credit card debt to pay for it because many of us really don’t have the money to live this way to begin with.

This vicious circle is, in turn, fueled by industries and businesses that have become addicted to our money – they can’t survive without our addiction!

The first step in AA’s 12 steps is where we need to begin:

“We admitted we were powerless over (name your substance) -- that our lives had become unmanageable.”

In my case, and probably yours too, I have to be honest and admit that in spite of my beliefs and values, I REALLY LIKE THIS CONSUMER LIFE – AND I DON’T WANT TO STOP! The Burger King Whopper and fries is goooood. That Nikon D200, 10-megapixel digital camera at a mere $1,600 is calling my name, and I DO want flat panel plasma HDTV this year.

If, together, we admit that we are hooked, and if together we admit that we have to “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God…” (AA step 3), then maybe we have a real shot at living saner and simpler lives. Then maybe we can even reach out and help others as well.

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Focus On The Bottom Line And Nothing Else

The Car Culture column in the Washington Post, 1/11/06, pointed out:

“It’s easy to figure out where the automobile industry is going …
it’s heading toward the bank, and it will take any route, develop any car or truck, introduce any new vehicle to get there.”

This comment was in a review of Detroit’s North American International Auto Show held in Detroit this January.

It did not seem to the commentator that the ‘Big 3’ think the tide has turned toward smaller, fuel-efficient cars since the Katrina gas price surge. The biggest and most numerous displays were of SUV’s and large luxurious sedans decorated with TV starlets. There were only a few displays of small cars and hybrids scattered about.

An example of the excess:

“The Cadillac Escalade ESV is 21 inches longer than the regular Escalade, which is plenty big already, and it houses a 6.2 liter, 403 horsepower V-8 engine.”

The writer, Warren Brown, comments “That does not mean they don’t care about the environment. They care about the environment as long as it sells.”

… not that this is any great surprise!

During the 2nd half of 20th Century corporate values shifted significantly toward the philosophy that making a profit is the only goal of business as Peter Drucker, the late management guru, so eloquently stated. It would seem, then, that no environmental, social, or human values have any real place in corporate ethics or practices despite their media rhetoric to the contrary.

For example there has been a rash of employee and retiree benefit reductions including pensions and health benefits, while executive golden parachutes have spiraled upwards. These are uniformly seen in the corporate world as unmitigated good things – good for business – good for everyone, no matter who gets hurt!

I don’t argue with the need to be profitable, but I do disagree with the philosophy of high profit and high stock prices at any cost. That, I believe, is unconscionable.

I grew up in a successful family business, and have had my own as well. I understand the need to make a business profitable. But I also know that it can be done in a way that is respectful and supportive of the people it serves as well as those who work in it.

I know that business owners and managers can care more about the quality of what they do and how they do it, than pushing profits and stock prices ever higher. The right business value should be:

If you care more about the money than the people, then you should not be in that business, or perhaps in any business.

Jesus’ point is that it’s what money does to you that is the root of all evil, because in the chase for it we become careless about other people’s needs, and that damages everyone.

Of course the excuse for abandoning this simple value in favor of those that look suspiciously like corporate greed, is:

A modern business has to do whatever it takes to stay out ahead otherwise it will die and then everyone gets hurt.

That, of course, is a transparent self-fulfilling prophecy. In reality WE create the values we live by – Martians do not force them on us.

My bottom line is that even businesses, like individuals, must live simply with caring, mindful values if we are to survive as a livable, sustainable society. When we find businesses that are not willing or able to do that, we should run, not walk, away from them. At the moment Exxon-Mobile is one of those, but that’s a topic for another day.

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A Media Drought for Lent

When Lent began this year, I was faced with the perennial question of “What should I give up?” There was the usual list of possibilities, but one new suggestion from our Pastor was “Give up the media.” Don’t turn on the TV, or radio, and don’t read the newspaper. This would probably also mean not getting on the Internet, but I’m not sure if that would include email (does being a Christian always come down to splitting hairs?).

It made me think. Although I have gone for periods of time intentionally not turning on the TV, I hadn’t thought about avoiding all media. What would happen if I did that?

It could be a very good thing in that we don’t usually think about the huge number of social values messages we get through the media and how they subtly change our perspectives and behavior. Even when we only intend to listen to the news stories, all the advertising, commentary, sequencing and framing of stories, the music played, etc., influences what we think, often unconsciously. Even when I make a point of deconstructing media messages and work at not accepting other’s biases, I’m still getting a dose I’m not aware of. So, does listening to the media every day really help us to be ourselves, marching to our own drummers?

If the notion of not conforming to popular secular culture is a key ingredient in Christian simple living, and I believe it is, the question becomes, how much are we conforming to the culture without even knowing it? Are we being covertly co-opted because we are so ‘plugged-in’ that we aren’t aware of losing ourselves and the values we think we have?

You may be thinking, like I did, “I can make myself conscious and aware, and inoculate myself against the negative effects of the media. I will just listen-in without buying-in so that at least I know what’s going on in the world. I won’t let myself be changed by it.”

Fat chance! Consumer culture is more powerful, seductive, and subliminal than many of us realize. The media are so much a part of our society and economy that their very structures automatically insinuate consumer and economic growth assumptions into our thought processes and value systems.

In spite of believing this to be true, I still want to know what’s going on in the world. I’ve spent a lot of years in the behavior-change business, so I have at least some residual belief that awareness, education, and training can be helpful in changing our behavior and reducing our susceptibility to media influences.

BUT … I no longer feel invulnerable to media messages and I do believe that I, and probably all of us, should spend much less time plugged into the media. Our use of the media doesn’t have to be like an umbilical cord that keeps us alive through 'mother media'. If we work hard at it, we can be less susceptible to unconsciously conforming to the culture - we might actually have more time to live the truly free life Jesus promised.

So I think I will give up the media for Lent. I want to test my own theory and find out how a media drought will affect my life one way or the other. Will it make life simpler?

What do you think?

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To Cell or not to Cell

I want a cell phone. Is this part of my consumer addiction, or do I really need one?

I bought my wife a cell phone years ago so she’d be safer on the road, and she has rarely used it. I’ve resisted getting one myself to reduce my dependency on the ‘grid’, lighten the load on the environment, and not support the ‘growth economy’.

But now my car at, 11 years of age, and has 150,000 miles on it, and is a whole lot less dependable than it used to be, and it would feel a lot safer if I had a phone in the car. Of course I could always buy a newer, more dependable car but that would be a tad more expensive and even worse for the environment. So, personal safety vs. economic and environmental responsibility – what to do?

I’d love to have a new toy, and it would be convenient in case of an emergency, but then I’ve spent countless years driving old cars with no phone, so why is it now suddenly dangerous to be without one? Sure, they’re available now and they weren’t a few years ago, so why reject safety for a principle?

The reason is actually pretty compelling. We think of high tech industries as being ‘clean’ or ‘light. When we look at a cell phone or laptop we don’t notice any smoke coming out of it and no oil stains on the table and we conclude that it’s clean, but in fact they are far from it. What we don’t pay attention to is the tremendous amount of fossil fuels, water, and toxic chemicals that are used to manufacture them.

For instance, the United Nations did a study last year and found that the average desktop computer requires 10 times their weight in fossil fuels and other resources to build compared to the average car which only requires twice its weight in the same fluids - NOT a light industry. And at the rate we discard cells, computers, and peripherals, it becomes waste, often not recycled. Those that are recycled usually end up in super-dumps in Asia where the toxics leach from them creating the equivalent of Super-Fund sites. National Geographic Magazine did an article on recycling electronics several months ago and included a startling picture of kids in Asia pulling the innards out of computers and cell phones while sitting in toxic wastes that had leached into water puddles. NOT a clean or safe industry!

We need to also consider that the use of these speedy, ‘efficient’ high tech devices also has the perverse effect of dramatically speeding up the rate of economic growth, development, and environmental degradation virtually everywhere in the world. Is this also something I should support?

Obviously there are good reasons not to further contribute to this mess. But I want a cell phone!

What would you do?

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Elders : Let’s Just Warehouse ‘em

Is institutionalizing our parents and grandparents in nursing homes a loving, just, or economically sustainable thing to do?

It must be, because that’s what has become the norm in our society.

Fortunately all older people haven’t been institutionalized this way yet. Some older people are lucky enough, or healthy enough, to be able to ‘age in place’, being supported by family and friends if and when needed. But many are not so lucky. A growing number of elders unfortunately walk, or are pushed, down the common pathway to the nursing home.

My day-job is working for a health care research organization that studies issues in long term care among other things. It is clear from that research that we are already in big economic trouble caring for elders with the boomers hitting 60. And that problem is going to get much worse in the near future.

I’ve also had a fair amount of personal experience with assisted living and nursing facilities. I’ve found that once you get past the ‘chandelier effect’ (the big brass chandelier and French provincial furniture that usually grace the entryways and public rooms) the level of care can be devastatingly poor except in the more expensive programs.

Certainly some people pro-actively choose to go to nursing facilities, but there are many others, however, who are forced into this because there aren’t any other real options. In our society, living with your children or grandchildren is now usually considered to be an unfair burden and therefore not a real option.

Full-time nursing care or a nursing home is sometimes a practical solution, but there are better, higher quality, less expensive options, which often aren’t offered or aren’t considered.

Soon many of our parents, grandparents, and us for that matter, will not be able to afford to live in such a facility of any quality – and the range of quality in these facilities is breathtaking. The economics of long-term care are turning against us as the boomers age and health and custodial care costs go up. There are already far too few trained caregivers and facilities, and just too little money for many of us to afford the rapidly escalating costs of assisted living and nursing home care.

Folks getting close to retirement can forget about long-term care insurance because it is too expensive to justify the tiny benefit it will provide. For middle-aged folks the prospects are a little better, but not much. Long-term care is so expensive that even relatively good LTC insurance policies won’t come close to providing what will be needed.

We are racing toward a financial wall at break-neck speed, apparently without a thought as to how we are going to deal with it

More difficult than financing is the issue we have so far avoided thinking about:

Institutionalizing our parents is not a loving response to the normal process of aging.

It isn’t loving because no institution of any quality can provide the love and concern that a normally healthy family and community can, and they can’t provide the familiarity and comfort that ‘home’ provides at any stage of our lives. Home is home no matter how old you are. And it certainly isn’t loving to push our families into a terrible financial quagmire just to survive.

We try to avoid this issue because none of us want to see ourselves as unloving or uncaring, but in those fleeting moments when we are honest with ourselves this feeling pops-up as a very unwelcome intruder. Let’s face it: we are merely rationalizing when we try to convince ourselves that “they’re better off this way because we could never provide that kind of care.” Thank God you can’t provide that kind of care!

How did we get ourselves into this crisis?

Americans, in the Twentieth Century, took the notion of the self-reliant frontiersman and the rugged individualist to a new extreme. We decided that our children must be allowed to fulfill themselves as completely independent individuals, discovering their futures and making their fortunes no matter where that might lead them. This extreme individualism has become one of the key drivers for our culture.

This meant that kids routinely moved around the country in search of education, jobs, and spouses, usually never to return home to live. We then decided that individualism must also mean that the insular, nuclear family of two adults and two kids was a big improvement over the traditional extended family. This left us with families scattered across the country. Increasingly communities, particularly suburban communities, became case studies for the film "Bowling Alone" – large tracts of houses occupied by strangers who formed temporary alliances with a few people living close-by or at work.

‘Family’ has become a mere holiday entertainment involving costly and time-consuming travel, not to mention the newly traditional argument over whose family we will visit this year!

What does all this have to do with simple living? There seems to be nothing simple or sustainable about this new arrangement – especially not for the young and the old. The young are also farmed-out to day care or pre-pre-pre-school, which are simply mini-institutions but, we hope, not as bad as the nursing homes!

But it seems to me that a community of Christian people or congregations committed to living simply and caring for each other, could creatively work together at the congregational level to develop loving, effective, and enjoyable lives – not just for our elders, but also for every generation represented in our congregations. If we care, shouldn’t we be able to create our own ‘hand made’ solutions that are better than relying on ‘competitive free market forces’, the wisdom of government, or blind luck?

If we really began to live simple lives by cutting back on our demands for the ‘good life’ we might save time, money, and effort, which could then be re-invested in voluntarily caring for our youngsters who need day care and after-school care, and elders who could be cared for in their homes or congregationally run home and community care programs - rather than farming them out to commercial institutions. Young folks can help take care of elders along with adults, and elders can help take care of kids and provide other services as well. That way everyone stays useful, productive, and happy much longer. It builds community, and it builds family. Seems to me things used to be this way, but who am I to stand in the way of ‘progress’?

It’s not possible to turn back the clock, but I’m wondering if we haven’t thrown the baby out with the bath water in our race to be modern, self-fulfilled, well-off individuals – maybe otherwise known as a ‘race to the bottom’. Maybe we need to re-visit these issues and bring our lives and communities back into a truly human scale that have depth and meaning again.

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It’s Weed and Bug Time Again

It’s spring: great weather, but with a few dysfunctional side effects.

I’ve got an old house with lots of cracks, damp spots, and really neat places for bugs to get in and breed, and since spring is swarming season, we are about to be overrun with ants, cave crickets and a number of other beasties. Every spring the house gets infested with ants (not termites, thank goodness) and we end up having to toss a lot of food and spray some nasty stuff. This is not good for the environment, but the ants aren’t good for us.

The outside isn’t any better, and given the poor soil and shade, the weeds can be overwhelming, and like a lot of people I don’t have enough time to spend hours every week weeding by hand. The easy solution is to buy broad-spectrum weed killers and spay regularly. Again, not good for the environment.

So what am I supposed to do?

It seems the possible solutions run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous.

On one hand I could just say, as some simple-livers do, that we should just live and let-live and not bother the insects and weeds since we are all part of God’s creation and people aren’t any more important than the ants. This may be the more ridiculous end of the spectrum, but I would really like to join this group. Philosophically I agree and it is the most environmentally sensible approach, and it would sure save me some time and angst.

But there is this other ‘socialized’ part of me that has been taught to have a well maintained, neat looking place that looks like someone cares about it, or that I care about myself and how I live, not to mention that “we should take care of what God has given us.” This part is actually quite deeply embedded in my psyche. I’m not sure if I like that or not. And then there’s the fact that I just don’t like the sight of ants parading through all my food, and the weeds seem to make the place look like a dump rather than nature.

Toward the more sublime end is the ‘have your cake and eat it too’ version of simple living that holds that we can use weed killers and insecticides and have a nice, neat place, as long as these products are environmentally friendly: no fuss, no muss, no angst. I like this version too, because they make my life a lot easier, if not more philosophically satisfying.

On the other hand (this is like one of those good news-bad news stories) although some of the green insecticides that use pyrethrum for example, work pretty well, they also kill a lot of bugs that
aren’t a problem along with those that are. I’ve also used some of the natural herbicides, but they don’t work nearly as well as the real toxic stuff, and tend to leave the place looking not only weedy, but half dead in the bargain.

In between these extremes may be some reasonable solutions. I think this year I’ll use mulch again as much as possible (thankfully our congregation has a mulch sale each spring), and try different brands of natural herbicides, maybe in higher concentration, and
I’ve just signed a pest control contract with a company that uses natural ingredients and other green measures. In this case expertise may be better than a lot of toxics. So I’m going toward the sublime route.

I’d really like to know what other folks are doing about these issues and how they’re working out.

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