ON THE GOOD LIFE

One of the big topics of conversation among the fishermen has focused upon if religion, economics, both, or neither will help to save humanity from destroying the world. When I think about Christians and environmental issues my palms sweat, my stomach churns, and my head spins. I have grown up in the Episcopal Church and we have prayers and Eucharists in which we thank God for creation, from the cosmos to the caterpillar, but at what point do these prayers and these sacraments become actions and results. Protestant faith, I believe, has made too many people complacent. Instead of acting on the beliefs we hear about in those prayers, we sit in pews on Sunday mornings expecting to change the world. Now, there are of course exceptions to this blanket statement and communal times of worship help to build a structure that could very well act positively. However, in the age of the Good Life, when one can order everything from shotgun shells to shoes on the web or pick up almost anything at Wal-Mart and pay for it in the self-checkout aisle, we have lost contact with whom we purchase from, where our products come from, and what toll those products have on the world in which we live. 

American culture has created a world of instant convenience, which on some levels is really cool, creates jobs for many, and makes almost anything available to anyone who has the plastic to pay for it. On the other hand though, we are putting tons of carbon into the atmosphere driving trucks and flying planes with all our precious packages in them. Now that we have made everything available at our fingertips, I believe breaking ourselves of the Good Life will be more difficult than it would have been 30 years ago, when some experts first pointed out our destructive manners. Yes, there are incentives for creating more "green" technology and this is part of the solution, but I think weaning ourselves of the excessiveness that has become a cultural norm will help to bring us back towards sanity too. 

Christians talk a lot about sacrifice and supposedly resonate with the image of the cross and that sacrificial offering, but I wonder how many people would be willing and able to give up their cars altogether, stop buying goods made in sweatshops, or obtaining stuff they do not need in the first place (I include myself in this criticism). I am not saying we are necessarily consciously evil, but more evil through ignorance. If we are carrying leftovers in our hands and come into contact with a starving person it is quite easy to depart with our leftovers, but this becomes more difficult when we do not venture out of our house or when we do just sneak through the self-checkout aisle. Perhaps the big problem is not so much the Good Life, but a lack in vision to see the people living the not so good life right next to you or down the street. This could ultimately be a much more difficult problem to solve though, because as Americans, we value individualism much more than community, and when in community, I believe, it is much easier to see someone or some other creature next to you hurting. 

So maybe my question is not whether religion or economics might coax humans into aborting this self destruction sequence, but whether we will turn to one another soon enough to see how we are hurting each other and the other creatures of the earth.