Blog Archives
How much do you want a new pair of trainers?
This much?
http://www.myfoxhouston.com/video/videoplayer.swf?dppversion=11212
Fights Over Nike Air Jordan Concord Sneakers: MyFoxHOUSTON.com
Ridiculous scenes as a crowd turns to violence over purchasing newly released Nike Air Jordan trainers. BBC coverage here.
Lada making a UK comeback?
The BBC magazine asks if the car brand Lada can make a comeback in the UK in the current era, given that now, more than ever, you are what you buy. One interesting quote:
Bayley believes the relative popularity of the Lada in the UK was down to two things – first, the car’s robustness and longevity; and second, the fact that owning one of these fairly drab, rudimentary vehicles from the East allowed one to wriggle free from the consumerist pressure to buy a big flash car in order to show off.
“Car ownership is all about cultural modelling and making a display, it is all about buying a vehicle that apparently says something important about your identity. The great thing about the Lada is that you could free yourself from all of that.
Perhaps it could be a way around consumerism. A brand for those who don’t want to be branded. But, I guess, by saying that, it becomes an identity marker just like every other.
Max Lerner on Consumerism
In our rich consumers’ civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions
Shopping
Debenhams have very kindly told me that I can shop online in their sale ON CHRISTMAS DAY!!! Aparrently, the point of life is to consume and buy things, and even when the shops are closed we can still do that. I was rather looking forward to having a complete day free of anything like that, enjoying the company of people rather than the false security of things.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Sabbath Rest
In his daily devotional, For the Love of God, Don Carson poses a question at the end of his comment on Leviticus 23.
How should the people of the new covenant remember and commemorate the provisions of our great covenantal God?
Leviticus 23 is all about the setting up of festivals for the Israelites to commemorate the acts of God in their history – the Festival of Weeks, the Passover, the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Trumpets and Tabernacles. They recall what God has done from God bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, to his ongoing provision of the harvest and his ongoing work of Atonement.
At the heart of these festivals are sacrifice and offerings, and rest. The Israelites are continually told to ‘do no regular work’ (see verses 3, 8, 21, 25, 30, 35, 26). These festivals are to be a day of rest.
A few months ago I was interviewed for a piece on local radio about Sunday Trading hours. About 15 years ago the laws were relaxed and shops began to open on Sundays, albeit for shorter hours than on other days of the weeks. There were a few exceptions – Christmas Day and Easter Day were to retain the old laws with restricted trading on these days. This year talk has been to relax these laws even further, and allow full shopping hours on these days. I was asked what I thought of this. Why did we have a day once a week when shops were shut?
The answer, I think comes from what Sabbath was originally for.
- It was to rest. Humans are created with a need to relax and recharge. We do it on a small scale each day by sleeping, but we need a larger scaled rest once ever seven days. Does it have to be every seven days? If wee keep going for too long, we burn out. Even God rested after his creation.
- To have time with family. Relationships need to be nurtured and time with family in increasingly being crowded out of life. The early Soviet empire experimented with a continuous calendar of five and six day weeks, with a fifth of the population having a different day off so that 80% of the workforce was working at any one time. For various reasons, it didn’t work, but one of them was that it destroyed family life. They reverted to a seven day week with a common day off.
- To remember and worship God. This was the point of all the Israelite festivals – to stop for a time and remember what God had done for them. We have shopping available six days a week, do we really need another and are we crowding out time to contemplate what God has done for us?
- By having a Sabbath rest, we are not only remembering what God has done, but trusting him for it. This is one day when people weren’t allowed to go to their fields and look after their crop. By not working we are trusting God to provide the growth for the food and ultimately to provide the food itself, rather than relying solely on our own work. This I see as very valuable as it reminds us where all of our provision comes from in the first place.
Having said that, does the Sabbath Rest have to be on a Sunday? No, but having a common day of rest for the whole society helps. Historically, the Jewish Sabbath (and early Christian Sabbath) was a Saturday, and some Christians still keep this day holy. But if shops do open on a Sunday, they will require people to staff them and will make spending time with families more difficult if people are called into work. In countries where Sunday trading is still limited, families use the opportunities to go to parks and have picnics and meals together. In the UK, Sunday is now just another shopping day.
Of course, there are always going to be some who have to work on a Sunday, being a minister I am one of them. In this case the principle of taking one day off to rest, remember God, and spend time with family still applies, regardless of which day of the week it is.
Passions and Consumerism
For those who have been reading my blog over the last few months, you may have noticed quite a number of links to the blog of an Orthodox priest in the USA. In his writing, Father Stephen seems to eminate a wisdom that can only come from many hours in prayer and contemplation.
Here, he writes about the passions that drive us, many of which are imposed on us from outside.
Some years ago (many years ago now, I realize) when I was a “tie-wearing” man (priest in cassocks don’t wear ties), I remember wondering how ties that had once seemed so fashionable (think of the really wide ties of the early 70’s) overnight seemed so terrible (think skinny ties of the 1980’s). The question that came to my mind was, “When did I ever make a decision about how a tie actually looks – how wide it should be, etc.?” The answer, of course, is that I never did make such a decision. Those decisions were made in fashion houses miles from me and in the marketing departments of the fashion industry. What disturbed me then (and now) was that it was clearly the case that “how I saw the world” (at least as measured by ties) had nothing to do with reason, decision, preference, etc. It was “planted in my brain” to quote Paul Simon, and I never noticed the operation.
How then do we avoid being manipulated by the passions of consumerism and other things? He adds:
To be fully human does not include becoming a passive receptacle to marketing forces (ideas are as marketable as ties). To be a person of virtue includes not being a slave to any of the passions. Struggling with the passions (greed, envy, lust, gluttony, etc.) is an everyday struggle for Christians and should be part of the agenda of every Christian who intends to be obedient to Scripture.
It’s worth reading the whole article.
You can’t take it with you
I came across a funny story from Reuters News
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German man was such an avid collector of weapons and other paraphernalia that he ran out of space at home and had to sleep in a hotel, neighbors said following the 71-year-old’s death.
Executors found an arsenal of weaponry and assorted goods at the man’s two-story home in the western city of Aachen, police said on Wednesday.
“There were 71 guns — one for each year of his life,” said police spokesman Paul Kemen. “He also had 41 cases of ammunition and five walking sticks fitted with retractable blades.”
Heiner Hautermans, a reporter at the Aachener Nachrichten paper, said neighbors related how the man, who lived alone, collected everything from clothing to garden tools and watches.
“The house was stuffed to the rafters,” he said. “By the end, the neighbors said he had to sleep in a hotel sometimes because there was no more room.”
One neighbor sometimes handled up to 14 deliveries of goods a day for the man when he was out, he added. “At some point she got fed up with it.”
No heirs have yet been found for the man, police said.
I can’t help but being reminded of the parable of the rich fool in the gospel of Luke. There’s nothing wrong with collecting things, although in this case it meant that he couldn’t live in his own house, which is surely going too far. Earthy security is one thing, but don’t we all have an eternal secutirty to think about too? When we die we have to leave all that we have collected behind. It stays here to be passed on to our family and friends. The parable of the rich fool goes on to talk about being rich towards God. As this is something that will exist after death, maybe this is where the majority of my attention should be.
