A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on June 19th, 2008 in Progressive Faith

Reverend Mother is questioning the simplicity of simple living. Her question is worth pondering - what can communities of faith do to make it easier for members to consider all of creation in their actions?

The first thing I have to do is say that I think a lot of the sound and the fury over “think local” is really nothing more than a disguise for anti-corporatism. I’m not a big fan of powerful corporations ruling the world, but neither are they the bugaboo of the whole world. They are often the instrument of unlimited greed, but it is the greed that is the problem, not the corporation. Corporations can do as much good as they can do ill. It depends on the attitudes of those running the thing.

That, of course, is not what RM has in mind - and I don’t think she is among the anti-corporatists at any measure. But she is looking for both ways to be a good steward and ways in which good intentions get sidetracked.

One thought that comes immediately to mind is composting. If everyone in Jersey City threw their potato peelings in the back yard to rot; then the air quality would suffer. We’d also have tons of rodents and insects that are necessary to assist in breaking down the peelings. In fact, the history of our major cities tells us that this is exactly what people used to do. The sanitation was improved by having pigs and goats roam through neighborhoods. Cities began trash collection to deal with the health problems that came along with that method of disposal.

The only way they knew to deal with the collected garbage was to throw it in unused spaces - like rivers and low-lying areas. The problem with this is that it poisoned - or at least degraded - the water quality and when the waters rose in a flood, all the crap that had been thrown out was thrown back in. So they dug big pits and burned and/or buried it.

Of course, that caused a whole set of new problems that we were slow to realize. Now we still throw our trash in pits, but we have them lined with impermeable plastic and pump out the leachate (where it often is disposed by mixing in very small amounts with our drinking water - yum!).

Now we could throw stuff in a pit and have a means of capturing the methane that is emitted - then we might be able to use the degrading trash to fuel our energy demands. In fact, we do this in some places, but not many.

So what can we do? I think the first thing to do is to teach that there is no way out of this mess. We are here and we consume and our consumption has consequences. We can alleviate those consequences, we can minimize them - but we cannot make them not exist. And as sure as we breathe, the actions we take to deal with consequences will have further consequences. It isn’t about finding the final answer, it’s about continually finding better ways to do things.

Perhaps that is the best thing that we can do - promote the idea that there is no perfect idea. We will do the best we can, but those actions will cause problems that we must deal with in turn.

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