I’ve been doing some thinking (and preaching) about following Jesus in a consumer society. You know the phrase, ‘marching to the sound of a different drummer’? Maybe the phrase for Christ-followers in a consumer driven culture is ‘we pay attention to a different bottom line’. But is that true? Are Christians less wasteful – are cutting down on waste, recycling, responsible purchasing, doing without, virtues more obvious in Christian lifestyle?
Last night watched some of a programme about families who create most waste, and the ongoing debate about what we do with the amount of throwaway stuff we create – pay as you throw waste-bags, microchip bins where you pay by weight, for example.
Reminded me of this wee poem by Norman McCaig
Small Boy
He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.
And another, and another.
He couldn’t stop.
He wasn’t trying to fill the sea.
He wasn’t trying to empty the beach
he was just throwing away,
nothing else but.
Like a kitten playing
he was practising for the future
when there’ll be so many things
he’ll want to throw away
if only his fingers will unclench
and let them go.
We live in a world where we throw away too much, want too much, and find ourselves being both possessive (things we can’t do without) and wasteful (things we no longer want, let alone need). McCaig captures with fine irony the idea of practising being greedily wasteful, and he exposes that capacity we all have,- to hold on to, and to throw away, to possess and to waste – and so to lose a sense of the value of things, to obscure that humanising regard for a world that is too beautiful to be rubbished.
Leave a Reply