Subversive Community - Challenging Economics

A few years ago I wrote an article for our website called The Church as Subversive Community. It is probably one of my best read articles and was one of the clearest visions at the time of where I saw our local community headed. However, like anything else seen from a distance, the boundaries of what a "subversive community" looked like in suburban south Florida were in fact pretty blurry.

Now that we have a few more years under our belt and are surrounded by a mix of thoughtful, engaged people, some of the "deeper" questions I eluded to in my last post are beginning to rise to the surface. We still tell stories, throw parties, and (in the words of Eugene Peterson) hold a constant "wrestling match in holiness" with God and each other. But there are bleeding edges to which time and energy often seem to only allow a cursory thought or brief conversation to flesh out mammoth implications.

One of these bleeding edges deals with money, specifically how a subversive community of the Spirit challenges the status quo by its practices as individuals and corporately. This is an enormous conversation, and I certainly can only hope but to scratch the surface on this blog. But I recently ran across a series of passages from the book of James which might help to provide some initial conversation points. I'll begin with the first one today and hopefully be able to post on the others soon:

"Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low, because the rich will disappear like a flower in the field. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the field; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. It is the same with the rich; in the midst of a busy life, they will wither away." - James 1:2-8

There is very little about life in South Florida that has anything to do with "the South". This is not a sleepy, lazy, Mayberry-esqe existence. The culture in South Florida is primarily influenced by our northeastern friends who move to escape winters and long commutes for sun and overpriced housing. I grew up in Florida, but have only spent the past 6 years as a South Florida resident. Believe me, this is not the Florida I grew up with.

That being said, this culture is not unrepresentative of the typical American lifestyle. We shop at the same stores, eat at the same restaurants, and play the same sports as most Americans. We just do it, well, bigger in most cases. South Florida is a loud place, in color and in spirit. But there is dark side to the aggressiveness of our pursuit of the American dream - almost no one knows how to rest.

Our company provides consulting engineering services to some of the most exclusive golf clubs and resorts in the area. We are the primary mechanical engineering firm for the Breakers Hotel. We are also in the midst of directing a massive air conditioning renovation at the Palm Beach Country Club. In the course of our work, we interface with quite a few extremely wealthy people, most of whom you've never heard of. It has been said that the wealthy can be some of the most bored people alive. That may be true for the Paris Hiltons of the world, the sons and daughters of privilege. But the people who amassed this wealth in the first place - the fathers and mothers of privilege - are typically so busy they would make a mother of five seem lazy.

Our obsession with getting and growing leaves little room for the cultivation of life in the Spirit. Churchgoers can be the worst offenders of this frenetic pace - I know, because I was one of them, and still am to some degree. A subversive community will heed the words of James and recognize that the pursuit of more, bigger, and better will leave you with a shrivelled soul. In our community, a social norm is developing that is not impressed by state-of-the-art or the latest model. Sure, we own ipods and joke about setting up a friend's apartment with a huge flat screen to play video games, but it's much more interesting to hear how someone set aside a few more bucks a month to sponsor another Compassion child. There are few things more boring to me than, for example, the hype around the iphone's release. No wonder people who slapped down $600 for their overpriced phone are mad Steve Jobs just lowered the price by $200. Silliness.

Rest - Sabbath rest, Jubilee rest - is the antidote for busyness that leads to death. However, by writing about Sabbath and Jubilee here, I would simply be attempting to restate what others have said much better than I ever could. Rather, I'd like to focus on the first part of the passage above - "Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low." Small communities like ours have a tremendous opportunity to subvert the default economic culture through our willingness to pursue social norms that encourage rest, share burdens, ignore the cult of what's happening now, and dare to ask if our lifestyles are sustainable. This must be a communal pursuit and must find its anchor in our common identification as apprentices of Jesus.

A final thought: developing social norms that create an alternative economic culture does not have to be all that complicated or, well, intellectual-sounding. Here's a novel idea...how about just having a lot of fun? Goofing around has a tendency to keep us distracted from ourselves, to not take ourselves so seriously. Instead of playing football with a bunch of adults who get over-competitive and angry, invite a bunch of kids to play along who drop passes, run the wrong way, etc. Or do something that doesn't involve competition at all, like fishing or watching a game with some buddies. In the midst of play, when productivity or efficiency doesn't matter, we begin to see the world as God intended.