We live in culture plagued by a vicious cycles of
instant and incessant gratification.
We want to quench our thirst, satisfy our hunger – and we want it our
way! Our culture has become a
society defined as consumer and consumeristic. In the midst of our hungers and thirsts (which are natural)
somehow we get lost. The fear that
there isn’t enough to go around, leads us to symbiotic anxiety and
mistrust. We need to get ours or
get git. In such presumed scarcity
our needs are morphed into wants, desires and fantasies. We want it all, otherwise we might not
get any. We want it how and when
we want it, otherwise it might not be around. And yet the God of the Bible points towards a
different way of life together, a community of koinonia or fellowship based upon the shared life-transforming
experience of God’s love known in Jesus of Nazareth who gave his life rather
than give into the anxiety of scarcity.
His sacrifice changes everything, giving us a new lens through which to
see the world as it truly is. How
do we live this paradoxical truth by faith in a society based upon the myth of
scarcity? How do we love our
neighbor when we are told that our neighbor is out to get what we have? How do we testify to a life-sustaining
God in a culture in which we are told to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps
and to save ourselves, because no one else will?
