Still Thinking Abundance

Much of Jesus’ teaching encouraged his listeners to live life with a sense of abundance.  While later Christianity has tended to restrict and limit this teaching to what a person could or could not do, the Gospel’s give a strong message that the ministry of Jesus was about removing the restrictions and opening the lives of his followers to the abundance and fullness that one could encounter in this world.  It is probably no surprise that one of my favourite verse in the Bible is the passage in John’s gospel Chapter 10, verse 10, where Jesus’ says to his disciples, “a thief comes to steal, kill and destroy; I have come that you may have life and may have it in all its fullness.”

There are many thieves in this world that would destroy abundant/full living today.  This includes rule based religions; immoral and unethical living; fear of failure; the unwillingness to take risks and even a distorted view of ourselves and others.  But I want to focus on just one thief of abundant living and that is the thief of attachment.   For us in middle Australia this is always a difficult subject.  We have so much and yet we seldom feel as if we have enough.  It is also difficult because our economic society is based on consumerism. If we stop consuming then the retail industry suffers and we all suffer (economically at least.)

But constant consumerism and the need for continual growth is not the same as living a life of abundance. While there are real human needs that must be meet, housing, food, education, transport among others, there are true limits to how the things we consume contribute to an abundant life.

Few have been more articulate on this subject than the director of the Australia Institute, Clive Hamilton.  In two of his books, Growth Fetish and Affluenza, Hamilton takes Australian society to task for its financial and consumerist obsessions.  He suggests that Westfield shopping centres are more the “quintessential icons of modern Australia,” than the Sydney Opera House and Uluru.  He argues that two thirds of we Australians can’t afford what they buy and then once we have bought it, we become the third biggest generator of landfill per capita in the world. I heard someone complained recently about having to purchase a digital TV because the analogue signal will soon be switched off.  They purchased the television and took the old one to the tip and there at the tip they saw a mountain of discarded analogue TVs.

I don’t raise this because I am a non-consumer, that is not even possible, but because at its heart consumerism is a spiritual and theological approach to life.  Buying stuff and having more and more things can be a way of dealing with the hunger in us for what is called “the More”  and the more is the desire to live with abundance.  But a grain of wisdom and a pinch of maturity shows us that the things, the stuff we have, seldom feeds the need in human beings to satisfy their desire for “the More.”  Spiritual hunger can only be satisfied spiritually.  That means we apply spiritual principles to our lives such as; less is more; or to have something - one must let go of it; to find oneself - one must lose oneself; and abundance is discovered in who we are, not in than what we have.

And of course no stronger words can be said than what Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.”

Christopher