Anyway

Posted on the Green Lent blog this morning was an article by Sharon Astyk from Georgia Interfaith Power and Light called "The Theory of Anyway." In a word, she argues that all the things we try to do as environmentalists--garden, or bike, or live in small houses--are not just things we are doing because of peak oil, or climate change, or environmental justice, or survival. "We would like," she writes, "to think of ourselves as moral people, but we tend to think of moral questions as the obvious ones: 'Should I steal or pay?' 'Should I hit or talk?' But the real and most essential moral questions of our lives are the questions we rarely ask of the things we do every day: 'Should I eat this?' 'Where should I live and how?' 'What should I wear?' 'How should I keep warm/cool?' We think of these questions as foregone conclusions - I should keep warm X way because that's the kind of furnace I have, or I should eat this because that's what's in the grocery store. [The] Theory of Anyway turns this around, and points out that what we do, the way we live, must pass ethical muster first - we must always ask the question 'Is this contributing to the repair of the world, or its destruction?'"

Christianity in America did itself a grave disservice when it relegated its concept of "moral values" toward issues of sex and drugs and away from issues of food, community, and economy. Among other things, this focus has made it easy for many of us, for a long time, to turn a blind eye on our own sins while pointing with laser sharpness at everyone else's. By turning morality into a set of simple rules--don't smoke, drink, curse, do drugs, or have sex--we have made it easy for ourselves to think we are righteous while actually living exactly the same as everyone around us. And I'm not referring to the divorce rate, which is no different among churchgoers than anyone else, or to any of the many sexual scandals among church leaders over the years. I am referring to our houses, and our food, and our toys, and our cars, and our neighborhoods. I am referring to the fact that we live in mansions and drive big cars and buy lots of cell phones and computers and are fat. I am referring to the fact that we eagerly make use of many more resources than we need while others are hungry, and poor, and - to us - invisible. I am referring to the fact that we live in neighborhoods where everyone looks just like us, out in the suburbs where the air is less polluted and the water is clean, and we pretend there is no where else we could have lived. I am referring to the fact that we have forgotten the truth about sin: that it's not a personal choice or an instant of action, but rather something integral to the way we are - to the way everyone around us is - and that is precisely why it's so hard to stand up against. If we want to live in a way that is right, not just for us but also for our neighbors and for the world, we will have to live in a way that is fundamentally different from how we have been living. Not because that's what we have to do to survive, at least until the problem gets fixed and we can go back to the way we've become comfortable. But because the way that is comfortable is not always right, and the way other people live is not always right, and because we are beginning, slowly, to realize at last that the way we have been living is not at all right. And having realized that, we can no longer pretend to be innocent.