The wife and I had the opportunity to escape our two small children for a very brief time. This last weekend, my wonderful mother-in-law traveled to our home to watch Nate and Sam, while Lori and I headed for Chicago. Wednesday night, after church, I found myself packing for our departure on Thursday morning. I have the tendency to pack like a girl. This tendency has its roots, partially at least, in the influence of my two older sisters. More likely, however, is that I’m scared. As I lay in bed on Wednesday night, my mind raced through all the items I had packed. “Do I have enough underwear? Yes, I’ve got six pairs for a three day trip. Do I have enough shirts? I think so. I have enough for three each day. Socks? Every pair I own.” It hit me, while I lay in bed that night; I’m scared of not having enough. Sure, I probably wouldn’t need all those shirts and undies. But…what if? What if it’s really hot and I sweat a lot? What if a bird poos on my shorts? What if I poo my shorts? The scenarios are endless.
This kind of scared behavior plays itself out in almost every aspect of my life. When it comes to food I’m extra scared. Put me in a buffet line or church pot luck and I can’t get to the food fast enough. “Ohhh, egg rolls! I better take five because there might not be any left when I come back through the line.” So I take five egg rolls only to discover that I only needed/wanted two. The same kind of behavior plays out with my time, money, relationships, and energy. I need to hoard all of these things because there probably won’t be enough of them to keep me comfortable.
All of this hoarding has consequences. I take more than my fair share of the suitcase. Someone else doesn’t get to enjoy a delicious egg roll. Time I spent relaxing could have been better used helping someone who really doesn’t have the time. Money I’m not currently using could be used to help someone else. My need to think I have enough usually ends up with someone else truly not having enough.
There’s an idea that I was first introduced to, most likely, in Marty Michelson’s Old Testament Theology class at Southern Nazarene University. It’s the Myth of Scarcity. Simply put, this myth states that there is or never will be enough for everyone. One has only to view the evening news or listen to the radio to know that there seems to be a serious shortage of stuff. In America, it’s money. As a country, we don’t have enough money to cover our obligations. In other places, the horn of Africa, it’s water. A severe drought has griped that land and, as a consequence, food is scarce too. The list of shortages could go on for quite some time. It’s rather hard to look past all of these “needs” to see a different reality. Like most myths, the myth of scarcity tells us a tale which is not true, but which carries enough rhetorical weight to significantly shape our view of reality. Myths shape nations.
But, as the term implies, the myth is not an accurate representation of the way things are – or at least, the way things should be. There is another account of reality, a counter narrative, if you will. Walter Brueggemann, my Old Testament theology non-sexual man crush, reminds us of this in an article I’ve recently read. In The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity, Brueggemann charts for us how the myth of scarcity runs counter a liturgy of abundance. This liturgy of abundance runs through the first book of the Bible and is threaded throughout Israel’s testimony concerning the God who created them as a people, the God who orders their world and sends them as a gift to the world.
As the Biblical witness runs on, the liturgy of abundance is confronted with the myth of scarcity embodied in the person of Pharaoh. Egypt’s king, faced with the reality of a great famine, gathers and hoards all that he can. He then leverages his hoarded grain until no one in the land has anything but him. Brueggemann asserts that Israel, and later the Church, have been seeking to be free from the power of this myth. Despite the fact that we are greatly blessed in wealth, we still find ourselves thinking there isn’t enough. Brueggemann puts the challenge that we face this way:
We who are now the richest nation are today’s main coveters. We never feel that we have enough; we have to have more and more, and this insatiable desire destroys us. Whether we are liberal or conservative Christians, we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God’s abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity – a belief that makes us greedy, mean and unneighborly.
Despite what the world around us looks like, despite the Untied States deficit/debt ceiling fiasco, despite the homelessness we see in the city, despite the great famine in Africa, I want to live my life in the liturgy of abundance instead of in the myth of scarcity. But I’m scared. I’m scared that the God who makes springs gush forth in the valleys; who makes water flow between the hills, giving drink to every wild animal; who quenches the thirst of the wild asses, who runs streams so the birds of the air can have their habitation in the branches and sing, who satisfies the whole earth with the fruit of his work (Psalm 104:10-13), might not continue doing so. I’m scared that such grandiose feats might not be sustained or repeated. In short, I’m scared that God isn’t who God says he is. I’m scared that God isn’t who Israel says he is.
So I cry out, with the father in Mark 9:24, who frantically wants his son to be free of a demon, “I believe, help my unbelief!” I want to believe that the God who created the world also sustains it. I want to believe that there is enough so that I don’t have to spend my life scraping, grabbing, and hoarding just to survive. I want to believe so that I can be generous with what God has given me.
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