Consume this!
Environmental lessons at grandma’s knee
It wasn’t a theological issue (although I didn’t always like being “the Christian” among a group of friends who mostly were not) or cultural uneasiness (I didn’t particularly like borscht but our family didn’t cling to cultural identifiers too fiercely). I knew enough Christians to mitigate the unpleasantness of my status as a “cognitive minority,” and there were enough sweet German pastries to offset those Mennonite dishes that offended my palate. No, the source of my misery lay elsewhere.
To be blunt, I resented how frugal we were taught to be. This came from my parents – and, more often, my grandparents. I remember frequently being told not to throw out item X because it could be reused, to turn out the lights when we left a room, to eat what we took (or take less), to avoid littering, to turn off the water while brushing our teeth, to take shorter showers, to be content with used hockey equipment, and the list goes on. Waste and profligate consumption were anathema in our family.
I can’t help but notice similarities between the way my grandparents approached life and the way we are currently being encouraged to live in order to avert environmental catastrophe. In both cases, a lifestyle of responsible consumption and fiscal restraint are offered as important components of living well in the world. The difference is the motivation behind the two ways of approaching the world.
I’m not going to romanticize or over-theologize my grandparents’ reasons for advocating a lifestyle of responsible consumption. I’m under no illusion that they saw their approach as a response to a “shared and unifying cause” or a grave “moral and spiritual challenge” (as Al Gore describes our current ecological predicament). They had nine kids and money was tight. A good deal of their reasoning was based on basic economic necessity.
However, I think they exhorted us to use resources wisely for deeper reasons as well. I’m convinced they saw it as a part of what it means to be a responsible bearer of God’s image – to respond in gratitude to the God who had made them and the world in which they lived.
The earth is the Lord’s, they believed, and everything in it (Psalm 24:1). We are accountable to God for how we treat the planet he made. Being wasteful and irresponsible in our consumption of resources is not just imprudent, it’s immoral.
My grandparents knew what it was like to go without. They knew that many on our planet struggle to meet basic needs. To live wastefully is to adopt a posture of indifference to the plight of others and to turn our backs on an important part of our heritage by refusing to learn from it.
Twenty-some years later, I reflect upon how I was raised with a mixture of irony and appreciation. It’s ironic that a culture that has spent decades consuming itself to death has now “realized” that our future may depend on living with less and using what we have more responsibly. I think my grandparents (and many before them) knew this a long time ago.
My appreciation comes from the fact that we were taught to live this way not as a response to catastrophic predictions from a sometimes hysterical mass media or because of a felt need for “spiritual transcendence” or a “unifying generational mission,” but because we simply had obligations: to the planet, to our fellow human beings, and, ultimately, to God.
I’m grateful my parents and grandparents modelled a way of being in the world that was, in many ways, ahead of its time, and that this way of being is, however fitfully, being expressed in my own parenting. I hear my parents’ voices when I’m harping on my own kids to turn off the water while they’re brushing their teeth, or not to waste paper by drawing on one corner then throwing it out.
I’m transported back to my grandparents’ kitchen when I insist that my kids eat what they take and learn how to approach food gratefully and responsibly.
When we march off to Value Village (there’s no MCC store in Nanaimo) rather than the Gap in pursuit of “new” clothes for another school year, I think of my grandma reusing and repairing countless articles of clothing for her nine children.
And I will continue to enthusiastically do my small part to “save the planet” and pass along an ethic of responsible consumption to my own children. I will do this, however, for reasons that have less to do with the edicts delivered from on high by the current prophets of climate change than with the familial, cultural, and theological heritage that I’m only beginning to appreciate.
Today, it’s trendy to denounce consumerism and individualism. But do we know what they are? Consume This! looks for a new way to be Anabaptist in the 21st century by highlighting habits taken for granted. How are thought, faith, and action connected?—Eds.When I was a kid, I remember feeling somewhat resentful of my “Mennonite-ness.”
It wasn’t a theological issue (although I didn’t always like being “the Christian” among a group of friends who mostly were not) or cultural uneasiness (I didn’t particularly like borscht but our family didn’t cling to cultural identifiers too fiercely). I knew enough Christians to mitigate the unpleasantness of my status as a “cognitive minority,” and there were enough sweet German pastries to offset those Mennonite dishes that offended my palate. No, the source of my misery lay elsewhere.
To be blunt, I resented how frugal we were taught to be. This came from my parents – and, more often, my grandparents. I remember frequently being told not to throw out item X because it could be reused, to turn out the lights when we left a room, to eat what we took (or take less), to avoid littering, to turn off the water while brushing our teeth, to take shorter showers, to be content with used hockey equipment, and the list goes on. Waste and profligate consumption were anathema in our family.
I can’t help but notice similarities between the way my grandparents approached life and the way we are currently being encouraged to live in order to avert environmental catastrophe. In both cases, a lifestyle of responsible consumption and fiscal restraint are offered as important components of living well in the world. The difference is the motivation behind the two ways of approaching the world.
I’m not going to romanticize or over-theologize my grandparents’ reasons for advocating a lifestyle of responsible consumption. I’m under no illusion that they saw their approach as a response to a “shared and unifying cause” or a grave “moral and spiritual challenge” (as Al Gore describes our current ecological predicament). They had nine kids and money was tight. A good deal of their reasoning was based on basic economic necessity.
However, I think they exhorted us to use resources wisely for deeper reasons as well. I’m convinced they saw it as a part of what it means to be a responsible bearer of God’s image – to respond in gratitude to the God who had made them and the world in which they lived.
The earth is the Lord’s, they believed, and everything in it (Psalm 24:1). We are accountable to God for how we treat the planet he made. Being wasteful and irresponsible in our consumption of resources is not just imprudent, it’s immoral.
My grandparents knew what it was like to go without. They knew that many on our planet struggle to meet basic needs. To live wastefully is to adopt a posture of indifference to the plight of others and to turn our backs on an important part of our heritage by refusing to learn from it.
Twenty-some years later, I reflect upon how I was raised with a mixture of irony and appreciation. It’s ironic that a culture that has spent decades consuming itself to death has now “realized” that our future may depend on living with less and using what we have more responsibly. I think my grandparents (and many before them) knew this a long time ago.
My appreciation comes from the fact that we were taught to live this way not as a response to catastrophic predictions from a sometimes hysterical mass media or because of a felt need for “spiritual transcendence” or a “unifying generational mission,” but because we simply had obligations: to the planet, to our fellow human beings, and, ultimately, to God.
I’m grateful my parents and grandparents modelled a way of being in the world that was, in many ways, ahead of its time, and that this way of being is, however fitfully, being expressed in my own parenting. I hear my parents’ voices when I’m harping on my own kids to turn off the water while they’re brushing their teeth, or not to waste paper by drawing on one corner then throwing it out.
I’m transported back to my grandparents’ kitchen when I insist that my kids eat what they take and learn how to approach food gratefully and responsibly.
When we march off to Value Village (there’s no MCC store in Nanaimo) rather than the Gap in pursuit of “new” clothes for another school year, I think of my grandma reusing and repairing countless articles of clothing for her nine children.
And I will continue to enthusiastically do my small part to “save the planet” and pass along an ethic of responsible consumption to my own children. I will do this, however, for reasons that have less to do with the edicts delivered from on high by the current prophets of climate change than with the familial, cultural, and theological heritage that I’m only beginning to appreciate.
—Ryan Dueck
