Christmas is around the corner so you know what that means: Let’s celebrate JESUS by plunging deeper in DEBT!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

By Heber Brown, III

Advent Conspiracy

Two weeks ago for our church’s Bible Study which we call Transformation Tuesdays, I began a class centered around a movement called Advent Conspiracy. The effort in a nutshell is to encourage Believers during the Season of Advent to Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and Love All. It’s a message that really resonated with me and seems to agree deeply with those who are taking this class as well. In a fantastic promotional video, the pastors who created this effort really described how I and many others feel about the Advent Season. With all the sales, stores, pressures related to purchasing and giving gifts, living up to others consumeristic expectations and throwing a lil Jesus on the side, I’m happy just to survive it and am glad when it’s all over! I don’t like feeling like that. Why should I in some ways be dreading one of the most miraculous seasons of the year for Believers?

I’ve hated commercials for a long time (my wife will tell you that I turn the radio off or mute the television when they come on) perhaps because a part of me is tired of running in the hamster wheel of American consumerism. This country is leading the world in making idols of our “stuff” and our cash. I’m unplugging from it beginning this year. In fact, my transformation has already begun. I feel it.

Last week in our Thursday Noon Bible Study, we began talking about money, the scriptures, and our lives. Using some of the questions in the Money Autobiography exercise provided by the Faith & Money Network; we began exploring as a group our attitudes, beliefs, and practices related to money. Our Thursday Noon Bible Study is primarily made up of senior women, but don’t get it twisted – we mix it up big time! Some of the scriptures that we read together last week really got us debating the meaning of passages like Matthew 6: 19-34, Acts 2: 43-47, and Acts 4:32-34 . We’re not really focused on drawing conclusions so much as we’re engaging in self and congregational examination around the question: “Should our Faith inform our attitudes, beliefs, and practices related to money? And if yes, how so?”

We ended our study last week by watching a promotional video for an organization called One Day’s Wages. It’s a ministry that makes it possible for people to donate the equivalent of their one day’s wage to some organization in the world that is working to combat global poverty.

The Movement of One Day’s Wages from One Day's Wages on Vimeo.

I’m inspired by their witness and the moved to respond by facts like: 3 Billion people in the world live on less than 2 $US dollars a day. How do I encounter news like that and look around my home seeing things that I’ve rarely or never worn, don’t need, or don’t even want? (One year, I received a Christmas gift in the morning and gave it to someone else by that night!)

I’m convicted by the words of our Christian forebearers who spoke on poverty and wealth like Basil of Caesarea who said: “The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging in your closet belongs to the man who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the man who has no shoes; the money which you put into the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help but fail to help.”

I feel a tradewind blowing in my life and I’m committing to live in a new direction. I’m committing to a higher degree of simple living, radical loving, and liberation from my cultural addiction to money and consumerism. They say in NA Meetings that the first step to recovery involves the admission that there is a problem. Well, I guess its apropos to say, “Hi, my name is Heber and I have a problem.”

Stay tuned as I expose my addiction and take steps along the path to recovery during this Advent Season.

For anyone else in the Baltimore metro area looking to be freed from their addiction to money and things you’re more than welcome to join us on Tuesday nights at 7PM or Thursdays at 12Noon at a church called Pleasant Hope.

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