Between a Bookstand and a Thorn Bush

When I was nearabouts eight years old I remember being acutely aware of suffering kids in Africa. My life was pretty carefree and didn’t contain much suffering. And I felt a sort of empathy, or… something. It didn’t feel right to me that kids my age across the world should have to suffer while I didn’t. I stepped out on our front porch and surveyed a bush full of prickly thorns. Then, in what I counted as an expression of solidarity, I held my breath and jumped in.

When I was nearabouts twelve years old I remember being acutely opposed to eating all of the food that my mom had prepared for dinner. I think my parents did a pretty good job instilling in me that if you don’t like the food, you still eat it. But one night, I wasn’t having any of that. I didn’t like it. I wasn’t going to finish it. “There are starving kids in Africa who would be glad to have your meal,” said Mom. “Fine, then send it to them!” I said, defiantly pushing the plate away and jumping up from the table.

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Stepping foot in Africa for the first time two decades later, it wasn't long before we headed to the mall past the frozen yogurt store and babyshop into Nakumatt (Africa's Walmart) where we were greeted by Joel Olsteen’s smiling face front and center of the discount bookstand... and I realized being halfway across the world does not mean we’re far from home. The home, that is, of a consumer society. Even though over the years I had progressed beyond the "Africa = starving child" mentality of my youth, I still didn't anticipate finding such a familiar feeling of consumerism here.

William Cavanaugh, in Consumption, the Market, and the Eucharist, observes:

"It is not the desire for anything in particular, but the pleasure of stoking desire itself that makes malls into the new cathedrals of Western [but no longer Western only] culture... For a number of reasons, desire in consumer society keeps us distracted from the desires of the truly hungry, those who experience hunger as life-threatening deprivation... Consumerism is the death of Christian eschatology. There can be no rupture with the status quo, no in breaking of the kingdom of God, but only endless superficial novelty."

No rupture with the status quo... my eight-year old leap into a thorn bush was silly, though sincere. It was a leap of lament; "God, if there must be suffering, I am willing to share in it" was my prayer. As unnecessary as the act may have been, it was an attempt to rupture the status quo, an act that was produced from an eschatological hope.

Consumerism, the death of Christian eschatology... but as I grew older, I grew into more of a consumer. At twelve, I was well conditioned that food can be bought at the store, and very easily. Tastier food than what I was eating. I didn't want to eat that food. So long, food. But yeah, someone else can have it. Give me the superficial novelties.

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As we began visiting with Kenyans after that initial trip to the mall, we learned from them that the things that Christians (and culture in general) struggle with here are in fact not foreign to our own: consumerism, finding identity and safety in possessions, doing whatever it takes to make it to the top.

Nevertheless, among the truly committed Christians here we've also witnessed an obvious strength: a deep reverence of God. It’s a respect that’s hard to describe. It’s something in the way they address God in prayer, the way they worship and the way they speak about him. You can just tell that the God they know is a very big, very present God—not reduced to the relevance of their needs alone, but who exists first outside of their needs as a great and holy God. And although there is a deep appreciation for the things he has done for them and anticipation for the way his hands continue to work in their lives, there is also an enormous admiration for him because he is the one and only true God.

At different points of my life, how easy it has been to make even God just another product of consumer society. Witnessing this big, reverent view of God among Kenyan believers has made me realize how remaining rightly related to his bigness can be a crucial antidote to consumerism. †

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