We exhort our children be careful about too much spending and not to become victims of the conspicuous consumption of our society but here, once again, the intention is not really moral or spiritual formation: it is to spare them the pain of subsequent debt -- the motive is practical.
The lives of many of us are passed in a gentle self-indulgence which would have shocked our predecessors, and which stands, incidentally, in dreadful contrast to the massive privations of existence in large parts of our world. Our culture now contains little or nothing which suggests that self-denial may be virtuous for its own sake, and the religious teaching which once considered it an important aspect of the spiritual life has largely been abandoned even in Christian circles. The gospel of prosperity reigns.
Many today regard themselves as entitled (the word of our decade!) to the good life. Rights, have a lot to do with it: the moral culture of rights, with with the catalogue of human rights at its center, is hardly likely to honor our personal privation, even when voluntarily entered into. Life today seems more and more arranged by social or economic or political need; it seems to be about not having what we want or deserve. Most of us would say that we want to be happy: freedom from illness, stable and secure relationships, personal comfort, and emotional satisfaction, for example. But what do they mean? What are the limits? I recently listened to an interview on NPR in which a woman argued that 10-year-olds should have the right to read books that showed different positions of the sex act!
It seems to me we live in a world in which expectations of our happiness are forever extending and where satisfaction is more and more illusory. On the other hand, to seek self-discipline in the small aspects of personal living is to cultivate moral and spiritual awareness of the need for the same quality in larger matters; self-denial becomes a precursor of wisdom, of learning how to live wisely, a life not based on wants or rights, but on appreciation and gratitude; doing without helps one appreciate what one has. What we need is not more but less. However, it is almost impossible to declare this in a culture which denies itself nothing.
Christianity has always recognized the truth of self-denial. Jesus told his followers to take up their cross; truth was achieved by arranging individual lives so that the manner in which a person lives assists spiritual understanding. The world is a place where lessons are to be learned; it is not an interlude of hedonism before everlasting bliss. What we become through the accumulation of spiritual discipline here is what endures for eternity.
Blessings,
Jeff
