Last week I told you about my feeling that our county is sick with a gluttony. That feeling came from my time on mission down in Mexico. Over the week of November 4-9, I was in Oaxaca, Mexico working with the Josh McDowell Ministry. Josh was in Mexico to speak at Le Gran Fiesta, an event for Christian pastors from around Mexico, funded and supported through Growers First.
Growers First is a non-profit ministry established to improve the quality of life for impoverished farming communities. They use strategies within five pillars of a healthy community: economics, agricultural advancement, educational, health and faith. Growers First believes in helping these farmers and their communities with the goal to create generational sustainability that ultimately contributes to a better economic and social quality of life.
Founded by Dave Day, the son of long-time minister Dick Day who is a close ministry friend of Josh McDowell, Growers First has been in operation since 2000 and has helped thousands of farmers in Mexico and Central America. More can be read on their website.
As you might surmise, the mission trip had an effect on me. All trips like this do, whether traveling to another nation or going just down the street. I urge you plan on investing time this year in some sort of service to others. The deepest impact I felt however was an overarching sadness for our country. My regular readers know that I write to help others Live Well. It’s been the focus of my life since I was in high school when I actively participated in my church in our youth mission trips. I wrote about this back in 2010, and it is worth repeating here in early 2015:
Maybe above all else, I love to help people achieve their dreams. I believe I am making a difference when I get letters with statements from my students that say, “thank you for your investment in me; your words have inspired me to take a deep leap of faith and change my young life for the better.” If you’ll run with me here, I think you’ll have the same experience.
So, in that vein, we’ll talk about how to Live Well. As a historian, I think we are living in the most dynamic times since the Renaissance. How do we live well? What does “Live Well” even mean? History provides us clues about core values that have guided millions of people over the years, and through the posts here, I think you’ll discover the true essence of that deep success.
In that writing, however, I often find myself critiquing and criticizing issues within our country. I try to stay away from too much current-day politics, but even avoiding that arena doesn’t keep me from noting the obvious…our country has changed and, to me, is heading still towards a major crisis. Well, being in Mexico made this stand out more starkly than ever before. By the time I was flying home, I was already somewhat missing being in Mexico. Part of that wistfulness came from realizing how different, and in a bad way, the culture in our country is compared to what I had experienced.
Now admittedly, I was in a special place while in Mexico and was not fully around the normal life of the people. And, I am aware that the average Mexican, including the Christians that I was with, lives in a less-comfortable situation than the average citizen of the USA. And yet….
The feeling I had as I headed back to the US was that we are sick with a gluttony. Not just the gluttony of food—that too for sure—but a gluttony of two other issues….a gluttony of possessions and, perhaps more importantly, a gluttony of stimulus. The first two–the typical gluttony related to food and the gluttony of possessions is pretty easy to see. In the past 30-40 years, the USA has become the land of obesity, which is pretty amazing when you look around at how big the health and fitness industry is. It’s as if we’ve had the same sort of divide between haves and have nots just like we economically, except this is those who have good health and those who are very out-of-shape.
Meanwhile, we’ve become even sicker, more obese with our possessions. You know, a century ago or so, the end of the year was a time of three simple, yet important celebrations. One was a reflection on death and life, another was about giving thanks and the third was centered on the birth of a child, the genesis of the path of salvation for man and eventual peace on earth. Today, all three are a gluttony of spending and excess. Billions of dollars are spent on costumes and candy, turkey and desserts, and presents galore, almost always buying things no one needs, and often things that no one really wants. Children are playing with toys right now while their playrooms are stuffed to the brim with older toys…and many of the new toys will soon be forgotten and some children will play more with the box. And all the while, millions of American families will wonder why they don’t have enough money, supposedly, for food for their children.
Far worse, though, is how I felt about our gluttony of stimulus. Over the past decade, something has happened to us. As I wrote back in July, “At the end of the day, if nothing else, we have lost any sense that in the midst of the multitude of methods to communicate that we really are talking to one another. I Facebook you, but you Twitter, while our third friend mostly does Instagram. That person’s friend spends all their time on Pinterest, but other friends are in Google Hangouts. Email, Kik, Vine, Snapchat, Wechat, Path…on and on. The impact is a desperate race to keep up, or the resignation that I can’t keep up which means I no longer am in contact.” While in Mexico, I felt none of the desperate race. Even during the festival, during the downtime, the Mexican people relaxed, children played soccer, adults held conversations. The Americans? Almost always someone was on their phone desperately hoping for a signal.
Our first day there coincided with the November elections back in the States. The morning after the election, instead of keeping focused on the task at hand, many of the Americans, including some of the leaders, were furiously tapping away at their phone. It reminded me of rats in a lab experiment that I was involved with as a student while back at Auburn; as a psychology major, we worked with laboratory rats and we did one of those traditional tests to teach the animals to tap a little bar to receive a food reward. All around the room, dozens of rats hammered furiously at their metal bar in the hopes of getting food. Watching Americans walk in a daze, eyes glued to a little screen, tap-tap-tapping…the mimicry is obvious.
As we head into February, I urge you to wake up. Become aware. Consider this an intervention of sorts. We are probably already over the edge into the abyss where our gluttony cannot easily be stopped. We aren’t a few pounds overweight; we are dozens, maybe hundreds. It will take a sustained effort to turn this around, and perhaps years before you are truly healthy again. The time to start is now. Next time, I will write about one way to make that happen.