I really really don\u2019t want to talk about the gorilla thing, however much the Internet may squeeze my tender consciousness to weigh in. I have children, I like animals. The whole thing is a great sadness to me, though not the mother who gets to still have her child. But what is a child, when there\u2019s a gorilla to be had.<\/p>\n
Actually, it does sort of tie in, because what I really wanted to rattle on about was the Minimalists. I know, again, already. I didn\u2019t intend to. I\u2019ve been listening to endlessly varied podcasts about Trump (just trying to understand, for real, just trying to understand) and then the minimalists came up next while I was busy and so I listened for a while.<\/p>\n
They have a movie out. Well, a documentary. And they are traveling around the country promoting it. They played clips of it, and part of the sound track.<\/p>\n
And, honestly, I am not far off in my estimation that what they are peddling is a religious exercise. It isn\u2019t about the stuff, however much it is about the stuff. At the root of it (whatever it is), it\u2019s about you as a person and how you relate yourself to your circumstances, other people, and the cosmos.<\/p>\n
I was particularly bemused this time by the lamentingly sorrowful nature of the clips they played. The underlying music that moved the experts along was doleful, repetitive, mournful. And the substance of the interviews was, I hate to say it, sort of dystopic. Humanity has sinned greatly by owning too much stuff. Salvation can come through getting rid of the excess and leading a meaningfully purposeful but still hopeless life in which the righteous person is surrounded by an appropriate number of useful items.<\/p>\n
The third clip was heartbreaking. The minimalists described their childhoods and the trauma of living through divorce and neglect. At the end they played part of the sound track\u2013an album cut specially for the movie, but really a guttural lamenting cry. The only hope we have, if indeed we have any at all, is to not give in to the consumeristic siren call of the age. Humanity has so erred and strayed and there is no health in us. Therefore, we must do the best we can before we die.<\/p>\n
I kept wanting to interrupt them, and get a word in. Just to depress them more. The obvious troubling problem is that even if you get rid of all your stuff, and give it to the poor and have nothing, you still won\u2019t be happy\u2013just like you weren\u2019t happy when you possessed everything. Whether there is much or little, if you are still there, you can\u2019t be happy, because you are the problem. There\u2019s no magic, life changing fix to get around the trouble of sin. There\u2019s nothing you can do or not do, nothing you can own or get rid of that will bring you joy in all your circumstances. Even the very clever tag line, \u201cuse things not people\u201d, while sensible and true, can\u2019t be achieved, and therefore can\u2019t bring happiness.<\/p>\n
The problem with the world is that we are in it. In some sense, that horrible person on Twitter was right. If all the people disappeared, the gorilla would be allowed to be free and go war against all the other gorillas. Except he wouldn\u2019t war, he would be at peace, or, at the very least, we wouldn\u2019t be around to see it and be upset.<\/p>\n
But we are here, even though we are the problem. And, as a Christian, I can comfortably say that I\u2019m meant to be here, that God wanted me to be here, even though I was going to make a hash of everything. God made me, and that poor gorilla, and the mother and her child, and the minimalists. And he knew that we would fashion a lot of stuff and use it wrongly, and use each other. He is not surprised by all the bad useless things we collect and bury ourselves with. Moreover, having brought us in to the world, he\u2019s provided a solution to all the trouble that we\u2019ve spread all over the landscape. There is even a way to be happy, to rejoice, even in the midst of brokenness.<\/p>\n
But the solution doesn\u2019t include continuing to perfectly manage the stuff, or backing away from the rest of creation and living in a box. The solution is Jesus, the true minimalist, whose perfect life and death atones for sin. Wherever you go, there you still are, ready to make a wreck of everything. And in to the middle of it, Jesus comes to heal and restore. Once you\u2019ve fallen into his care, and understood that he won\u2019t leave you or forsake you, you are free to have stuff or not to have it, to stay where you are or go somewhere else. Wherever you are, there he is, constantly bringing joy instead of sorrow, rejoicing instead of lament, order instead of dystopia.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I really really don\u2019t want to talk about the gorilla thing, however much the Internet may squeeze my tender consciousness to weigh in. I have children, I like animals. The whole thing is a great sadness to me, though not the mother who gets to still have her child. But what is a child, when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2373,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[32,34,64],"class_list":["post-4714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch-2","tag-clutter","tag-culture-watch","tag-vanity"],"yoast_head":"\n