by Teri Ong
In a Time Magazine essay entitled “The Great Reset: The End of Excess” (4/6/09) Kurt Andersen makes the case that the current “economic crisis” is good for us because it is forcing us to rethink a fat lifestyle that has left us bloated and sick as a society. He cites many statistics to show where we have gone in the past 25 years: consumer debt up 35%, savings rates down from 11% to 1%, legalized gambling up from 2 states to 48 states, average weight of humans up 20 pounds per person, etc. Andersen calls it our “26-year long spree.” (p. 34)
C. S. Lewis wrote about the White Witch’s reign of terror in the imaginary Narnia as being “always winter and never Christmas.” In other words, bleak and hopeless.” The past two decades in America have been more like a reign of terror of a green (as in money) witch who has made it always Christmas and never winter. But continual partying becomes as bleak as continual anything– to celebrate everything is to celebrate nothing. We lived in the illusion that times would never be cold and tough ever again. And so now our “fat” lifestyle has proven to be so much magical Turkish Delight– we could have as much as we wanted but it proved to be unsatisfying and ultimately tasteless.
Now we have self-help writers teaching us to “live green” in an ecological sense– in other words, turn down the thermostat to pre-hypothermia levels to save on energy we can’t afford, turn off fluorescent low-energy bulbs so we don’t have to call haz-mat as often to dispose of burn-outs, walk off our excess pounds so we don’t need as much gasoline we can’t afford for cars we can’t afford.
There are many benefits of that kind of lifestyle– if you have to walk to the grocery store you won’t bring home as much stuff. If you are going to recycle everything anyway, why not recycle your raged jeans to your own closet rather than buying a new pair that some factory turned into rags before you ever saw them? There is an old Puritan rhyme that goes–
“Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
or Do without”
Our family has lived by that Puritan ethic for over 30 years– not always by choosing faithful stewardship– sometimes (often!) by necessity pressed upon us by the nature of our small inner-city church ministry. Mostly, we haven’t minded. After all, does it make sense to spend $30 on a Wal-Mart blazer when you can have a Burberry’s or Harris Tweed from the thrift store for a couple bucks? Americans undoubtedly can make do with much less in the way of material goods than we are accustomed to, but when we (or at least somebodies in the world) don’t buy things, there is no need for someone in the world to make those things, and no need for someone else in the world to sell them. Many analysts have celebrated our current downsizing as being a move in the direction of “sustainable growth,” but at some point we had also better look at the practicality of “sustainable recision.” People need to work, and we can’t all just go back to the land and work at growing our food and clothing!
The explosion of technology means that in many sectors we need fewer producers to satisfy all of the consumers. But all consumers need to work at something. The Apostle Paul said, “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.” (II Thes. 3:10) There is a distinction between people who cannot work and those who will not work. But when able-bodied people don’t work for their living, they become undisciplined busybodies (in the language of the New Testament). In contemporary terms, they become a dependency class sitting around living vicarious lives through daytime TV talk shows and soap operas.
Andersen makes the point that the caricature of the quintessential American is “childish, irresponsible, willfully oblivious, fat and happy.” The number of people who publicly declare they are counting on the Obama administration to meet all their needs for housing and health care and provide them with “bailouts” and economic “stimulus” to spend in frivolous ways shows the extent to which this caricature is accurate. But I don’t think that we, as a society, or government policy makers have realized that there is a practical limit to dependency and that we are probably already over that line.
That is probably why we, the little people, are being told that having less is better for us. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that bigger pieces of the economic pie going to the government means smaller pieces left over for us. But we needed to go a diet anyway, right? The “end of excess” for us really marks the beginning of the highest levels of excess of any government in the world EVER! President Obama, in 100 days in office, has authorized spending more on bailouts and buy-outs of dubious efficacy than the U.S. spent on WWII, Vietnam, the Cold War, the Gulf War, and the War on Terror combined.
The world has never seen money spent so wildly and in such quantities! The government has bailed out banks, investment firms, insurance companies, auto companies, often giving them more money than the total worth of some of those companies. Some institutions have decided that they don’t want the bail-out funds with its accompanying bureaucracy and government regulation, but the government won’t even let them change their minds and return the money without paying exorbitant fees for getting out of the program early.
THE END OF EXCESS, INDEED! It wasn’t only Bernie “Made-off” who collected large sums of money, spent it on himself, and gave hapless investors nothing in return. Our government is doing the same thing on a colossal scale with impunity– and they are even being hailed as heroes in the process!
But, Virginia, it is more likely that there is a Santa Claus than that there is such a thing as a free lunch. Somebody eventually will have to pay for all of the largess being handed around. It will probably be succeeding generations, so why should we care? First of all, we should care because God hates that attitude. When the prophet Isaiah told King Hezekiah that all of the wealth of his nation was going to be taken by a foreign nation, “Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘the word of the Lord which you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘Is it not so, if there shall be peace and truth in 
my days?’” (2 Kings 20:19) But God described him as “proud” and said that “wrath” would come upon him. Even after Hezekiah repented, “God left him alone to test him, that he might know all that was in his heart.” (2 Chronicles 32:31)
There is no question that our current government suffers overweening pride. Who are we to think we can bring about “global economic recovery” and guarantee that every person in the world will have their basic needs met? Who are we to think that by turning down the heat and turning off the lights we can control the global climate? We are due for a good dose of humiliation on several fronts.
Secondly, we should care because the future of America as a republic is at stake. The French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville observed that America would only be able to sustain a strong republic until politicians learned that they could “bribe the people with their own money.” That is precisely what is going on at all levels of government right now. We have forgotten that there is no such thing as “government money”; there is only our money, collected and redistributed in ways that may or may not (but probably won’t) be good for us.
Two thousand years ago, John the Baptist said of his Messiah, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30) President Obama has been touted as our economic savior, and to turn a phrase, “He will increase, but we will decrease.”
Obama promised us change we could count on; what we are left with is change we can count. The end of excess, indeed!
