Just before I sat down to write this column, I re-read some of the pages toward the beginning of Jesuit Father John Kavanaugh’s terrific book, “Following Christ in a Consumer Society: The Spirituality of Cultural Resistance” (New York, Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991, pp. 194).
These pages are the beginning of Father Kavanaugh’s analysis of the problems with a consumer society and what living in a consumer society can do to us. The Jesuit priest’s insights first upset me, and then challenged me.
Father Kavanaugh suggests that there is a hole in the center of what he calls “the consuming self.” We are in danger of losing our interior life. We can be seduced into living only for appearances. Father Kavanaugh writes the following about the “consuming self:”
“There is no substance to our being, nothing there but the appearances, the ‘outside’, the ‘looking good’…There is a hole underneath it all. It is a discovery frighteningly made in those moments of true solitude when we are no longer producing, consuming, marketing, or buying…
“The flight from the solitary personal self haunts our compulsion to work, our urgency to produce. We often seem incapable of living in the present moment while paradoxically we feel robbed of time.” (p. 6)
The temptation to expect things to fulfill us is great. There is also a temptation to live only for appearances. We can lose sight of what is most important about us. We might try to find our value in the things we possess – whether they are houses, automobiles or clothes, prestigious jobs or degrees from prestigious schools. In various ways, we are being told in our society that we don’t count as persons, that we are not important because of what we are, but only have value because of what we have.
Finding Value
Some of Father Kavanaugh’s insights don’t speak directly to me. For example, I am probably the worst shopper in the world. I don’t like shopping and for better or worse, I have no interest in the latest styles of clothing. If I ever wear some article of clothing that is the latest fashion, it’s a good bet that someone gave it to me as a Christmas or birthday gift. The only thing about an automobile that interests me is whether it starts up when I turn the ignition key.
What really speaks to me is Father Kavanaugh’s remark about the need to live in the present moment. One interest that many psychologists and psychiatrists have when they interview people is to see if the person can live in the present. If the person is depressed, this could be a sign of living in the past; if the person is anxious, this could be a sign that the person is living in the future. To be able to live in the present moment is a sign of mental and emotional health.
Grace of the Present
Not only is living in the present moment a sign of emotional health, but it is also related to an important truth in ascetical theology. Theologians talk about the grace of the present moment. God is always present to us. We may forget about God, but God never forgets about us. God’s presence keeps us in existence and God’s presence can enable us to grow into a deeper relationship with God.
I am a person who tends to be anxious. This goes back at least to my high school days. Back then it took the form of extreme scrupulosity. I had an erroneous notion of what was and was not sinful, and that was accompanied by an image of a frightening God. I can recall how difficult availing myself of the sacrament of reconciliation was in my high school years.
Today, my anxiety focuses occasionally on church projects in which I am involved, or essays I have to write or talks I have to give. None of these frighten me, but they can preoccupy me so that I am living more in the future than in the present moment, even though everything I believe about God tells me that all of these projects are more God’s projects than mine.
Antidotes to Consumerism
I should trust more in God’s presence and this could help me to have a more balanced outlook on any priestly work I try to do. Living in the present moment, resting, relaxing and enjoying God’s loving presence may be the best antidote to the temptations of consumerism. Believing and trusting in God’s loving presence would seem to be the exact opposite of trusting in things or in appearances.
If we are unconditionally loved by God – and we are – why should we worry about how people judge us and evaluate us? We have been shown our value, dignity and importance through the life, teaching, death and resurrection of God’s Son.
Father Robert Lauder, philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, is the author of the recently published “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).