Inflation & Simping For Satan
The True Cost Of Living
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” - (Matthew 6:24).
As inflation rises, the ‘cost of living’ may make us feel that there is no choice but to make money our master. We are backed onto the treadmill of resource acquisition to keep the monsters at bay. In the words of the Verve’s bittersweet symphony, “trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to the money then you die.”
God called us to work for His glory not as a serf to the global, capitalist, monstrosity we find ourselves tangled in. We must carve out a place of sanctity from the moneymaking vortex while learning to survive within its orbit.
Satan would love nothing more than to control us by our purse strings. If the battle for our labour and dollar is a spiritual one, we need to be prepared.
Underconsumption
Underconsumption Core (people chronicling their refusal to buy new things) has been a lasting TikTok trend because it is liberating to eject yourself from the whirlpool of consumerism. There is a kick to be had out of unsubscribing from Netflix and forgoing collagen infused-whey protein-nut butter-longevity enhancing, Frappuccinos. The road to hell is paved with duty-free.
Underconsumption is natural when we are content with not only what we have available to us but who we are without all of the layers of protection afforded by material success and excess. I loathe to get all “you are enough” but according to God, we were worth Jesus being brutally executed to spare our souls. We make a mockery of this with attempts to impress each other with symbols of world-sanctioned stature.
Living within less than our means is punk, alleviates some of the economic weight of participating in the world and breaks patterns of frenzied spending. Most of what is available to us via Amazon is actually garbage anyway. Buyers are experiencing rapid “shitification” in the quality of clothes, homes and food so you may as well buy second hand and make from scratch. Over the last few months, I have been furnishing my first home and I can’t tell you how much more satisfying it is to be surrounded by wood than plastic even if the process is far slower. Our souls and bodies will thank us for our willingness to delay gratification.
Thanksgiving & Generosity
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” -Philippians 4:4-7
I don’t care if I sound like a wellness influencer on a Balinese retreat- practicing gratitude is life-changing. Focusing our attention on what we have over what we don’t is a path to joy. Gratitude for food, family, health and each day that is not promised will re-align our hearts and meditation upon salvation extradites us from the chains of this world, if not the pains. Genuine contentment is striking to behold; it is not an indication of complacence but of the peace that accompanies faith. A posture of gratitude makes way for a spirit of generosity.
Anecdotally, I have found generosity to be an elixir to financial stress- don’t ask me for the science but here is the Proverb, 22:9 “The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the poor.” I don’t know how, or why it works but it does. When you feel the urge to tightly clutch your resources for dear life, give more away. Find the places of need around you and let your generosity flow there. It doesn’t have to be cash; it can be the unbridled giving of time, grace, energy or skill. Munificence in the face of financial strife confirms your devotion and develops spiritual richness.
Community
When times are tough, we need each other to share costs, labour, responsibility and fellowship. Through economic necessity, multigenerational homes emerge, people are forced to ask for help, others are confronted with the wealth that they have compared to the masses. There are countless calls to love, to give freely to, to suffer alongside one another in the bible. Take Galatians 6:2, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.”
Community can be scary. During the tail end of my adolescence I found myself in a cult (a story for another time). I experienced the torture of ostracisation and the dark side of tight-knit social order. As difficult as it was to process the complexity of this experience, there were transcendent moments of profound relational beauty made possible by a shared goal and ethos. I understand the knee-jerk recoil from organised social groups but most of the time, the good does outweigh the bad. I attended a church last Sunday with a social vibrance and warmth that feels like the beginnings of a revolution.
There is truly no greater middle finger to the cult of individualism than to put yourself out for your neighbour. If we pool our efforts and blessings with family, neighbours and friends, we can foster considerable wealth. Creating robust local networks is not about giving up on the big picture; it can be the foundations for lasting political change. These grass-roots projects have the potential to evolve into parallel economic, cultural and educational networks as in post-communist Hungary with the Civic Circles Movement.
explains here:Praise
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” -Ecclesiastes 9:10
Work, hard work is par for the course on this side of eternity, and avoidance of it seems to incite a dull misery.
In his book The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism (1905), Max Weber marks the Protestant Work Ethic as “a work ethic concept in sociology, economics, and history which emphasises that a person's subscription to the values espoused by the Protestant faith, particularly Calvinism, result in diligence, discipline, and frugality.” Protestants viewed work as a stewardship graced to them; they did not work to achieve salvation but in thanks for the salvation they had already received and as a blessing to others. Hard-work and frugality were the natural fruits of their salvation- and so they still should be.
Excellence, effort and the endeavour to reflect God in all that we do pleases Him and wealth is one of the ways He blesses us, however the states we exist under haven’t necessarily got the memo…
In my beloved homeland, we have a government that just keeps printing money (turning what we have have into dust), ludicrous “welfare” initiatives, billion-dollar woke re-education budgets telling men to stop being mean as well as punitive measures for small business that crush ingenuity. The war against meritocracy in Oz began long before the woeful performance of ideologically selected performer, Ray-Gun at the last Olympics.
Lest we forget.
I can’t actually say that good old fashioned elbow grease and applied diligence is going to get you ahead financially (though it very well might and should). In the land down under, it does feel like you’d be better off acquiring several dubious health diagnoses and stacking welfare checks than grinding away at a start-up.
What rigour, endurance and the aspiration to glorify God does foster is integrity and excellence, and these qualities shine no matter how broken our world. The best drummer I know grew up playing in church; she has what Muso’s esteem as “Gospel Chops”. At seventeen, when she started playing in the wider community, she was head and shoulders above other musicians though she’d not trained at their elite schools. Artists who perform, paint, play for God often reverberate with the captivating characteristics that become authentic praise.
When The Bets Are Off
As I project into the future, I see tectonic shifts of global power structures and their markets. I am unsure of where to place my chips. To my mind, the only safe investments are the small acts of faith and obedience made each day. It is easy to cultivate brilliance and glorify God when there is economic and cultural prestige to be found in it but when the incentive structures reward Godlessness, most of us find that we would happily sin for a cheeseburger (myself, regrettably included on a hungry day).
The global, capitalist project steadily erodes truth, beauty and goodness and Western civilisations disintegrate around us. The opulence that the masses have become accustomed to is under threat, those who can forgo luxury and comfort and focus on spiritual fulfilment will be ok. I like to frequently remind myself that neither of my grandmothers grew up with butter. In what feel like hard times (and genuinely are for many of us), we can try and run faster on the hamster wheel for resources or we can take a step back and assess how we can put the true source of all at the centre. I must stress that we cannot do this alone, and it seems utterly vital to me that we find communities to both contribute to and lean on.
I will leave you with one of my favourite bible verses from Isaiah 27; The Deliverance Of Israel. Read it, you’ll like it.
2 In that day—“Sing about a fruitful vineyard:
3 I, the Lord, watch over it;
I water it continually.
I guard it day and night
so that no one may harm it.
4 I am not angry.
If only there were briers and thorns confronting me!
I would march against them in battle;
I would set them all on fire.
5 Or else let them come to me for refuge;
let them make peace with me,
yes, let them make peace with me.”
