Following Jesus into the Wilderness: Giving Up Capitalism for Lent

By Wilson Dickinson

What are you giving up for Lent? The Bias is inviting you for the next forty days to join Christ in his wilderness wanderings by giving up capitalism.

This is no joke, though there is a fair bit of mischief and holy folly in the idea. We cannot individually opt out of systems that shape every aspect of our lives. But we can spend this season gaining a deeper understanding of the ways that the economic, political, and social structures of capitalism function, and we can also begin to engage in the work that will cultivate collective power and viable alternatives that will bring about change. The point of gaining such an understanding, as one (somewhat) Jewish prophet once said, is not to interpret the world but to transform it.

To gain this perspective we will provide a few articles throughout the season that attend to the very things that many people give up for Lent, like coffee, social media, single-use plastic, and meat. These small objects and activities will serve as windows that allow us to look beyond the obscuring structures of normalcy and busyness so that we can see how capitalism is intertwined with the material aspects of our everyday lives. They will serve as portals that give us a glimpse at systems that exploit and oppresses people and which threaten life on this planet. We will also be exploring the practices and communal activities that we can nurture in our shared lives so as to turn them around.

By giving up capitalism for lent we are hoping to occupy a spiritual, programmatic, theological, and liturgical space that is too often co-opted by the forces of individualism and asceticism.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of this season of penance. While there are likely individual transgressions that we need to reflect on, the great suffering and sin of our world is rooted in systems and structures. For example, this planet is being scarred and wounded by the devastating work of climate change and ecological destruction. We are already witnessing the horrors of the loss of entire species, raging fires, expanding deserts, and destructive storms which are contributing to deepening poverty, rising totalitarianism, and surging refugee populations.

And yet, all of this is merely a portent of what might come. In the summer of 2019 the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, the primary measure of climate change, reached an 800,000-year high. Humans have never lived on an earth in this condition. The last time that the number was this high there were trees at the South Pople.

There is still time. The earth is like a giant pot of water that has been placed on a stove. It will take time for the temperature to rise. As Project Drawdown shows, we already have the technology not just to reduce our emissions but, if we were to maximally apply and expand the options currently available, we could draw down the carbon in the atmosphere.

This is a problem that exists on a planetary scale, and so we cannot address it as individuals. There is a temptation to focus on our consumer choices but doing so keeps the structures of consumerism intact. Furthermore, it causes us to hold ourselves responsible and to look past the structures that are at the root of the problem.

The structures of capitalism have set all of the defaults of our lives to carbon intensive forms of production and consumption. Its internal logic is set on limitless growth in a world crashing into its limits. Its accounting schemes externalize the true costs onto ecosystems and exploited peoples. To mitigate the suffering that climate change will compound, we must begin to understand these structures more deeply and to build collective power to push back.

In this time of reflection and repentance, the wilderness wanderings of Jesus offer us a path to follow. The forty days of lent parallel the forty days Christ spent in the Judean countryside in preparation for his ministry of teaching and healing to bring about the kingdom of God. The Gospel account of this time in the wilderness does not portray it as a hike out into pristine nature, but as a time of struggle and testing with the demonic powers and principalities of this world.

In Luke and Matthew this is dramatized in an exchange with the demonic powers that seek to seduce Christ with security, domination, and acclaim. Christ responds not simply by resisting or abstaining, but he unveils these temptations as being tied in with the ways of empire. Christ responds to the devil's offer to have authority over all the kingdoms of the world, by citing a passage from the covenant, that contrasts the bondage of the ways of Egypt with the liberating power of God (Luke 4:5-8/Deut 6:12-13). In preparation for his great work, Christ does not simply give things up, but he comes to learn about the nature and seductions of destructive imperial powers.

When we seek to follow Christ, we cannot do so as heroic and sovereign individuals, but we imitate Christ as the body of Christ. We engage in this work communally and collectively. And so, in our wilderness wanderings we should continue with Christ to another scene in the wilderness, when five thousand followed him. The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is not so much a story of a disruption of the natural order, as it is a miraculous account of how community can be organized by the rhythms of creation and the covenant (which I treat more fully elsewhere).

The Gospels tell us that out in the wilderness, on the edges of the dominant political and economic structures, Jesus taught and healed--showing people the ways of the kingdom. As the day came to an end the disciples sought to turn away the multitude and send them back to the imperial economy for sustenance. Jesus looked out into the crowd of people from Galilee—the breadbasket of ancient Israel—and saw farmers and fishermen. He counseled the disciples to organize the people into groups of about fifty. He took loaves and fishes and he broke, blessed, and gave them. He transformed the blessings of the earth from being commodities to sacraments, and showed that through cooperation there can be abundance (Mk 6:30-44).

This Lent you are invited to follow Jesus in these wilderness wanderings. For the next forty days you, and hopefully your community and friends, can wrestle with the ways that the powers and principalities of capitalism have come to shape our lives and seduce our hearts. You can also begin to see the ways that the hunger at the heart of our communities might be filled by organizing ourselves, our practices, and the material blessings of our lives differently. Join us as we seek to occupy the wilderness of Lent, so as to build up collective power and to incarnate joyful alternatives to the systems and structures that are ravaging our world.

Wilson Dickinson is a contributing editor for The Bias Magazine, focusing on issues of environment, ecology and creation care.

___

Did you appreciate this article? Please consider making a donation to our IndieGoGo campaign to help us continue to build a new voice for the Chistian Left. Click here to donate today.