Detroit radio host Craig Fahle of WDET-FM, the local affiliate of NPR, is planning a series entitled “The New Normal” based on the changing life and habits of ordinary folks in light of the present economic challenges. This past Sunday, one of my parishioners handed me a Parade magazine article in which author Lee Eisenberg (“Your Money or Your Life?”) discussed how our lives are deeply influenced by the belt-tightening we have all had to do of late. Specifically, says the author, we may now define “value” differently, such that the previously coveted symbols of wealth give way to more genuine epiphanies about what makes life truly good. Preachers and poets have been saying that for years.
The truth is that we Americans were spoiled for too long. Our standard of living has been the envy of the world, even if it did involve not a little ostentation and conspicuous consumption. It never bothered us much that we we used up an inordinate percentage of the planet’s resources and that we could never figure out how to feed the rest of the world, although I am certain we would have if we could have. Now, just two years into an economic and financial meltdown, we are all feeling the pinch–some more than others, of course. My congregation is struggling mightily to stay afloat and vibrant in a small suburban city where home foreclosures have been rampant and the unemployment rate is probably approaching 25 percent. In this bleak landscape, one truly wonders if there is a word from the Lord.
Practically speaking, I sometimes wonder if the concessions that so many have had to make at their places of employment–things like working more hours for less pay and salary cuts–will become permanent. One could argue that we were always artificially affluent and that the cutbacks are just the needed correction in a market-driven economy. Even if that’s true, such acquiescence to a hard reality will do nothing toward paying that mortgage on a homestead which is now “under water.” That’s a whole other discussion.
But perhaps there is a spiritual upside to all of this, and it has to do with our being reminded, albeit rudely, that “Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 124:8). Before this is all over (it’s anybody’s guess as to when), we will have learned to rely on each other and on the Providence of God alone. Perhaps we will have discovered that life is what happens while we are trying so desperately to make a living. Maybe the new normal will be what God intended for us all along, and we were just too busy to notice.
Raising Basileia 
Even during this resession, the US is still the envy of the world economically. The poor in the US — though nothing to wish for — have more options for survival than most of the poor in the developing world. On the whole we still consume conspicuously and continue to leverage cheap goods from poorer countries. And there are still plenty of gas gusling cars and trucks on ther road to cause traffic jams. We even manage for the most part to adjust to the pressures created by personal bankrutcies, forclosed homes, and lost jobs better than the majority of people on earth.
It could be much, much worse for us — and of course there are no guarentees that the economy won’t dive again as we head into 2011. But it won’t be the end of the world even if it does.
Difficult times create an occasion: 1) to break down some of the ethnic, cultural, and economic walls between us; 2) to develop new friendships, community initiatives, and cooperative endeavers; and 3) to trust in the Lord in more tangible, universally experiential, and Spirit-filled ways. The uncertainty and uncomfort of 2010 has the potential to bring people together. I pray that Christians not let this opportunity slip away.
Well said, Tim. It seems almost sophomoric to suggest that difficult times help us to remember what is truly lasting, but I think they do. Maybe this whole thing is a kind of corrective to our previous excesses and even our myopia. You are right in suggesting that we recognize the opportunities before us and not let them slip away.
Tough times bring about new revelations, new songs, new artistic images, new ways of being, living and even “doing church”. The hardest part for anyone, is to learn how to offer up a “sacrifice of praise”, even when things seem the bleakest. Yet, I believe that’s exactly what God requires of us. All things are not equal. Sometimes it takes us a while to figure that out, even though we may have been raised to believe in this and think this. If there is one thing that is equal, it is what can be found in the scriptures, that “it rains equally on the just and unjust”. It’s taken me a while to begin to practice “gratitude living”. When I began to do this, I began to look at life differently. I began to see God’s blessings all around me, even in the so called “bad times/tough times”. The hardest thing I think, is to realize that God’s kingdom has come and is here with us, right now, on earth as it is in heaven. Humanity, somehow keeps mucking it up. Peace, N