MATERIALISM: NOT ALL BAD
Robert Meyers

“The world is too much with us,” Wordsworth said, and after a bit of coaxing I can always get my students to say that he means “materialism” when he says “the world.” But poets and preachers alike sometimes distort a half-truth by underscoring it. Materialism takes an undeserved beating in some sermons, because it isn’t matter that’s opposed to spirit (the two were designed to go together). What is opposed to spirit is perverted matter, uncared-for matter, unloved and unlovely matter.

I remember a superb essay about this topic from Robert Capon in an old and now-lost issue of the religious magazine, Dominion. He says we need to work up a Christian materialism in which we value matter as it ought to be valued. We have far too many things not because of what they are, but because of what they confer on us. We do not really care about them, so they serve us badly, and after a while we discard them. We produce so much there isn’t time or room to keep it. What is sad, though, is that wonder goes into the trash can along with it.

When a little boy finds an old electric motor in the trash, he loves its weight, its windings, and the silent turning of it. When he gets it home his mother tells him to throw it out. Probably he cries. This is his first and truest reaction to the affluent society. He usually forgets it, but we shouldn’t. He is sane; society isn’t. He possesses because he cares. We don’t.

Everything comes so quickly and easily now, Capon argues, that we tend to care less and less because we have little stake in what we own or enjoy. When we had to dress up and go to the theater we had our care reinforced: we had a stake in the venture. But when we need only throw a switch on the box in the living room, our care grows weaker. We are satisfied with less enjoyment, to which we give minimal attention. Boys who once spent hours per day learning to fashion something with loving care now pick it up for 98¢ in the department store, play with it for half an hour, and throw it away. They miss the discipline of learning how caring blesses work, and work reinforces caring.

Capon sees hobbies as probably the largest single area where people may still care deeply. Hobbies are not mere diversions, he points out, but concentrations. His language suddenly takes on the color of religious rhetoric:

“The model locomotive builder at his basement bench is a priestly recluse. The ski enthusiast practicing alone on the slope is a true hermit of the natural religion of things. Man is set apart in order to offer and to worship. The hobbyist sees his vocation precisely as a personal call to do it yourself.”

Because we have a society that cares less and less, says Capon, we are now surrounded by fakes. “The average house if full of fakes: fake drawer pulls and fake drawers; cast-iron trivets made of plastic, and table lamps made out of fake coffee grinders; fake pastry and fake whipped cream; cheeses spread full of vegetable gum; and not even an old jar of unhydrogenated peanut butter to take the curse off it all.

“Care does not come in a pressurized can; accordingly, it is not our kind of item. We use, but we use without attention and without appreciation. We sometimes have a general notion of what is excellent, but we can’t manage the detail required to produce it. We just don’t care enough to bother.” (Italics mine: rrm)

I trust it to be obvious why these comments should be reprinted in a religious journal. The same disease of indifference infects all religious enterprises. A rare person here or there cares, is willing to take infinite time with a project of giving or learning, and can wait for the results without impatience. But most of us, brought up on a “quickie” diet of fake objects and embossed designs, want fast results. If we do not get them, we lose interest and move impatiently to some other endeavor which promises to give them.

The “will of God” is not the death of a baby before its time, or the havoc of a tornado, or the blight of an earthquake. The “will of God” is when the parents, having fought hard against a dread disease threatening their child, win. The “will of God” is when we find the polio vaccine at last, and when (may the day come quickly!) we make a breakthrough in the war against cancer. The “will of God” is an alcoholic’s return from never-never land to sobriety. . . .

These are things bright, beautiful, good. The “will of God” is always, for every life, that particular life’s most perfect unfolding. And the “will of God” is that all of us shall do battle with Him so that these things can be.

Cleland McAfee and Katherine Parker, in Near to the Heart of God, tells a provocative story:

“Passengers on the Baltic on that voyage in 1910 when the Republic sank and its passengers were brought back by the Baltic will never forget how the great rescuing steamer sailed round and round after reaching the supposed location of the injured vessel, whistling dismally and poking its nose through the fog, trying to find the ship. All afternoon the search went on, and when night came most of the passengers felt sinking hearts in the thought that now it would be impossible to bring rescue until morning. That was their mistake, for as the night grew darker it became possible to see the lights of the doomed vessel, and presently that which could not be found in the foggy light of the day became clear in the darkness of the night.”

You and I have been there.