Consumption

The language and ideas of consumption are upon our lips every day in these times. Right now, we are trying to reverse our consumption of "things" so that the planet is not worn out - and rightly so. My garage is no longer the traditional home of a motor vehicle, it never actually was anyway, but now it is full of different boxes and bags of different types of recycling. I can't help but wonder if someone has pulled a fast one where, instead of the recycling depot, our garage has now become a recycling processing site!
The word "consume" brings all kinds of images into my head: something or someone consumes what is available, more often than not in a container, and then uses or digests the something, then often throwing away the container as rubbish. Also, in the case of fuel, a vehicle or boiler will consume fuel, and then having extracted energy, exhausts another substance which is what is leftover.
The Christian concept of stewardship is significant here. Christians are meant to be good stewards of that which God has put them in charge of. Good rather than careless. Why? Because the scriptures are clear that we will have to give an account for how we have cared for things and people and a good few other items, I guess. In other words, consumption is a reality, but the manner in which we consume has to be a careful process.
The word consume also suggests from a Christian perspective that we are not simply to be consumers, but that we are to be a people who give something back. We are not to be those that merely suck something dry, but actually, we are to be part of the process of inputting, so that others benefit.
There is a significant pause for caution and reflection here too. The implication of consumption is that that which is discarded is seemingly no longer cared for. It is potentially thrown over our shoulders or dropped onto the floor, and considered as rubbish which we never look back on, because we are only focused on that which we have got out of the process.
One of the side reflections of my dog walk today (on this topic), is that which I am very much concerned with and for as a local church pastor - the local church. Now the scriptures paint a very radical picture of the church. It is not a building or an institution or a kind of dead, lifeless and unimportant object. In fact, Baptist Doctrine which was my training at theological college and is the tradition to which I belong, very clearly paints the church as the people. The church is the committed group of people who make up a local family of believers. There are numerous types of these in local towns and they are all different. And if the local church is the living people who have committed to God and each other, then this is a living and active experience which is about how we give and put into the family, and it's not at all about what we consume. The danger here is all too clear in the context of consumption. Consumption would suggest that we are only interested in what we get out of it - in this sense, the local church. Being a church consumer would suggest precisely this - only what we get out of it, and when we are done with it, we merely discard what we no longer need and move on to something else or indeed somewhere else. In actual fact, the idea of consumption is completely foreign to being a part of a local church. No, this living relationship is a three-way process of giving to God, giving to others and receiving from others. But be in no doubt, the idea that somehow or other the local church is where you might consume or receive only, is a completely foreign, illogical and unbiblical concept which has no place in a Christian's life.