ALEX SIMS; TODAY'S EXCESS, TOMORROW'S PRUDENCE

I got my first cell phone about seven years ago. A roommate gave me a hard time about it. He meant it jokingly, but his contention was that cell phones were excessive. He has a cell phone now.

I'm not making fun of that roommate. His point really gave me pause for thought. I bring up the anecdote to illustrate the difficulty of trying to live a prudent life in our culture. I am using the word “prudent” to refer to living carefully, wisely, and judiciously. I can think of several examples of practices and possessions that seem excessive one year and perfectly prudent five years later. I believe the Bible calls us to lives of prudence, but I have little idea of how to gauge prudence beyond a gut level, and even then my gut is pretty much dictated by culture.

Perhaps it's okay, at least in part, to have the concept of prudence be dictated by culture. For instance, I wouldn't consider it prudent for my son to wear a dress today, but if we lived in a time when wearing dresses was normal for men, I suspect I'd be fine with it. My point in saying this isn't to ask about men in dresses, but rather to point to one angle of the complex issue of living prudently - maybe there are times when we are called to take our cues from culture.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but suspect that Christian prudence in America has largely (not entirely) become a practice of waiting one to ten or so years before adapting to new trends. It seems to me that more culturally-aware Christians accept new trends closer to a year after such practices become popular, while more conservative-minded Christians wait a few years longer to adapt. Either way, it seems to me that, ultimately, most of us end up adapting to our culture's standard of prudence sooner or later.

I'm sure that I'm oversimplifying, and I don't want to be excessively critical; I think the Church is often the recipient of over-generalized criticisms that cannot be backed up in detail. So please correct me where I'm wrong. I think we're in a harder spot than most critics realize. It's genuinely hard to know how to live prudently when things change so fast.

Consider a few examples. I want to teach my daughter how to dress modestly. What standard do I pick? Prudence circa 1950? Prudence circa 2015? The former standard might forbid mixed swimming; the latter might permit all sorts of things I don't want to think about. Do I split the difference? I'm being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the truth is that I don't know how to assess prudent dress without judging it by a narrow period in history.

Similarly, I want to raise my kids to think about alleviating suffering more than thinking about luxurious comfort and ease. But what are luxury, comfort, and ease? If I lived in a week of luxury 20 years ago, I bet that I would consider it suffering. Similarly, I’m guessing that 10 years from now a 2008 BMW won't seem luxurious.

I'm really scattered here, and that is because the questions and answers are scattered in my mind. I truly feel perplexed by this question: How do we process the concept of living a prudent, modest lifestyle in a world where the concepts of luxury, prudence, and modesty so rapidly change?

I have only two thoughts on the subject, and neither remotely represents the entire answer to my question. My first thought is to recognize that we'll never get it fully right; and, therefore, it seems to me that we should probably be willing to question and, where necessary, repent of most things that we do.

My second thought is to be humble, quick to acknowledge our own lack of wisdom, and slow to point out others' perceived shortcomings because if we think we know the detailed lines between prudence and excess, we've probably fooled ourselves. I'm not good at repentance or humility.

Those are my only two thoughts on how to address my question. I'd love to hear any thoughts that you may have. Thanks for your time.

Comments

[GL]

Alex,

These are incisive questions. You highlight the inescapably relative nature of many of our concepts. What is faithfulness amidst such fluid relativity? I don't know either. :)

I hope some wise readers can point us in helpful directions.

[Heidi]

This post asks some intriguing questions! It seems like technology has sped up cultural change over the last 100 years, and I think this effects our judgment of prudence, since it appears to be somewhat culturally determined.

I think prudence might be aided by stepping outside the affluent, Western culture at times. When we are faced with real poverty, that real people are living in every day, it challenges notions of my rights to spend my money as I please. It also helps us to see that our cultural norms are not universal.

I heard a pastor say once, that if Christians are living on par with people at our socioeconomic level, and have all the same conveniences and comforts, then most likely we are letting the culture dictate our ideas of money and possessions more than the kingdom of God. It was a challenging statement, but I think there is truth in the idea that we don't need all these things, and there is more freedom to give than we probably want to admit.

To me, the issue of being "behind the times" technologically is also because new things tend to cost a lot and then as they become more widespread and supply increases, the costs go way down, making the technology more accessible. Just some thoughts.

[Judy Nelson]

Great questions. I find that the one of the most difficult pull of culture is to make life more efficient. I have an iPhone--all my contact, emails, web access, weather, photos in one place. Is that good? Bad? More helpful? Yes, but for what? Faster, faster, faster so that I can . . . do what? Keep going faster?

[Joel]

Those of us who view technological prudence as "wait and see" are really dependent on those who have the "early adopter" sensibilities. I guess we all have our cross to bear, and in God's intricate economy of individuals and personalities, he somehow provides richly for all that we could ever need, want, and then some.

[Alex]

These are all excellent comments. Thanks for taking the time to read and reply. One thing I didn't mention in the above post was that the post was originally inspired, in part, by attending a kid's birthday party in which the Beatles and Beach Boys were the background music. It was great. But I couldn't help but think it's bizarre that music could seem so scandalous at one time and fitting music for something like pin-the-donkey a few decades later.