the Amish people are not all that worked up about the price of gas?
The rest of us, however, worry about it, fight wars over it, and make allies of some countries with very sketchy records on human rights just to make sure we have enough of the stuff. Oil, for the industrialized world and even the not so industrialized, is one of our drugs of choice and we’re ready to kill to get our fix while the Amish folk just wheel on by our gas stations with a fraction of our panic.
Now, I’m not saying we all need to adopt an Amish lifestyle. That’s a choice for some and for most of us, including some who were raised in that community, it’s not a life we would want to live on a permanent basis.
But do they, perhaps, have a point?
How many wars, how many needless conflicts, how much human suffering has been caused in our lives because we want bigger, faster, more and “better”? How much sadness has come to us because we never seem to have enough? How is it that we often only finally end our quest of acquisition when death finally faces us and we come to realize that it was all so unnecessary?
In a broken world it seems that sometimes the violence of war is needed but, in truth, there are many times when simple choices like trying to do our part to want less, to get off the consumer merry go round, and to be okay with not always having to have more could be at least one part of how the peace is made and how people can find a way to live together with some sense of sharing and not like lions growling over a carcass?
Although I wouldn’t want to go as far as they do in pursuit of their ideals, I think the Amish may be on to something that the rest of we Christians could prayerfully adopt, given our circumstances, in our own lives. What if we tried to live in such a way that we had what we needed, perhaps a little more for emergencies and the future, and then left it at that? Little everyday decisions that wouldn’t necessarily solve all the world’s problem but at least keep us out of the mad chase and in some small way free us from the slavery of always having to do more, be more, and see our needs as a zero-sum game?
And maybe, just maybe we might stop being exhausted and start having a little joy come back into our lives?
