Tuesday
March 17, 2009

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God.
-Leviticus 23:22

In the U.S., we are not very good at metaphorically leaving the edges of our fields unharvested to be gleaned by the poor—in our use of resources and energy, we now consume far more than previous generations of Americans, and we also consume 32 times more than people in the developing world.  We don’t just harvest all the way to the edges of our fields—we are gathering grain from others’ fields.  Our way of living casts a heavy burden on the planet and on our neighbors.  Over the last 30 years, U.S. material consumption increased 57 percent.  In 1992-2000, raw material usage increased by more than one third.  And much of those resources end up the trash—eighty percent of the products used in the U.S. are used once and thrown away.

Overconsumption uses precious resources for goods of poor quality and little purpose, creates waste, and generates greenhouse gases.  Is our stuff really worth all that?  Through the prophet Isaiah, God asks a couple of questions that go to the heart of our problem with overconsumption, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” (Isaiah 55:2)