Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (link goes to synchroblog)

I read the book Down we Go by Kathy Escobar, and I will be adding a proper review shortly, but the one thing that I couldn’t get out of my mind was all the similarities to Shane Claiborne and The Simple Way. The main reason was that both Kathy Escobar and Shane Claiborne lived in community. But that wasn’t all. Kathy Escobar was an executive who sold all her own possessions to form her community.

The Simple Way in Philadelphia was different. I went to The Simple Way in October of 2010. Everyone there was friendly and I wouldn’t have minded living there if I were still in college. But not one person there had a pot to pee in (as far as I could tell). Shane was probably 35 and the oldest member of the community.

How does that saying go, if you’re in your 20′s and you’re not a liberal, you have no heart, but if you’re in you’re 30′s and you’re still liberal, you have no brain.

I guess it’s because “reality” sets in. You have bills, you have a mortgage or rent and you pay taxes. A lot of taxes.

A neighbor, who is an atheist, but claims he worships “The Flying Spaghetti Monster” asked about my trip to Philly. He said “Oh, a bunch of rich trust fund college kid granolas who feel guilty because mommy and daddy pay for everything, so now they’re slumming it for Jesus.  Sure, I would do it too! Let’s see..work 12 hours to pay for everything or live for free and  travel around the world feeding the hungry while I go back to my cozy house rent free and eat bonbons. I’d like to see how they can help others if they can’t pay the gas,  the electricity gets shut off in December and there’s a crying baby and you have no insurance to pay the dentist to pull out your cavity and the gravy train stops. Will they have faith then?”

While his comments were dripping with sarcasm , he actually said a lot of truth.

To me, a commune was a place with unshaven hippies (both male and female) who danced around a Burning Man while they smoked weed.

True, maybe many Christian communes laid off the shrooms, but as I went home from my neighbor’s house, I had to think. How was this building paid for? He owned 3 buildings in Philadelphia. And if he didn’t own them, he paid rent to somebody who did. He didn’t work. None of them worked. Most were students and some did work part time at a bookstore or cafe (big bucks), but they pooled their income with every one else.

I live near a community locally that practically does the same thing, but they’re not hippies dropping acid and listening to Rusted Root. They’re Anabaptists from Germany who own nothing, share everything and live  happily. How? They make millions of dollars every year making toys and furniture.

So, while I honor them for their choice (and it is a choice, the Lord doesn’t command all of us to do this), you NEED capitalism for this to work. Some at The SImple Way in PA were anti-capitalists and believed life would be so much better if the “bad capitalists” would just go away. I bet many of them are at the “Overtake Wall St” marches.

I have nothing bad to say about Mr. Claiborne or anyone else in these communities, but he didn’t come off the street as a homeless man reeking of 30 day old urine and a house just appeared out of thin air. Hs parents most likely paid for the house. And he probably has a trust fund that pays for everything else.

So to “play communist” or “to play socialist” is all fine and dandy. People who are supporters of living this way I believe may be forgetting that if it wasn’t for democracy and capitalism they wouldn’t even exist.

I spoke to one of my friends at the community near me, and I asked him why they are no longer in Germany. He said “we had Nazi‘s on one side and Communists on the other who didn’t believe in our way.”

So the communists had ideological differences. That’s fine if the place you live is “tolerant” of you opposing view.

I am not speaking against communal living. I wish I knew about it before I was hardened by the world.  Could I give up everything and trust the group to keep me safe? No. If Jesus asked me, I would. If the Lord told me personally to do it, I would. I want to house homeless people. I’ve befriended drug addicts and had them sleep at my house. But I’m one person. And I have a wife and children to take care of. Call me crazy, but it might be a bit unsafe to have heroin addicts sleeping in the same house as my 4 yr old daughter.

I have no idea how I’d pay to fly to Zambia with my family if I sold everything I had and then prayed for someone to donate money.

It’s not that I don’t have faith. I just don’t have faith in something that the Lord didn’t promise me.

This was written for the October 2011 synchroblog.

Here are links to the other Synchrobloggers this month

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