On Glorifying God

Another reading from The Anarchist's Tool Chest by Christopher Schwarz:

We have become a culture that is obsessed with price more than any other attribute of the things we buy.  It doesn't matter if the item is ugly, poorly made or constructed of materials that cannot be recycled.  All that matters is if the price is low enough.  Because the price of our household objects has hit rock bottom, if an item breaks or starts to look dated, we can throw it away and buy something else.  For the first time in human history, manufactured furniture is shockingly inexpensive.  So it's no wonder that artisans are exiting the craft.  It's difficult to compete against furniture that costs less than what you pay for your raw materials (458).

Those in the church are equal participants in this trend, though we might even be worse.  While the common person may simply be motivated by saving a buck, or might even be honest enough to admit that they're being greedy, those in the church tend to dress it up in blame-diverting spiritual terms.  We call it "good stewardship."   When we make the lowest price the law, we are simply being "good stewards" of the money God has entrusted to us.  To spend any more than we absolutely have to is wasteful, bad stewardship.   You get extra pious-points too if you add in something about the poor starving people in Africa, and how sinful it would be to spend extra on something here when God's children over there are lacking everything.  (That line would be a bit more meaningful if every dollar we saved at Walmart actually did go to Africa).

An older strain of Christendom, however, would puzzle at the assumption that theology aligns so well with modern discount commercialism.  For them, the dominant thrust of Christian practice was not to be a good steward, but to glorify God in everything you do.  Since God is more glorified by good than by bad, it naturally followed that you could better glorify God by doing a good job than by doing a bad job.  The Christian worker, then, would seek to do every job to the very best of their ability, so that the end result of their work would glorify God.  Medieval Cathedrals, which are so often disparaged today as shameful wastes of money, were examples of this: if we are going to build a building for God, it better be the best one we can build.