7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess

by Jen Hatmaker

  We looked at minivans.

  We looked at hybrids.

  We looked at conversion vans.

  We looked at station wagons.

  Activating my multiple personalities, we juggled competing priorities: space, price, gas mileage, fuel consumption, and emissions. Prioritizing fuel consumption cancels out space. Choosing emissions can utterly inflate the price. Selecting price can wreck gas mileage. Since space was nonnegotiable for our impending Duggar-type family, I would have loved a big hybrid Tahoe, but if we spent $45,000 on a car, Freedom Shakra would’ve killed me in my sleep.

  We did the math.

  We crunched the numbers.

  We googled our hearts out.

  We bought an eight-year-old Suburban that runs on . . . flex fuel!

  Comfortably priced in four digits, it was the best option to appease all the voices. Let me condense the alternative fuel research for you: Rather than running on straight gasoline, flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) are powered by an 85 percent ethanol/15 percent gasoline blend, which is considered an alternative fuel by the EPA. Ethanol is produced domestically from corn, reducing our dependence on foreign oil and producing less greenhouse gas emissions.11 Yay for alternative fuel! We’re getting closer to Doc’s DeLorean from the future.

  Downside: FFVs gets fewer miles to the gallon. Upside: Flex fuel is about $.30 cheaper per gallon so cost per mile isn’t a massive increase. It will cost an additional $400 a year to run our Suburban on flex fuel. Ouch. Freedom Shakra is not too happy, but Ryvre and Sage Moonjava are thrilled because at 85 percent ethanol it uses a fraction of the gasoline, and we will conserve roughly 735 gallons of gas a year, seventeen fewer barrels of gas. Comparing an FFV Suburban to a regular one, its carbon footprint (which measures a vehicle’s impact on climate change in tons of carbon dioxide emitted annually) drops from 13.3 to 9.6; greenhouse gases not emitted = 4,820 pounds a year.12

  It’s no Prius to be sure, but using only 15 percent of the gas otherwise required is quite an improvement. Like this FFV Suburban owner calculated: “The price of E85 in my area doesn’t justify E85 on price alone, but lowering dependence on oil and cleaner air does justify it for me. Look at the mileage for gasoline consumption alone: At 360 miles per tank using only 4.8 gallons of gasoline (85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline), my gasoline mileage is greater than 75 mpg. That’s better than the hybrids.”13

  Following all these numbers? Here’s what it boils down to: a little pricier to run but remarkably better for the earth. It’s a start, people. And how is this for providence? Austin has only three ethanol filling stations: one is just south of us in Kyle, 6.7 miles doorstep to doorstep, and another is in my zip code in Buda, 3.8 miles from my driveway. When God shuts a door, He opens a window. Or something.

  Bad sound bite: Jen bought a Suburban during green month.

  Good sound bite: It uses less gas than an economy car.

  This is me, awkwardly (for him) hugging the FedEx guy who mailed off our adoption dossier. I'm a weirdo.

  Day 27

  Hey? How fun is www.Groupon.com for local buying?? Specializing in local businesses, you enter your zip code, and Groupon sends a daily e-mail coupon for some service or restaurant or product. You have to purchase (not use) the Groupon that day, but I just got $20 worth of food from Mama Fu’s for $10. That’s free money from a local restaurant I patron once a week anyway.

  Groupon takes the sting out of some pricier local shopping options:

  •$12 for $25 worth of food from Hyde Park Grill (Their French fries and “special sauce” will change your life.)

  •$8 for a $24 one-year subscription to Austin Monthly

  •$69 for four-week unlimited workouts at Boot Camp 512, valued at $150 (I’ll pass on this one and eat the fries from Hyde Park Grill instead, thank you.)

  •$65 for a one-hour photo session and image DVD from Silver Bee Photography, normally $320

  This is a great way to keep your money local while not busting the bank. Brandon and I couldn’t eat at a Pizza Hut for less than $12, but thanks to Groupon, we get a highbrow date night on a fast-food budget. And believe me, we’re highbrow people. I call as my witness the cutoff sweatpants and “Beach Week 2002” T-shirt I’m wearing. That I also wore yesterday. And to bed.

  Day 28

  I drove by a neighbor’s house on trash day today. I do not know these people. I saw a huge cardboard diaper box sticking out of their bin. I stopped. I reversed. I pulled it out of their trash can, broke it down, and put it in our recycling bin. It might be the creepiest thing I have ever done.

  Day 29

  In many ways, I’m more like a dude than a chick. Oh sure, I straighten my hair and wear scarves and earrings, but I don’t want to talk about it when I’m mad. I’m a terrible gift-giver, and I love stupid humor and dumb movies.

  Also excluded from my not-so-feminine DNA is the shopping gene. I would rather have my saliva permanently transmuted to urine than spend extended time at the mall. I just don’t like to shop. It’s fun for like zero seconds. This is why my clothes come from Target; I’m there for Sharpies, so I guess I’ll buy this shirt facing the aisle. If it doesn’t fit I’ll return it never.

  So for this month of 7, “buy only local or thrift” wasn’t as hard as it might have been for a real girl. Not going to Express or Kohl’s or wherever is not so much a tenet for 7 as it is for my entire life. Well, it is challenging when we legitimately need something not readily available through local and thrift outlets, but as you might recall, we busted straight through that boundary for backpacks and tennis shoes. (My girlfriend: “You could’ve sewed their backpacks out of reclaimed sweatshirts.” Me: “What do you mean, sew? I don’t understand the words coming out of your mouth.”)

  That said, I strolled through Goodwill to honor green month. I’m not an accomplished thrift shopper, meaning I never thrift shop. I’m easily overwhelmed in a regular store organized by genre, color, and price point, so throw a little chaos and fifty crammed racks together, and I might start maniacally humming and hitting myself in the head.

  Here was my assessment of Goodwill: In the category of organization, I give it a 90 percent approval rating. (The other 10 percent was its consequence for still being a store.) Items were even grouped by color, which is helpful for an antishopper like me. Sizing had taken a fairly severe hit by entropy, but still. Shoes on the back wall. Furniture to the right. All very clean and orderly. Kudos, Goodwill.

  Thanks to the color and genre subcategories, even a situational manic/depressant like me scored. My sophisticated thought process went something like this:

  Too many things.

  Can’t breathe!

  (TRYING NOT TO MAKE HYSTERICAL MONKEY SOUNDS!)

  Breathe.

  I like shirts.

  I like brown.

  I like yellow.

  Here are brown shirts.

  Here are yellow shirts.

  I bought a cable-knit brown sweater and a buttery yellow v-neck tee that will make the perfect backdrop for my long Africa necklace. Both styles hit the scene just this year; I saw them everywhere, and by everywhere I mean on commercials. $8.45 out the door.

  Plus the staff at Goodwill has a nice, laid-back, whatevah attitude I’m totally into. No perky sweater folders, no annoying “I’m on commission” sales reps, no judgmental cashiers following me around because my outfit communicates, “I put things in my purse.” In fact, as I approached the register with my two little treasures mined from the masses, the cashiers finished up a good fifteen seconds of their conversation before attending to my purchase:

  “He a fool.”

  “I told you.”

  “His Mama didn’t raise him like that.”

  “He stopped going to church five years ago. Thatta tell you somethin’.”

  “He ain�
��t going back to church unless they get a smoking section.”

  “Just leave him. Laquisha can have your sorry leftovers.”

  [Noticing me.]

  “Oh hey, sugar. Sorry about that. We’re just talking ‘bout how men are dogs.”

  Me: “No please, by all means, carry on. Any man who quits church is up to no good. One day he stops going to church, the next day he’s glued to the Barcalounger barking for a beer.”

  “Girl, you ain’t never told a lie. Come a little earlier next time, sugar. You can sit on the counter and enjoy ALL our gossip.”

  I just might.

  Day 30

  Oh my stars, has this month ever lodged deeply!

  I keep thinking about our obsession with health. Our kids have been immunized, checked, prodded, measured, tested, and examined since the day they were born. Cuts get antibacterial crème and Band-Aids. Twisted ankles get ice. Strep throats get antibiotics. We fuel our bodies with good food, drinking enough water and milk to keep the wheels on. Brandon and I make sure our parents get annual checkups, and we visit the dentist twice a year. I’m watching for tricky moles and checking for lumps. I inspect my kids’ lymph nodes and keep us all sunscreened. We have a cabinet of pills if something veers off course, and I can pick up a prescription one hour after a diagnosis.

  Why?

  Because God gave us spectacular bodies, and we value them.

  But as certainly as God created man in His image, He first created the earth. With the same care He designed sixty thousand miles of blood vessels in the human body, He also crafted hydrangeas and freshwater rapids and hummingbirds. He balanced healthy ecosystems with precision and established climates and beauty. He integrated colors and smells and sounds that would astound humanity. The details He included while designing the earth are so extraordinary, it is no wonder He spent five of the six days of creation on it.

  So why don’t we care for the earth anywhere near to the degree we do our bodies? Why don’t we fuss and examine and steward creation with the same tenacity? Why aren’t we refusing complicity in the ravaging of our planet? Why aren’t we determined to stop pillaging the earth’s resources like savages? Why do we mock environmentalists and undermine their passion for conservation? Do we think ourselves so superior to the rest of creation that we are willing to deplete the earth to supply our luxuries? If so, we may very well be the last generation who gets that prerogative.

  “There is not always more,” explained Steven Bouma-Prediger in For the Beauty of the Earth. “Except for our energy income from the sun, the world is finite. Numbers of individual organisms may seem limitless, but they are not. Species may appear to be beyond counting, but they are finite in number. Our life support systems may seem beyond abuse, but there are limits to what they can bear. Like it or not, we are finite creatures living in a finite world.”14

  I’ve been gobbling up the goodies, making a huge mess and assuming someone else would clean it up and foot the bill. But let me tell you, this month put the brakes on that. I cannot believe how God has captured me for creation care. All of it: recycling, using less, gardening, composting, conserving, buying local, repurposing instead of replacing; I’m in. From the nearly empty garbage bin to the lower electric bill, the immediate effects of a greener lifestyle are obvious.

  My land, do we have far to go! My hypocrisies are too numerous to count, but this month birthed something unmistakable: I’m done separating ecology from theology, pretending they don’t originate from the same source.

  The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.” (Ps. 24:1–2)

  A friend said, “I don’t know why you’re trying. It won’t matter. No one else cares.” To that, I’ll close with this bit of wisdom:

  If God is really at the center of things and God’s good future is the most certain reality, then the truly realistic course of action is to buck the dominant consequentialist ethic of our age—which says that we should act only if our action will most likely bring about good consequences—and simply, because we are people who embody the virtue of hope, do the right thing. If we believe it is part of our task as earthkeepers to recycle, then we ought to recycle, whether or not it will change the world. Do the right thing. If we think it part and parcel of our ecological obedience to drive less and walk more, then that is what we ought to do. Do the right thing. We should fulfill our calling to be caretakers of the earth regardless of whether global warming is real or there are holes in the ozone layer or three nonhuman species become extinct each day. Our vocation is not contingent on results or the state of the planet. Our calling simply depends on our identity as God’s response-able human image-bearers.15

  Let’s do the right thing.

  Month Six: Spending

  Once upon a time, a girl averaged how many different places per month her little family spent money. She tallied bank statements for the previous year, and they averaged sixty-six vendors a month, not counting repeat expenditures. She wanted to throw up. The end.

  When Brandon and I married in college, our joint income was $11,270. We were so poor, people on welfare gave us cheese and peanut butter. This trend continued through the early days of youth ministry and into the lean days of one income, babies, and toddlers. I remember Brandon handing me a twenty-dollar bill to feed us for a week. The refrigerator and pantry were empty, I had a preschooler at the table, a toddler on my leg, and a baby on my hip. I sat in the middle of our kitchen and bawled my eyes out.

  Back then we didn’t just watch each penny; we scrutinized, counted, shuffled, and squeezed every last one. Sonic was an outrageous extravagance. Staying true to our generation, we dug a deep, dark debt hole to purchase the lifestyle we couldn’t afford but for some reason felt entitled to. Unwilling to live within our means, we lived paycheck to paycheck, floating checks and nodding politely as the wealthy people at church talked about their vacations and new cars, wondering who we had to make out with to acquire these luxuries (Chase and Capital One were happy to oblige).

  Fast-forward a few years and here we are. I no longer fill my gas tank half full or feed my tribe on twenty dollars a week. We’ve conquered that debt and—brace yourself—we even have a savings account. I assure you, we don’t wipe our behinds with Benjamins or anything. “Rich Christian author” is an oxymoron, trust me. Ditto for my hubby’s income as “senior pastor.” SPs are like farmers—only a few are heavily subsidized into obscene wealth while the little organic guys are just praying for a harvest and trying to keep the lights on.

  Anyhow, once I finally quit panicking my debit card would be declined (which took years in the black to overcome), the pendulum swung to the other side. Now I am completely careless. And clueless. Anyone who spends money in sixty-six places a month is the most heinous kind of consumer. Had you asked me to estimate, I would’ve guessed less than half of what we actually fritter away.

  I am the consumer the poor world and the responsible world and the world itself can’t stand or sustain any longer. How will I answer for my choices when God confronts them one day? With this much expendable income funding restaurants, shoe stores, and movie theaters, I doubt Jesus will accept my excuses for neglecting the poor on account of cash flow.

  Speaking of cash flow, we’re only spending money in seven places this month—a slight decrease in consuming (sarcasm): 89 percent fewer vendors in a month, for the love of Moses. These are the vendors getting our dough:

  • The Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market

  • HEB gas station (flex fuel!)

  • Online bill pay

  • Kids’ school

  • Limited travel fund

  • Emergency medical

  • Target

  Target is the all-purpose back on my roster because there is a (slight) chance the weather will turn a
nd my kids’ jeans will neither button nor cover their shins. And for the dozen other glitches (like toilet paper and detergent), Target is there for me, ensuring I don’t send my son to a birthday party with kale from the Farmer’s Market. However, we’ll attempt to meet our needs any other way before traipsing off to Target, as I could sustain our entire life there without missing a step.

  This means no restaurants, movie theaters, Chick-fil-A, no Coke and nachos at the UT/UCLA game (or parking), no Kindle/Barnes and Noble /amazon.com/Borders/Half Price Books to feed my habit, no lunch after church, no Hays High School football games unless my Mom The Principal scores us free tickets, no hunting paraphernalia (Brandon), Call of Duty 4 (Gavin), iTunes (Sydney), fishing worms (Caleb), and Mama Fu’s Spicy Mongolian Beef over Brown Rice with a Beef Curry Roll (moi).

  The Council is giving me the proverbial “we’ll see” (or its Christian cousin “Let me pray about it”) when I ask about their participation. Let’s face it: Month Six bites. Boiling down even moderate spending to seven options is so very un-American. Becky summed it up nicely in this e-mail:

  I thought about this while sitting in the Chick-fil-A parking lot eating dinner by myself. I’d gotten off work early, and I was only going home. But I thought, “Do I really want to partake in whatever nachos-and-applesauce dinner Marcus made for the girls?” No. “Do I want to cook dinner just for myself?” No. Spending money unnecessarily is fun and I like it. I’m just sorry.

  She’s really going to be sorry if she mentions Chick-fil-A to me again this month.

  Day 2

  Let me begin with a caveat since I already spent nonapproved money.

  Ahem.

  So let’s make a distinction between spending and giving. The beast we are battling is consumerism, defined as “the fact or practice of an increasing consumption of goods.”1 We are severely limiting the purchase of goods or services for ourselves. The stuff we eat, we buy, we use, we like. This consumerism has become ordinary to the point of being imperceptible.