Indulging ourselves until the next famine befalls

We have been winning, to our inestimable loss, a competition against our own land and our own people. At present, what we have to show for this "victory" is a surplus of food. But this is a surplus achieved by the ruin of its sources. (Wendell Berry, Nature as Measure, 1989)

Every seminarian sooner or later learns that the Greek word for "sin" is an archery term, literally meaning "missing the mark." Shooting for the bulls-eye, you hit instead the nearby bull in the eye. The cure, of course, is to refine one's aim -- to shoot with more precision. Spiritually speaking, it means to "repent," which in that same Greek simply means to "go in a different," presumably better aimed, "direction."

As Berry suggests in the opening observation, our cross-hairs could use some recalibration. Agriculturally speaking, we are essentially eating the geese that lay our nutritional golden eggs. We are, in other words, proudly succeeding at our own self-destruction. Or to recall a quote from Thomas Friedman, "We are getting better and better at that which shouldn't be done at all."

Short-term gain and long-term cost. If ever there were evidence of what the ancient theologians described as "Original Sin," it would be this recurring pattern. We witnessed it again in recent years in Wall Street's (read: investor's) insatiable hunger for greater returns, which maximized quarterly reports over sustained vitality and gentler growth, which drove business practices -- and created investment instruments -- that looked good on paper but were ultimately suicidal.

We never seem quite able to comprehend that "how we do things" really does matter as much as -- and perhaps more than -- "what we do."

Agriculturally we measure per acre output, without considering the larger impact of all that goes into achieving it -- the financial, chemical, environmental and even medical price that is paid. Economically we similarly care only about the most superficial "bottom line." Spiritually -- well, we find all manner of ways to be titillated in the moment but not really grounded and nourished throughout the landscape of human experience.

Berry, I think, has put his finger on the essential nature of sin: setting our sights on, and investing our creative energies into, accomplishing more voluminously, more cheaply, and more quickly those things we believe are most important for keeping us alive -- and succeeding; only to die because our very pursuit obliterated that which actually had the capacity to sustain us.

But none of that looks very promising to the shareholders, reading the quarterly reports, so we will just keep doing what we are doing -- and feeling proud and successful -- until the next famine of some sort befalls us.