Article

Christmas survival

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Eating

Joy

11 December 2024

4 min read

Share some food and find the antidote to despair

Who we eat with says who we are.

Isaac Frisby

Isaac is a PhD candidate in Theology at Durham University and preparing for priesthood in the Church of England.

Three people stand beside a table and smile.

Lewisham Mayor Brenda Dacres with foodbank volunteers.

Lewisham Foodbank.

In my local supermarket a new foodbank collection trolley has appeared with this sign,

“Gift a toy this Christmas…give a gift this Christmas to those who need it most.”

Setting aside the usual ethical dilemma presented by the existence of foodbanks (why do they exist in such a wealthy country?), the sign prompted a thought on the nature of joy. What is more joyful than the surprise of an unexpected gift? After all, Christmas is around the corner, “Joy to the world!”.

That thought came to mind when I was recently asked; how do we cultivate and foster joy? If I’m honest I was a little stumped by the question. What even is joy anyway?

We can too easily and readily conflate it with lesser feelings like happiness or pleasure, which by their nature seem to be fleeting, like a chocolate bar: here one moment, gone the next. Thinking about it, joy seems to be thrown into relief when it is set against one of its opposites: despair. We all know what despair looks like; loneliness, isolation, a hopelessness which can yawn like a great dark chasm, without edges to get purchase on, or without a hand to hold.

Christmas can be an especially potent time for despair. The days are short and often dimmed by heavy cloud and rain. Children’s expectation that Santa will bring all of the latest goodies drives parents into debt to make their hopes come true. Those in dire straits will struggle to scrape together the food that goes into the usual Christmas feast. This combination of dark days and high expectations can and does drive many further into despair. It is this sense of aloneness, of the weight of the world heaped on your shoulders alone, which fuels despair.

This despair is not only reserved for Christmas. We see the climbing rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues in the younger generations. Having been born into the age of the internet and growing up with social media, the temptation to compare with the heavily edited and curated lives of others, encouraged by the platform algorithms themselves, only serves to make young people feel increasingly alone.

This feeling is not helped by the propaganda of the age; that we are all rational, autonomous individuals, whose fulfilment looks like self-reliance, status, and wealth, without the need for anyone else. All this breeds the solipsism and nihilism that so often morphs into despair.

Foodbanks are the proof that this most basic constituent of joy is a struggle for many, from the sheer lack of food to share

What does this despair tell us about joy? If despair is in isolation, bearing our burdens alone, then joy is in being with other people. To return to that chocolate bar, if happiness (and perhaps the despair which comes from having no more chocolate bar) is scoffing it by ourselves, then joy is breaking off a part and sharing it with another. Human beings are naturally social creatures. It is in our very nature to live with one another. If we remain alone, closed off to others, then we nurture the despair that this breeds.

An incredibly simple way we remain connected to each other is by sharing food. If despair is the isolation from others then sharing food is the negation of this isolation. Sharing food is universally important, whether it’s the realpolitik of American high school films (the jock table vs the dork table and who’s allowed to sit with who, encapsulated perfectly by Mean Girls), or the mystical heights of the Christian eucharist. Who we eat with says who we are, with all the potential for exclusion the examples above show. But eating with others says what we are. Sharing food, especially in celebration at a time like Christmas, reminds us that our humanity is only ever shared. This reminder that we are not alone is not a fleeting happiness; it is a confirmation in our very flesh and bones that we are made of the same stuff, that we are never alone.

Many of us will have this joy as part of our everyday lives; foodbanks are the proof that this most basic constituent of joy is a struggle for many, from the sheer lack of food to share. The sign that appeared in my local supermarket is more proof that we already know how simple joy can be. Many foodbanks organise specifically festive food for this season, because we know that not only sharing food, but celebrating in that sharing is crucial to what it means to be human. Even in the morally mixed ecosystem of the foodbank, the need for joy shines through; sharing food in celebration is one of those antidotes for despair. In sharing our food we find our humanity, and what is more joyful than that?

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Explainer

Belief

Climate

Comment

Sustainability

13 September 2024

7 min read

Living sustainably doesn’t have to be a burden, here’s the case for action

How not to get hot and bothered about climate change.

Barnabas Aspray

Barnabas Aspray is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at St Mary’s Seminary and University.

A protester holds up a green sign reading: 'It's hard to be green. Kermit'.

Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

The fundamental tenets of Christianity show why Christians are called to love not just one another but all created things.

1. God is love.

2. God created everything.

Therefore, God loves everything he created.

3. God appointed humanity as the guardians of creation.

Therefore, a fundamental part of our identity and calling as human beings is to protect and sustain all that God created.

This lies at the basis of everything Christians believe and do. But a case can be made that is more basic still because it appeals, not to anything distinctively Christian, but to natural human wisdom. The climate crisis is not a Christian crisis. It’s a crisis for everyone who cares about their future and that of our planet. The climate crisis may be something unprecedented in the history of humanity, but the principles that are needed to resolve it are not new at all. Sustainability is not a new or particularly abstruse idea. It is something everyone understands as basic common sense. If I cut down trees faster than they can grow, I won’t be able to do that forever. One day I will cut down the last tree and then there won’t be any more trees, ever again. If I catch fish faster than they can reproduce, then one day I will catch the last fish and then won’t be able to catch any more ever again.

But it’s not only about foresters and fishermen. Since the dawn of humanity, we have been living sustainably – wisely preserving resources and using only what we can replace, so that we and our descendants can continue to live. This applies to everyone regardless of their profession. All of us, if we spend more money than we earn, are living in a way that cannot last for long. If we use resources at a faster rate than we can replenish them, we will run into trouble at some point in the future. Every person possessed of reason and common sense knows this intuitively without having to be taught it. Only someone seriously deluded, foolish, or with some kind of mental health problem fails to understand the need for sustainability in order to have any kind of future at all, let alone a pleasant future.

The call to live sustainably can lead us to feel burdened by a permanent sense of guilt, a feeling that we ought to be doing more than we are...

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We are burning fossil fuels at hundreds of times the rate they can be produced. We are producing plastics that cannot be recycled, meaning we have to dump them in landfills that are growing all the time. We are pouring carbon dioxide into the air faster than anyone can take it out. All of these things mean that there is a time limit on the kind of lifestyles we are all leading now. If we carry on in this way, then one day we will cross a line from which there is no returning. As Mark Scarlata has pointed out, the solution cannot be technological. Even if we find a way to balance carbon outputs with inputs, we are only kicking the can further down the road. Our inability to live within our means will simply resurface somewhere else later on. The problem is spiritual, not technical.

Everyone understands this at some level even if it’s the kind of truth from which we prefer to avert our eyes. The harder problem is to understand why this basic common sense isn’t proving effective. Why are we living collectively in a way that only a foolish or insane person would live, when most of us taken by ourselves are neither foolish or insane?

The problem, at least in part, is that we are all entangled in systems that make it very hard for us to live sustainably. If I am an ordinary Brit living in an ordinary town or city, and I need to buy toothbrushes or nappies or cucumbers or strawberries, I go to the local supermarket: and the only options available are made of plastic or wrapped in plastic that will not decompose for 500 years, and often brought here from the other side of the world using huge amounts of carbon emissions. Most of us are busy people with limited financial resources. We don’t have the time to find sustainable alternatives and often they are too expensive even if we can find them. The societal structures that we live in limit the choices we have. The call to live sustainably can lead us to feel burdened by a permanent sense of guilt, a feeling that we ought to be doing more than we are, but also an inability to see how we could be doing more given all the pressures, needs and constraints on our time and money.

Christians do not naively believe that God will sweep in and fix everything if we just wait. That would be to deny our responsibility, and it is not what hope means.

We are all culprits in part, since we all contribute to non-sustainable living. But we are also partly victims of forces beyond our control, large cultural forces that shape and determine our actions more than we can imagine. We have very little power over those structural forces and currently things do not look good. Common sense principles aren’t working. The climate crisis is only getting worse. So, what do we do?

It is at this point that Christianity has something special to offer to the problem.

First, Christians are never called to be defeatist or to throw in the towel. This is because we are called to an enormous hope, a hope that surpasses understanding, a hope that the world cannot understand because it stands over against all the odds and all the possibilities. This hope is rooted in the conviction that our God is God Almighty, that he has not abandoned his creation, and that he has power to save. He is a saviour. He is the God of our salvation. This is the God we believe in. The climate crisis may look bleak right now, but Christians need never despair or become indifferent. If we do our small part, we can trust that God is in control of what is out of our control.

Secondly, Christians believe that every human being is a free agent with the capacity to choose how he or she will act. Our freedom may be limited by the societal structures that shape and constrain our choices, but it is not destroyed. We can still make choices within those limits to buy and live more sustainably – anything from choosing a holiday destination within driving distance, to giving up beef (by far the worst food for carbon emissions). There is something all of us can do.

Thirdly, Christians believe in a God who transforms hearts and lives, winning them to the power of the gospel and to a new way of living that is free of the shackles that this world – the structures of society – puts on us. This transformation is slow – slower than we would like it to be sometimes. We feel the shackles still gripping us at times. We are not expected to change everything all at once, to become holy overnight. Nevertheless, God gives us the power to change our lives, and to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The way towards sustainable living is not to try to change everything at once, but to ask: what one thing can I change in my daily lifestyle that would make it more sustainable? And then once we’ve mastered that and integrated it so we no longer even think about it and it’s just a default, then we can ask: what’s the next thing I can do? All of a sudden what looks like an unimaginable height of transformation, when it is broken down, becomes a series of manageable steps.

Even if we do everything in our power, we cannot by ourselves avert a possible catastrophe. We are small players in a big game. Christians do not naively believe that God will sweep in and fix everything if we just wait. That would be to deny our responsibility, and it is not what hope means. Hope means the opposite: that we continue to fight to avert climate disaster even when it seems hopeless. Christians are called to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. We are called to live in such a way that, if catastrophe comes, it won’t be because of us – to live in hope that our actions are meaningful and worthwhile and that we are in the hands of a God who is far more powerful than the most powerful forces in this world.