By TE Brian Carpenter
When my wife was a child, she was told a story about two little girls who magically got to choose between two life scenarios: have the first half of life be pleasant and easy but the last part be painful and marked by hardship, or let the first half be marked by hardship and pain and the last half be marked by pleasure and gain and ease. Then the story followed those two girls in their decisions. The moral was that pleasure now and pain later equips you neither to use the pleasure appropriately, nor handle the pain later. But pain now and pleasure later equips you to handle both. She learned a great lesson from that story and has always been miles ahead of me in this area. My own upbringing was more “normal.” It was marked by just the opposite approach.
A couple years ago Barbara Walters had a 20/20 special on the children of Appalachia. My wife and I watched it just because it was about a place we both know and love. We spent much time in Eastern Kentucky when we lived in Georgetown, Ohio. It was our vacation spot. The highlight of my year was a boys-only striper fishing trip on Lake Cumberland.
The program was a profile of four young people and their families trying to make it in Eastern Kentucky, which is a very poor region.
Now, I do not want to take away from the hardships that come with poverty. I will not minimize them. But their poverty was made worse . . . was actually made into a trap because of their own intergenerational behavior.
The main difference between rich and poor is not birthplace, or education level, or the area of the country, or the quality of the schools. It’s not the local economy. The main difference between rich and poor is the ability to delay gratification in anticipation of greater rewards down the road. There’s an old country saying that’s full of wisdom: “Don’t eat your seed-corn.” These kids came from family situations where it was the normal course of things to “eat their seed-corn.” Opportunities and resources are regularly squandered in favor of transitory pleasures now.
It was apparent in the lives of these four kids, and it was apparent that they would probably end up repeating their parents’ mistakes. Like what? Drunkenness. Idleness. Addiction to OxyContin (also called “Hillbilly Heroin.”) Drinking so much Mountain Dew that it rotted the teeth (Barbara Walters tried to blame Pepsi for that problem). Sex and pregnancy outside of marriage. Incest between a half-brother and half-sister, to which the half-sister willingly acquiesced in exchange for gifts of drugs and alcohol. One young man had a football scholarship to the college in Pikeville. He dropped out after 8 weeks because it was just too hard. Back to the squalor. Back to the drunken, dysfunctional family. Back to digging coal out of the exposed seams on the roadside to heat the house.
One family was shown putting Pepsi in a baby bottle. They ate a meal of noodles with ketchup on them. The foodstamps had run out, so they were hungry. We were informed that vegetables and fruits generally weren’t on the menu because they were too expensive. That’s simply not true. As an experiment in personal health and well-being, I recently became a vegan. It does not have to be expensive. True, arugula and tahini and sun-dried tomatoes and Swiss chard are expensive. Dried beans, dry rice (of the Asian, not the instant variety), corn, potatoes, lentils, spinach, canned tomatoes, and green beans and such are quite inexpensive. If you cook for yourself and learn to eat like a third world peasant, you can eat quite cheaply. And it’s better for you.
But also I know the area. The bottomlands and flat spots are relatively fertile soil and there is a tolerably long growing season. There were places to plant a garden if the old cars and junk in the yard were moved aside. A vegetable garden and a little canning would help stretch the foodstamp proceeds and provide healthy food. At an old Presbyterian mission in Eastern Tennessee where I took some kids on a mission trip, they had canners and supplies that could be borrowed like you borrow books from the library. There’s no zoning down there. They could keep a milk cow and some chickens if they wanted to. They had room. Deer, rabbits, and squirrels are plentiful to the point of being obnoxious pests. But nope. “We’re out of food stamps. We’ll just be hungry until the next batch comes in the mail.” The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and he’s too lazy to bring it to his own mouth (Prov 26:15). Hunger, even in one’s own children, won’t motivate some folks to do right. Shoot, the fishing’s really good down there. What self-respecting hillbilly won’t even go fishing to feed his family?
They interviewed the owner of several coal mines in the area. He had worked his way through college by working in the mines, so he was no silk-stocking white-shoe type who had everything handed to him. He said he had 100 open positions. Those positions paid $60,000 a year to start, with good insurance. That’s an enormous sum of money down there. But he couldn’t fill them because the labor pool couldn’t pass the drug screening to get hired. I’ve known several coal miners. Underground mining is dirty, it’s dangerous, and they still haven’t fully dealt with the black lung disease problem, but a man could live on $25,000 in Eastern Kentucky very easily, work for a year or two or three and save up $20-30,000 dollars. On that, he could move on to other places with other opportunities. Instead they spend huge amounts of money on tobacco and fast food, and go out and get into hock for $30,000 pickups.
If these people didn’t drink alcohol to excess, if they went to school, if they didn’t guzzle Mountain Dew by the gallon, if they worked hard and played by the rules and didn’t start taking highly addictive opiates, if they didn’t have sex outside of wedlock, if they would garden and can and hunt and fish and spend their money wisely, they would have a fair shot at escaping poverty. How do I know? My family did it. We were hillbillies. We were upper middle class white trash (and some of us still are). And those that did it did it in the First Great Depression to boot. Even more amazing, they did it by farming and business in the agricultural sector which was the hardest hit sector in the Great Depression. Those that escaped poverty were able to do it because they learned how to delay gratification.
Before we middle class folk get too uppity, it must be noticed that as a subculture we have become increasingly unable to delay gratification. We now act like the poor. We eat our seed-corn, too. It’s just that up until recently our bag of seed-corn was a lot larger than it is for the poor. Why does the average American family have $16,000 in credit card debt? Why was the savings rate, up until very recently, less than 0%? Why are most people upside down on their car loans right now? Why is consumption and consumer activity dropping like a rock? Why are we obese? Why are heart disease and diabetes skyrocketing? (I say this as a fat man who needs to take his own advice.) Because we are psychologically unable to delay gratification. Because we’ve had our faces planted in our bags of seed-corn, and we’ve eaten them all the way to the bottom, and now we’re in trouble. Now there’s nothing left. That is the root cause of the Second Great Depression, which we are now in, and which shows no real signs of abating. Two years ago the U.S. Federal Government’s obligations actually amount to more money than the Gross Domestic Product of the ENTIRE WORLD!!! That was before two bailouts and two rounds of Quantitative Easing. It’s much, much worse now.
You can’t become personally prosperous by borrowing and spending for consumption. You can’t grow an economy by borrowing and spending and consuming, either. Consumption does not provide a base for an economy to grow. Savings and investment in producing things that other people want to buy is how you grow an economy. That’s why the stimulus bills and bailouts are ultimately a swindle.
Behaving like the Chinese grows an economy. The Chinese, who are still officially Communists, build and produce and save and invest, and they are the ones being asked to finance our bailout because they’re sitting on the largest pile of our dollars that’s ever existed in history. The average Chinese worker makes $104 per month, and he saves more than 20% of what he earns.
General Electric is a sterling example of this. In the past, GE was a manufacturing powerhouse, making appliances, light bulbs, industrial equipment, etc, etc. Now the bulk of their earnings comes from GE Capital and GE Finance. It comes from pushing money around.
The middle class, and even the rich, have begun to behave like the poor. And our behavior will lead us and our children into poverty. The biggest challenge that the reader faces in the next ten years is not in the job market or the economy or the realm of politics. It is between his or her ears. You have got to shake off your fetters and begin to delay gratification and embrace discomfort, patience, slow acquisition, and thrift. A little pain now will pay huge dividends later. Learn to embrace it the way that some folks embrace the pain of exercise. Feel the “burn.” Learn to love it. I struggle with this myself. I really, really want an iPhone. I simply cannot afford that and the tuition to send my kids to the Christian school that I am working with the Missouri Synod Lutherans to create here in Sturgis. I’d also like a new car. Or a newer used car. It’s not gonna happen right now. I accept that. My kids and their spiritual, moral, and intellectual development are more important.
And you have got to teach your children to do so as well. Begin immediately. It’s absolutely crucial. Compel them to save a portion of their allowance. Force them to wait patiently to acquire whatever toy their heart yearns for. Teach them to tithe. And I’m going to say something else that’s going to sound snobbish. Do with it what you will.
I noticed a long time ago that if you take a dog and bring it inside the house and socialize it, it will behave more “humanly.” But if you put it with two or three other dogs out in the back yard it will be wild and “doggy” its whole life, and no fun at all to have in the house. If you take a cockatiel or a parakeet and raise it by itself in a famliy that interacts with it, it will learn to do amazing things and be a very pleasant pet. If you stick it in a cage with three or four other birds it will just squawk and bite and make messes. It will stay “birdy.”
If you are very careful about your children’s friends and playmates, and do not allow any significant relationships with children who do not share your family’s values, and especially at adolescence when your child’s peers are becoming more and more important, your child will take on your values. If you let them lie down with dogs, they’ll get up with fleas. They will become worldly. Bad company corrupts good morals (1 Cor 15:33). This is why Christian kids who go to public schools are often such a spiritual and moral train wreck. You cannot undo 30-35 hours a week of indoctrination by the enemies of God, along with total immersion in a godless youth subculture, by 4-5 hours per week of religious instruction.
And you are not as strong as you think you are, either. If your most significant relationships are with non-Christians or worldly Christians, you will not break out of this trap yourself. The initial function of what became known as snobbery was to protect those who had learned these fragile and difficult lessons from the cancerous influence of those who had not. It was a commonsense implementation of 1 Cor 15:33.
Self-denial and self-control and avoidance of all activities that are sinful or tend to dissipate one’s energies and substance are a big part of the Christian life. Hard work and diligence, “redeeming the time,” (Eph 5:16-17) simplicity and contentment, striving to lead a quiet life of productive work while minding your own affairs, (1 Thess 4:11-12) and making more than you need so you have something to share (Eph 4:28) are all elements of sanctification and the gospel-centered life. These also tend to produce material well-being and even wealth.
My maternal grandfather owned a grain elevator in Hayti, Mo. He was basically a grain broker. He was also the first in his family to send all of his kids to college. My Dad loves to tell the story about the farmer acquaintance who came to my grandfather for advice at the elevator one day. He wanted to send his daughter to college, but he didn’t know anything about colleges and cost and whatnot. This would have been in the early 1960′s. He dressed in worn out, patched bib overalls. He drove a truck that was 15 years past its prime and one fender was literally wired on with baling wire.
“Well, the cost and quality of colleges varies a lot. How much money do you figure you can spend to send her to college?” Granddaddy asked, as he eyed the old pickup.
“About $100,000.” he said.
My grandfather just about spit his RC Cola all over the man. That’s serious money now. It was a small fortune in the early ’60′s. This man looked poor, but he had plenty of money to spend. Today, we look wealthy and are broke.
I don’t know if that man was a Christian or not, but one thing is certain. He was, at the very least, operating off the storehouse of Christian values that sustained our culture for a couple of generations after biblical Christianity was widely abandoned. We need to refill that storehouse. Now.
Tags: delay, gratification, poverty, psychology, thrift, work
Beautifully true, Brian – thank you!
I minister in an area of England that is, relatively speaking, not all that unlike Appalachia. Left wing ideas have had free reign here for decades, resulting only in making it easier for people to live in squalor, addiction, and permanent unemployment. The only thing that has made any noticeable improvement has been a local high school led by evangelical Christians, where children from these families (some of who have no regular employment in living memory) learn about the Bible while also experiencing an environment where the work is hard and the gratification delayed.
The missionalists like to talk a lot about trendy things like holding parties for artists but so much about not basic, biblical things that actually work, such as teaching chastity, diligence, and thrift. Perhaps you should become the first ordinary means of grace “community transformation” pastor.
Superb, Brian. Moving, convicting, straight from the heart. These things need to be said.
Except for four years in Alabama during the 1970′s, I have lived in Mississippi all my life. The economy, the geography, and the demographics are different from Appalachia. Yet my wife and I could tell dozens of stories that are exact parallels to your accounts. We know our state and its people. Every day we see the devastating effects of multiple generations locked in the cycle of poverty, not because of lack of opportunity but because of the total breakdown of the Christian family. In some neighborhoods of every town, men are absent from the home. I mean they are literally not there. When they are, it’s often only until the woman gets pregnant, and then they move on. Not only faithful, but actual, husbands are practically unknown. The public schools certainly cannot solve these problems. Government programs — their number is legion — are ineffective. Church mercy ministry projects are the tiniest bandages on a open chest wound.
What most disappoints me about the infatuation in certain PCA circles with “Community Transformation” is its naive triumphalism. I’m weary of the chest-thumping delusions of grandeur, the long-term goals that are nothing but pipe dreams wrapped in exaggerations. You would think that well-planned activity equals regenerating power. Often absent is the recognition that without the Gospel changing hearts and transforming lives, all our mercy and compassion efforts will barely make a dent in solving our society’s ills.
I won’t revisit the discussion of whether we should do good to others and seek to bring temporal relief to those in need. Of course we should — first to the household of faith, then to all men as we have opportunity. Knowing how, when, and where to do it require wisdom and discernment. So what else is new?
I live in a culture that’s at once pervasively “Christian” and pervasively antinomian. A large percentage of the population attend church. A shocking percentage of these churchgoers lead lives of utter moral degradation. What we urgently need is not more social programs, nor even “working together” in Big Vision community projects, but uncompromising Gospel preachers who will courageously confront sin and lift up Christ as the only hope. (I could talk all day about the life-destroying effects among the poor of “prosperity Gospel” teaching in its various forms, but that’s for another discussion.) One humble, holy, praying, doctrinally sound, unshakable preacher of the Gospel living among sinners will do more for a desperate community than all the good works of all the sincere Christians who don’t live there.
Either the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, or it’s not. Either God’s “ordinary means” are sufficient to change lives and transform sinners, or they’re not. It’s time to reassert our priorities, brothers.
Bill said: ” . . . not basic, biblical things that actually work, such as teaching chastity, diligence, and thrift. ”
I think that pretty much answers a lot of concerns that I am seeing with the cosmic co-redeemers. If we are going to be transformational, let’s do it well. The problem with emphasizing chastity and strong families is that you will be immediately connected with the right wing fundamentalists and written off by a lot of people whom we want to impress.
My main problem with the cosmic co-redemptionists is that they seem to misdiagnose the origin, severity, effects, and cure of sin.
It is pretty amazing what the pervasive influence of Marxist economics and Darwinian biology has had. Even those who are not Marxists or Darwinists are so steeped in the presuppositions of the system that they are oblivious to the consequences of that way of thinking.
If we are only beasts, even exalted ones, and if our “labor” has intrinisic value apart from any value added to capital and materials, then it makes sense to believe that people are mere victims of circumstance, and if we only supply them with resources (resources shifted from capital to labor), they will become richer and their behaviors will change. Some have bought the lie that markers of success bring success, when actually character generally determines success and the markers of success, at least in America and the West.
One or two of us actually remember the debate surrounding the War on Poverty which has given us our present intractable multi-generational poverty culture and poverty industry. Taking the charitable view that the War on Poverty was well-intentioned, it nevertheless proved the truth of the Iron Law of Subsidy. Remove the logical and natural consequences (price) of bad choices and behaviors, and you get more of that behavior. It is the sociological application of Gresham’s Law.
Bill,
Martyn Lloyd Jones beat us both to it in the Sandfields in the 1920′s and 1930′s.
Everyone should read the Lloyd Jones biographies by Ian Murray. They are pure gold and deal so well with so many of these issues.
As a boy from the mountains of Appalachia there is a near 1:1 correlation between the current situation in Appalachia and the Great Society, Peace Corps students, and Leftists from Massachusetts that felt the need to teach us hillbillies how to brush our teeth and tie our shoes.
As my Grandaddy (who was born in a tent in a coal camp in southern West Virginia outside a town called Prince) will tell you, “We didn’t know we were poor until LBJ told us we were.”
I have lived in Mississippi (about 15 miles north of Frank) for 6 months now and I wholeheartedly agree with Frank. I have yet to meet a person that is not “churched” with one of the hundreds of Baptist churches that dot the pineywoods (most with the two large SBC churches in town that boast hundreds of members, large parking lots, and large buildings that dwarf our modest wood, 119 year-old building).
More to the point of “delayed gratification” if one drives 16th Avenue in Laurel, MS from the I-59 interchange to the Kroger’s Grocery (about 1 1/2 miles) one will see no less than 30 “Check Cashing” facilities and a number of “Title Loan” shops where one can get a loan on their car title.
Eileen,
It’s no accident that the theology of the Emergent church, which the Transformationalist crowd is relying on for an inspiration, is looking older liberal theologians like Jurgen Moltmann :
http://www.emergentvillage.com/search?q=moltmann
Moltmann is a Christian Marxist. Barth pretty well nailed it when he said to Moltmann in a letter that he was just regurgitating another theological Marxist, Ernst Bloch
http://cruciality.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/karl-barth-on-jurgen-moltmanns-theology-of-hope/
I don’t know where Keller’s favorite influence, Miroslav Volf stands on these things because I haven’t read enough of him, but since he trained under Moltmann, there’s cause to be concerned.
So, we ought not be surprised when not only the culture, but certain segments of the church who have been influenced by Marxist thinking, come up with essentially Marxist prescriptions for our ailments.
Now, if byFaith or the Perimeter church would publish something like this, there would be much more clarity on exactly what people are saying and believing.
Benjamin,
Contact Wes. He’ll give you my e-mail address. We should get together.
Pastor Carpenter,
Lacking your background in liberal theology collected at the Louisville Heretick Factory, I can’t comment on Moltmann or any of the EmergyClergy he influences. At my age I try to avoid ingesting contaminants to the extent possible, which is why I outsource my Bishop Nicky Tommy reading to Rachel, who should be receiving her check any day now ;o).
I don’t think it is a coincidence that we find FV and Transformationalism in urban centers and university towns. Intellectuals believe they have deep insights that we simpletons cannot grok, and they are the ones who have been infected in the academy by these false eschatologies in which hope is grounded in man or the church rather than the Ascended King.
Eileen,
I’m flirting with the idea that a neo-hegelianism is the real issue behind the issue.
Blessings,
B
Wes, have to agree with your sentiment, brings to mind something Vladimir Putin said: “I have observed more than once that in some countries, including the United States, people who call themselves Christians feel shy, resentful or afraid of showing their commitment to Christian traditions and rituals in public.” A lot easier to have an art festival and come out with your own microbrew label.
Excellent, Brian. Thank you. And your comments about the good and bad influences of friendships on our children is absolutely right.
Warmly in Christ,
Brian,
Well done. A very good article. Perhaps you can lead a church-planting emphasis to the rural poor?
Eileen,
As a former CREC minister, I’d like to know what evidence you have that the CREC (the purveyor of all things FV) is to be found in university centers and seeking the “intelligentsia” of the community. If you’d actually worshipped in a CREC church, you’d quickly see how silly such an idea is/was. The CREC is much smaller than the PCA, but there’s no comparing them. Here in Cincinnati, it’s the PCA that eschews the urban and rural poor for the suburbs. Only Pentecostals, Methodists, Baptists, and the non-denom. go there.
But maybe you know something I don’t?
Matt
[...] Carpenter, pastor of Foot Hills PCA, has written a very timely article entitled, “Poverty & the Delay of Gratification.” It is full of practical insight that we all should immediately apply to our [...]
Matt,
I’d actually like that a lot. Calvinism in general and Presbyterianism in particular have all but abandoned the working poor and blue collar. It’s a demographic that history has proven that we can do substantial worldly good for.
To Matt Beatty
Concur with your comments about Pentecostals and the Fundamentalists having more of a work in the poorer neighbourhoods. In the UK (where I am) the Christian witness amongst the less well-off neighbourhoods is mostly from Pentecostal works, but that reflects their own working-class revivalist origins – how many miles away from those of the PCA?
Matt,
I did not mention the CREC, and I have no idea whether the CREC is seeking intellectuals or not. I mentioned Federal Vision and Transformationalists and certainly didn’t mean to convey that they are *limited to* university towns and large cities. Intellectuals originate in university towns and usually settle in university towns and large urban centers where there is a demand for their skill set, bringing their psychographic profile with them.
I can only report what I have personally experienced and the inferences I draw from those experiences. The FV folks I know *all* have confidently expressed in various ways that they are much “deeper” than others in both doctrine and practice. I live in a suburb of a large city with multiple universities, and Transfomania is all over the place across the theological spectrum. I’ve also spent a fair amount of quality time in academic circles. One heuristic for how “real world” someone is, in my experience, is how far removed one is from making or growing or raising actual stuff from the dirt up. Actually, I *have* worshiped in two FV churches–one is PCA and the other is CREC, although at the time it was not.
I seriously doubt that I know something that you do not already know, and I have no idea what is going on in Cincinnati. I do believe that both Federal Vision and Transformationalism and Marxism and American-style materialism and any other utopianistic fantasy are all false eschatologies that cause people to put their hope in futile places, persons, and schemes.