The Catholic Gentleman

A blog for Catholic men that seeks to encourage virtue, the pursuit of holiness and the art of true masculinity.

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Strength in Vulnerability

So many men today walk around as if they have it all figured out and they don’t have a problem in the world. The “strong” silent type, if you will.  I know this for a fact. I used to do the same thing.

So much of my life was spent walking like a one-man army, convincing myself that I didn’t need anybody or anything. That’s what the world, the flesh, and the devil would have you believe. They fill your head full of lies and trick you into thinking that it is weak to have feelings, problems, or to admit that you need other people in your life. This plays right into the devil’s hands because it allows him to keep men on the sidelines and out of the game. Instead of being the men that we were created to be, we waste away in idleness, isolation, and addictions. We remain immature selfish boys, who fill our time trying to avoid our issues by drinking to deal with work stress, watching porn to deal with loneliness, experimenting with drugs and countless other things, all the while withdrawing further and further from our faith, family, and friends.

Does this sound like strength to you? Not to me. I know it doesn’t to God. 

In fact, in 2 Corinthians 12:9 God tells Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness.”  You see, to God, strength is found in admitting your weaknesses. It’s in our vulnerability that we find strength.

We become truly vulnerable when we admit our shortcomings in three ways. We must become vulnerable to ourselves, to God, and to those around us. This is the pathway of true biblical strength that God calls us all to. 

The first step is to become vulnerable with yourself.  We have to start speaking truth to ourselves. Many men know deep down that they have a certain problem or sin that is taking hold in their life. The problem is, many they never really admit it. They sweep the thought under the rug before they have any time to really deal with it. This is usually done with the lies the enemy is spinning in a man’s head. If he can make you believe you don’t have an issue, then you will never break free from it. This is why it is crucial for a man to become vulnerable with himself and the reality of his situation. We can never begin to move forward if we aren’t truthful about our sins and the hold they have over us.  

The second step in finding strength in vulnerability is to become vulnerable with God. We cannot fix the issues in our lives on our own. Most of the time we have found ourselves with a bigger problem strictly because we are trying to deal with it alone. When God told Paul that His power was made perfect in weakness, he was trying to get him to understand that it is through humility that we find our strength. You see when we come to know how weak we are on our own, we come to the realization that we need God.  When we are humbled by our own lack of strength we begin to understand that our strength has to come to from God.  It is that dependance on God and the power of the Holy Spirit that he has placed within us that gives us true strength.

God has even given us the perfect sacrament in which to become vulnerable. We need to meet God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. That’s right. We need to become vulnerable to God in the confessional. It is there that we can admit our faults and the need for His help. It is there that we can receive absolution and the grace to be able to move forward.  We can not get past our sins, our mistakes, and our failures without become vulnerable with Him.

The last step in finding strength in vulnerability is to become vulnerable with others. Now, I am not saying you need to shout all your sins from the roof tops for everyone to hear. That would be foolish. No, we need to find trustworthy men that are walking in virtue and holiness and confide in them.  There was a reason that Jesus sent the disciples out two by two. He knew if one fell there was another to pick him up. There is strength in numbers and there is nothing like being held accountable by a brother who cares about you.  When you become vulnerable with a brother, it forms a bond that is very hard for the devil to break. It also allows that brother to become vulnerable himself. 

Vulnerability is where change begins to happen. When we admit to God, ourselves, and our peers what we are struggling with in life, we take away all power and hold the devil has over us. No longer can he whisper in our ear that we aren’t good enough, that people will hate us, or that we will lose everything. He can no longer scare us with lies about what being vulnerable will cost us. It’s in our total vulnerability that the devil becomes weak.  That virtual prison cell that he has built around us begins to crumble. He can no longer threaten us with the idea that others will find out because we have told everyone that matters already. We render him powerless over us. We once again become clay, that in the hands of the great Potter, can begin to be molded into His original grand design. We become free. We can finally experience the peace that God desires for us.  We can truly begin to live. 

So take a good look at what’s holding you back.  Make the decision to become vulnerable with yourself and God in the confessional. Find a group of brothers to become weak with.  Follow in St. Paul’s footsteps and become “content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when you are weak, then you are strong” (2 Cor 12:10). 

Author: John Edwards is a husband, father, and Catholic speaker. He is the founder of Pew Ministries and the host of the podcast “Just a Guy in the Pew.“

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BBQ Etiquette for the Catholic Gentleman

As we start enjoying vernal and summer evenings, the great Canadian barbecue season has arrived. As Catholic gentlemen, we can partake and share such an important culinary and social tradition to renew and foster bonds, friendships and Catholic values.

Many are those who show their hospitality by hosting a barbecue.

The main advantage of a barbecue is that you can eat and entertain outdoors, basking in glorious sunshine; so beneficial for your mind, body and soul.

The Journal of Happiness Studies (2021) states that being outdoors is associated with higher emotional well-being, significantly higher positive affect and lower negative feelings, adding that “there is a wealth of evidence showing that being outdoors is associated with wide-ranging positive outcomes in terms of emotional well-being” (Stieger, Lewetz & Swami).  Therefore, in times of social constraints due to the coronavirus, “the ability to spend time outdoors is likely to take on added importance vis-à-vis emotional well-being,” the authors point out. To that end, a barbecue can be just the ticket.

As a host, prepare for your barbecue event, and for the vagaries of the weather by having some blankets at hand for your guests, even a fire pit ready for a cool evening.

The informality of a barbecue also requires to make it as comfortable as possible for your guests. Therefore, plan carefully so that they can feel welcome, relax, eat well and enjoy each other’s company.

Before your guests arrive, ensure the gas canister is full, lite the BBQ and have it ready, so that they don’t have to wait too long.

Before the event, make sure everything is prepared: arrange seating, a serving table or individual side tables, cutlery, crockery and napkins.

Large coloured napkins are more festive than plain white. A stack of smaller cocktail or luncheon-sized napkins should suffice.

Plastic plates or sturdy paper plates, plastic utensils and disposable cups makes the cleanup easier, and it’s practical when holding a barbecue outdoors, rather than on your deck or patio for a small number of guests, in which case you might prefer to use your own dinnerware and utensils. They don’t need to match styles and patterns.

Provide enough comfortable seats for the party. It can be challenging to have to juggle food and drink while having to stand, and perching on a rickety and unsteady chair is never that enjoyable. A table where guests can place their plates and drinks, instead of their laps, is better.

Make sure there is shade. If it’s too hot, you can make available sunscreen. Also, if there are mosquitos, provide mosquito repellant.

Offer plentiful supplies of ice-cold water and cold soft drinks to keep guests hydrated. It will also help last the provision of wine and beer.

If the weather gets a bit cold, you can offer hot coffee and tea.

Be mindful of your neighbours. A barbecue can be highly aromatic and smoky, depending on wind direction and the cook’s ability. Place your BBQ as far away as possible from the house.

When playing music, choose the music in advance, and be considerate. Don’t play the music too loud that would make conversation difficult, and disturb your neighbours. Check the noise city bylaws, and until what time you are allowed to play music.

If you are a guest, tell your host immediately whether you will be attending, so that he can plan accordingly.

Be on time. Arrive at or shortly after the time stated; fifteen minutes is OK. Do not, however, arrive early.

Barbecues are, by definition, informal, and meant to be enjoyed. Encourage your guests to help themselves to bread, salads and drinks. If they offer to help you with cooking, serving drinks or handing food round, accept their offer graciously.

Remember that your barbecue is not to be the Great Bake Off. You are not in that TV show, so don’t show off. Your guests are not there to applaud your BBQ prowess. Ridiculous aprons, silly chef’s hats, boasting and bragging while barbecuing is inappropriate. Your guests came to eat, socialise and have a good time.

Don’t boast, don’t be arrogant, and don’t be rude (1 Corinthians 13:4). Avoid rudeness and the risk to offend, even unwittingly, by being aware of conventions of politeness, facial expressions, hand gestures, body posture, language, your conversation, tone of voice, type of and appropriateness of clothing, appearance, personal grooming, and cleanliness.

St. Francis of Sales, in his Introduction to a Devout Life, ch. 27, says: “Beware most watchfully against ever uttering any unseemly expression; even though you may have no evil intention, those who hear it may receive it with a different meaning. An impure word falling upon a weak mind spreads its infection like a drop of oil on a garment, and sometimes it will take such a hold of the heart, as to fill it with an infinitude of lascivious thoughts and temptations.” He adds: “Those who cherish the angelic virtues of purity and modesty, will always speak simply, courteously, and modestly. As to unclean and light-hearted talk, St. Paul says that those things should not even be named among us, for, as he elsewhere tells us: “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” whereas good manners touch the lives of those who experience them. Manners can be a mark of Christian charity.

As they arrive, ask them what they’d like to drink, while telling them what drinks you can offer them. As you hand over the drinks, mention they’re welcome to help themselves to drinks.

Have garbage bags handy to collect periodically empty cans and used paper plates. Keep them out sight.

Ensure the health and safety for you and your guests, and be aware also about bacteria and possible food contamination. Follow proper food safety and hygiene: wash your hands before and after cooking and eating, use utensils, do not double dip, and refrain from licking your fingers; it’s unhygienic, unsightly and ungentlemanly.

Don’t overindulge. Eating as you are starving will attract the wrong type of attention to you, and it would leave less food for others. Pace yourself, and do not fill your plate to the brim. Have seconds instead. The Rule of St. Benedict specifically instructs “not to be given to much wine” and “not to be gluttonous.” Temperance being one the four cardinal virtues.

Keep the consumption of alcoholic drinks on the moderate to low side. St. Paul even recommends such libation: “Use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake” (1 Timothy 5:23). However, he also says: “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is luxury; but be ye filled with the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18).

As your guests leave, tell them how much you enjoyed their company.

Thank your host upon leaving, and a second time the following day by phone, email or with a written thank-you note. It’s a gracious gesture that will be truly appreciated.

The recipe for a good barbecue is to ensure that food, drinks, company, conversation and manners are good. Good barbecues are the sinews of good memories.

St. Paul already knew how you should conduct yourself before others: “Let not then our good be evil spoken of. For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but justice, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in this serveth Christ, pleaseth God, and is approved of men. Therefore let us follow after the things that are of peace; and keep the things that are of edification one towards another. Destroy not the work of God for meat. All things indeed are clean: but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence. It is good not to eat flesh, and not to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother is offended, or scandalized, or made weak. Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God. Blessed is he that condemneth not himself in that which he alloweth” (Romans 14: 16-22).

Meanwhile, St. Benedict in Rule No. 53 sets out how to receive guests:

“Let all guests that happen to come be received as Christ, because He is going to say: “A Guest was I and ye received Me.” And let suitable honour be shewn to them all, especially to those who are of the household of the faith and to strangers.” They should be met by the superior [in your case, you as the host] or “by the brethren with all due courtesy.”

Basically, and following St. Paul’s teaching, just show hospitality without grumbling, be patient, be kind, and rejoice always.

St. Francis of Sales is the patron saint of good manners. St. Julian the Hospitaller is the patron saint of hospitality, and St. Martha, who “was busy about much serving” Jesus Christ when she “received him into her house” (Luke 10: 38-42), is the patron saint of servants and cooks. Her feast day is July 29th, an appropriate day to host a barbecue.

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Jesus the Redeemer

It would be very strange if a child ever whipped out his checkbook to reimburse his parents for bringing him to life. One could try to put a dollar amount on the medical bills, the nursery expenses, the food consumed, the diapers ruined, the hourly rate of the parent. But this is all an obvious absurdity. 

The same thing is true for all gifts. A present does not fit the category of a usual monetary exchange—a gift is a sign of love, almost sacramental insofar as it signifies what it effects. You cannot reimburse someone for a gift. But you can enter into a relationship of self-giving with that person. A husband would never pay his wife for making dinner or his wife pay the husband for fixing the sink. Their lives are intertwined as they mutually and endlessly give and receive from one another. Similarly with the child and the parent. The child can never make up the debt to the parent. But what the child can give in return is honor. And he can give dignity to his parents in their last years by caring for them when they can no longer care for themselves. There is a reciprocity that may be appropriate but never a perfect payback for what was given.

Money vs. Sacrifice

Against the larger cultural consensus, I would like to suggest that this is true for absolutely everything in life—most importantly demonstrated by Christ’s sacrificial crucifixion for our salvation. One of the great axioms of our age is that debts need to be repaid. Because we think about debt in terms of money, we think that there is the ability to pay back something that is owed. Money—the perfect commodity insofar as a single dollar will always equal another dollar—allows for debts to be paid back perfectly for the amount that was lent (here I am ignoring all notions of interest, etc). But money merely represents, or symbolizes, real life—and in real life, all actions and gifts are inherently irreplaceable. 

Now, I am not saying that money is evil and debts ought never to be repaid—don’t push this argument to a silly conclusion! Money only emerges out of human creativity to get around certain predicaments. But it is not perfectly natural; it does not accurately represent what is going on in the world. When we give the barista a fiver for our latte, we are equating two unlike things: a paper bill and a foamy, caffeinated delight. We have constructed this convention for the sake of justice. 

But what is actually happening in real life is that we are receiving a real good and in place of that we give an artificial good, money. While commutative justice has been fulfilled, the natural debt has not been. Receiving the latte is similar to receiving the gift of life from our parents. Even as a commodity, the latte is a one of a kind, never to be perfectly repeated. But we have wisely created a monetary system so as to immediately offer some good to a stranger we may very well never see again. In reality, all purchases are better understood as relationships of giving and receiving even if our intentions have been reformed by the monetary construct we have created.

The Law of the Jubilee

Demonstrating the impossibility of paying back debts is a key component of the Levitical Jubilee years. Every fifty years, all debts would be forgiven and everyone who sold his property or himself into another’s service, “shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family” (Lev. 25:10). This is not an ideal form of charity that God called the Israelites to practice (and us in the New Testament to fulfill) but a call for us to remember that everything in life begins as Gift. God gifted creation to all of us equally. That is why He divided the land equally among all clans (cf Joshua 13–21). 

Inevitably people fall on hard times or are bad with their resources and need to sell their belongings, get a loan, or even sell themselves into the service of another (the ancient equivalent of us shutting down our small business and working for a corporation). The Year of Jubilee brought with it a freedom from all debts and all services. “‘Freedom,’ in the Bible, as in Mesopotamia, came to refer above all to release from the effects of debt.” If an Ancient Israelite came to America today, he would think that almost everyone was a slave because almost everyone lived under the effects of school, housing, car, and credit card debt. And while people could buy their way out of debt, God’s Levitical design was that debt-slaves would be freely released by their masters.

When most of us think about Jesus’ sacrifice, we think about God “buying us back” or “paying off” our debt—but this misses the point. Christ releases us from our sin and guilt and offers us a life with him, forever without the burden of sin we have built for ourselves. 

Jesus himself alludes to the spirit of jubilee redemption when telling the following parable:

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. 

“Be patient with me, ” he begged, “and I will pay back everything.” The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go. 

But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. “Pay back what you owe me!” he demanded. 

His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.” 

But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. 

Then the master called the servant in. “You wicked servant,” he said, “I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you ?” In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all his debt. (Matthew 18:23–34).

An Impossible Debt

The financial debt of the first servant equates to approximately $12 billion today. So in a very real sense, this is a debt that cannot possibly be repaid. When Christ says that the king “cancelled (ἀφίημι) the debt and let him go” he uses the same Greek word found in the Septuagint’s Levitical command on the Jubilee to “release” one’s brother from the debt. Jesus’  parable is about the endless mercy of God whose stores of goodness can never be depleted by us squandering His gifts. Far from the, say, Quranic, understanding of salvation where good deeds are weighed against bad deeds (cf, Surah Hud 11:114), the Catholic understanding of salvation begins with a debt forgiveness and finishes with the person becoming like unto the King so that we may begin to forgive debts as He has first forgiven us. 

That aforementioned Greek word, pronounced as “aphiemi”, is the same word that Christ brings into the Lord’s prayer itself—“forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect requires a disposition of redemption to extend Christ’s work on the cross. We are to “make up for what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions,” as St. Paul says in Colossians. In a certain sense, nothing at all is lacking in Christ’s perfect sacrifice to the Father. But the redemption must be readily accepted and the disposition of suffering to forgive, to redeem, must be assumed. In other words, what is lacking is our own conversion—the first servant must truly forgive debts as he has been forgiven. 

Payments vs. Personal Relationships

Luther did not believe this, thinking that Christ was a substitution that paid for our faults. “But now, if God’s wrath is to be taken away from me and I am to obtain grace and forgiveness, some one must merit this; for God cannot be a friend of sin nor gracious to it, nor can he remit the punishment and wrath, unless payment and satisfaction be made.” But this remains the logic of money and debt—a logic that man (helpfully) invented (for our own exchange), not God. Far from the Protestant notion of Christ buying us back or paying a debt only he could afford, the sacrifice of Christ is a perfect sacrificial offering to the Father that we are to join. 

Speaking of the Protestant notion of substitution, Pope Benedict says that the reality, “is exactly the opposite: God himself becomes the locus of reconciliation.” This is why we must consume the Eucharist that Christ’s sacrifice might live in us and through us. The perfect sacrifice made to God, the very sacrifice we should have made, was perfectly offered by Christ; we must enter Christ becoming one in life with Him. St. Peter makes sure we do not miss the significance of Christ’s redemption: “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pe 1:18–19). 

Our relationship with God is not based on money-like exchange relations. Money is man’s invention, not God’s. Money is an artificial way of relating to one another, an impersonal transactionary way. God’s way is totally personal. It requires blood that we consume to make our very own blood. “For our sake,” St. Paul teaches, “[God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” This is no transaction: Christ did not give his life as a mere exchange for our own. He gave His life that we may unite with Him once our debt has been forgiven.

This is the glory of Easter, not only that a slate has been wiped clean but that a life of pure intimacy with God can be lived. Redemption is freedom from our past accounts of spiritual adultery that distanced us from God and rendered us slaves to sin. Jesus is the great redeemer who has freed us from our past accounts and has given us a way forward through his cross and resurrection. This Easter season, we celebrate that.

—

Jacob Imam is the president of New Polity (newpolity.com), a DPhil candidate and prize scholar at the University of Oxford writing on theology and economics. 

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History Is A Memory. Tradition Is Alive.

King James IV of Scotland (r.1488-1512), one of the last Catholic monarchs of Scotland, was considered a true Renaissance man devoted to learning and enlightened rule. In addition to his pursuits in science and the arts, he had a particular interest in language and its origins. He was a polyglot and the last King of Scotland to speak Scottish Gaelic.

In an attempt to understand the development of language and to determine if God had instilled an innate divine language in mankind, the king conducted a linguistic experiment in language deprivation. 

King James ordered that a set of twin orphans be sent to live alone on the remote island of Inchkeith to be cared for by a mute woman. The purpose of this was to observe what language, if any, the children would develop and use to communicate. 

His hopes that he could discover the pure divine tongue from this experiment were fruitless. The children developed a series of claps and gesticulations to communicate their needs and would at times mimic the noises of the island’s native animals.

Divorced from history and tradition, the children were only capable of the most basic forms of communication…

There is a parallel in this experiment to the world and culture in which we now live. As modernism, consumerism, and relativism erode away the deep and foundational traditions of the Christian West, we find ourselves more and more incapable of grasping, and even less so, communicating the deep truths and faith that our ancestors so carefully guarded. 

Our modern society often lives in a self-imposed banishment to an Inchkeithon where we settle for the basest of pursuits, substituting philosophy for a soundbite, discernment for rashness, chastity for concupiscence, and eternal things for things that pass.

The antidote to this spiritual and cultural muteness, the escape raft from this isolated island, is a rediscovery of our history and traditions. 

It is the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of those before us that allow us to contemplate the complex and mysterious nuances of higher things like the divine, the family, and your own mortality. History and traditions provide us the lexicon to articulate and understand the innate desires of the immortal soul beyond our animal instincts. 

“Remember the days of old, consider the years of generations past. Ask your father, he will inform you, your elders, they will tell you.” Deuteronomy 32:7

A gentleman or gentlewoman studies and learns history. They protect and pass on traditions. They understand their mortality and plant trees in whom’s shade they will never rest. They add to the deposit and that gets left to the generations to come. They don’t live only in the present, but in the past and the future. They incorporate the richness of the past, the joys and struggles of the present, and the hope of the future.

To begin to understand history and tradition and to incorporate them into your life, one should understand the difference between them. A fundamental difference is that history exists as a memory, but tradition lives now. Learning history allows you to understand why things are; tradition lets you understand how things were. History forms tradition, tradition animates history.

So firstly, learn history. Read histories by Butler, Gibbon, Herodotus, Josephus, Livy, & Tacitus. 

Read novels and literature by Cervantes, Boccaccio, Alighieri, & Chaucer. Read about archaeological and anthropological finds. Visit museums and libraries. 

But, more importantly, learn your traditions. Discover how your grandfather lived as a young man. Cook the recipes your great-grandmother made. Research the name of your 5th great-grandfather. Learn the feast days and traditions your cultural ancestors celebrated. Learn the liturgical and devotional traditions of the Church that have been largely forgotten since the Council.

Most importantly of all, understand your place in tradition and history. All of your ancestors and those who built our culture are the links in a chain behind you. The future links will be your children and grandchildren. You must be the one to bind them together and form an unbroken chain. Make sure your link is strong. Do not allow those who come after us to be left mute and unequipped like those twins orphans on Inchkeith.

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Loyalty and Localism

For all of the oddities of hipsterdom, they get at least one thing right: buying local. Corporations care more about their ROI than the quality of the goods produced; they care more about their profit than their product. Part of the return to a true, profound Christian polity is a return to caring less about what company will yield the greatest returns and more about what company will do a city good.

For those of you who aren’t hipsters out there, you may be shaking your head already: “Hipsters are weird”; “The quality of local stuff isn’t better, or not enough to justify the higher price”; “Don’t financially support mediocrity”; “Trading with foreign places builds peace between neighboring peoples”; “sometimes you just can’t get oranges locally”; and so on go the first rebuttals. But hear me out. 

Locality is related to loyalty, because loyalty is nothing but love—love for something insofar as one belongs to it. The nature of loyalty stands out when we forsake the better for the sake of the closer. 

St. Thomas Aquinas validates this principle when he asks the question: “Whether we ought to love those who are better more than those who are more closely united to us?” and concludes “we ought, out of charity, to love those who are more closely united to us more, both because our love for them is more intense, and because there are more reasons for loving them.”

His last point is really the point. Budweiser has one reason for eliciting and sustaining our love, and that’s the love of consuming it. Its basic taste. Its consistent distribution throughout the entire world that enables us to chug it whenever we want. On the contrary, we have many reasons for loving our local brewery, the one “more closely united to us”: we may love the family it supports, the pride it inspires, the opportunity it provides for festivals, the land on which it works, and so on.

Every time you buy a Bud, some small percentage of your money goes to Belgium and to Brazil, dissipated out into a global corporation that does not give a damn about your community. This hardly seems like the economic relation that should stir the spirit of the good ol’ local boys, but it is a perverse feature of liberal states that its citizens tend to love their nations, and so their national brands, over their neighbors, and the production that takes place at a neighborly scale. Through the manipulation of American flags, eagles, and old-fashioned monopoly, corporations have successfully faked “closeness” and gained our loyalty. 

Others of you non-hipsters still agree with them, that we should buy locally, and are guiltily saying to yourselves right now, “Yes, I know I should shop local, I just don’t; it’s too easy to just jump on Amazon” or “Coors is just so much more affordable.” Well, just stop it; deepen your loves, as C.S. Lewis would say: “we are far too easily pleased.” Say farewell to Starbucks, wave goodbye to produce shipped from New Zealand, ignore the Czech Republic’s beer! Focus on loving your neighbor rather than on yourself, shirk off Black Friday (which is still ongoing somehow?), and start budgeting to help Greg sell his coffee down the road. 

Hipsters don’t get off easily themselves. It seems to me that their movement is less about buoying up and devotion to their neighbor than it is a general anti-corporatist vibe. At best, it’s a love of the arty aesthetic. In a strange way, this aesthetic is becoming corporatized itself: it doesn’t matter whether I’m in London, Pittsburgh, or Cape Town: all “local” shops look the same. The predictability of Starbucks isn’t the problem for them—no, they don’t mind, even actively desire, all coffee shops to look the same; it’s just the universal ownership they hate; it’s the leftist, “down with the 1%” spirit.

While I’m keen on their critique of Starbucks, I’m a bit nonplussed about their negative motivation to buy from “the corner shop.” In fact, it seems, in a certain way (and I know I’m generalizing so all exceptional hipsters out there, please forgive me), that they are fleeing from the corporatists and not moving toward the localists. The movement to the local must be a drive of love, not of hatred; a desire to support our neighbors rather than run out our enemies. Their love may be for the taste of the local, you say—but even then, their affinity is akin to the obsessed football fan’s preference for Bud-Lite: it’s about their palate and not other people. 

In both cases, we need to recall the Lewisian dictum: don’t be too easily pleased. Long for more; desire beatitude; deepen your loves. Love bespeaks belonging, having people to depend on and depend on you. It is profoundly personal. So shirk off the love of products for the love of people. But, of course, the product does matter.

So let’s get back to the criticism mentioned above: what if the brewmaster at the local pub struggles to make good beer? Well, that happened to us in our town. For a couple months, the guys would only bring to our monthly, First-Friday festival, a strawberry milkshake IPA. (I’m really not sure how anyone ever came up with that idea, let alone in the Rustbelt, but I digress.) We bought it, sure, out of solidarity and support. But with some fraternal correction, he stopped his pink mistake and started bringing his true-to-form classic American lager. Then we weren’t just buying out of love for the man but also for love of his product. Double win.

The product, and even the act of producing, really does matter. As a result of the current corporate takeover, through their ubiquity across every small and large town in America and beyond, we have forgotten how to do things ourselves. Skills are habits of souls. If we’re out of the habit, we lose the skill. This is most easily seen by the fact that we have lost the power of navigation—we can’t get anywhere without our phones lighting our path. But this is true about our hobbies as well. Why would you ever buy a coffee roaster when it’s cheaper, or at least more convenient, to buy a drip on the go? Why go through the hassle of buying brewing equipment when you can get a case of Corona for eighteen bucks? For those who do try to create their own goods, to fight against corporate-induced sloth, there is a market full of people who are habituated to “knowing what they’re going to get”, to buying the predictable, to the commodification of all consumable goods and not to the local. So we are not only a people that need to relearn what good taste is, we are also a people that needs to rediscover how to produce it. However, we will only ever give people the chance to learn, both how to produce as well as how to consume, if we turn to the local. 

So today I encourage you to focus on where your loyalty should lie. Go out and buy those feather-laden eggs, the wilting rosemary, and the expensive meat. Make it into something delicious and say a prayer for your fellow citizens who produced it.

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Jacob Imam is the president of New Polity (newpolity.com), a DPhil candidate and prize scholar at the University of Oxford writing on theology and economics.