One of my favorite things each week is meeting with a group I belong to that reads a book and discusses it from our faith perspective. Since the group usually—but not always—reads about faith and science, it’s jokingly called Heretics. It still makes me laugh when I look at my calendar and see: “Heretics at Starbucks, 6 a.m. Tuesday.”
Right now we’re reading The Need to Be Whole by Wendell Berry. Much of what Berry writes has struck me—unsurprising, given his ability as both writer and thinker—but there’s one paragraph in particular that has stayed with me and shaped a lot of my conversations this past week:
“People are encouraged by advertisements, experts, and insinuation everywhere in our consumer culture to believe that what they have is inferior to what they might have, and what they are is inferior to what they might be. So they are lulled and tolled into an economy of replacement without limit, discarding meanwhile all that our cultural heritage has to tell us about our need to be reconciled to the limits imposed upon us by partiality and mortality, and our obligation to live well within those limits. When you have succeeded so far in having a better face, a better body, a better house, a better car, and a better spouse or “partner,” then what you have is again inferior to what you might have, and so the cycle must begin again. People thus become ideal consumers. But how can they think well of themselves, whose lives are forever inferior and disposable?”
—Wendell Berry, The Need to Be Whole, p. 22.The phrase I’ve been using to sum up my thoughts is that we live in a culture of inferiority—a culture that tells us that no matter what you have or do, it’s always inferior to what you could have or do. You can always be more, and once you’ve become more, you can be even more still. Improvement itself can be wonderful, but this culture of inferiority is suffocating. It destroys life rather than enriching it.
You buy a new car, and next year a new model appears. After a few years you “need” another one because yours has become obsolete—after all, it’s about the safety of your family. You buy a new smartphone, and six months later a newer one promises features that will “change your life” and make you more effective. Our economic system thrives on this: whatever you have is automatically inferior to whatever is coming next.
So why wouldn’t we shape our lives around this lie too? No matter how much you’ve improved, that improvement only reveals the next thing you still need to fix. Read more books, learn more skills, redeem more time, optimize more everything. On and on it goes.
Don’t mishear me—improvement isn’t wrong. Far from it. Great things come from growth and skill and practice. But your improvement each year, month, week, or day does not determine your value. I believe the Creation story, and Jesus Himself, say the opposite. You bear the image of God. You are loved by the Lord.
The musician, producer, professor, and all‑around swell guy Steve Taylor wrote a song in 1993 titled “Cash Cow (A Rock Opera in Three Small Acts).” It ends with these lyrics:
Perhaps you’ve already been licked
I, too, was hypnotized by those big cow eyes
The last time I uttered those three little words
“I deserve better!”In the song, Taylor satirizes an economy in which people are enslaved by the constant belief that no matter what they have, “I deserve better!” It’s a lie that constantly feeds on itself. More and better. Better and more. Enough and finished are words that don’t exist in the economy.
I’ve been thinking lately that addiction to the phrase “I can do better” works the same way. It may sound more virtuous, but it can be just as destructive. It becomes a relentless taskmaster, wearing down the very people who try to serve it.
Meanwhile, the Lord of the Sabbath offers something entirely different—rest. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.
Culture of Inferiority
