Rent, Stream, Experience - New Values and the Church (1 of 3)

Before you read this, make sure you have read part one. 

While the Christian faith has much to speak to in the value of renting, you may be wondering what does the Christian faith have to say about the value of streaming? Streaming is very new technology and what could a 2,000 year old tradition have to say to this new thing?

by Lucinda Li

At the core, streaming is an expression of justice. When you stream something you still may not own it (see the value of stewardship/renting in previous post), but you have access to it. Universal and fair access is the realm of justice. Christians have cried foul when there has been limited access to a common good. For instance, when John Wesley saw that the grain in his day was being channeled toward producing alcohol and not food, he called for a boycott on alcohol until everyone was fed. The access to food was being restricted to those who had more money because the demand was so high.

The value of streaming carries with it a lot of things, but one of the things that it carries is universal access. This is why you see things like net neutrality fights and smartphone proliferation in the developing world. This is why when a nation (or company) restricts access to internet services there is a outcry. While streaming may invoke in most of us a technology that allows us to binge watch T.V. shows or allows us to hear a song without owning the physical record, streaming also carries with it a component of fair access or as it is someitmes called - justice.

Rent, Stream, Experience - New Values and the Church (1 of 3)

Recently Leslie Bradshaw shared about changing values in American culture. The tweetable line is that younger generations are affecting other generations toward "rent, stream, and experience." (You may want to take just a moment and read this little article to get the background.)

Personally, I resonate with these three values. Aside from the obvious definitions of rent, stream experience, I would submit there are connections to Christianity. And perhaps, if we get our stuff together, Christianity can help cultivate these values because these values overlap with Christian values.

First of all: rent.  Renting means not owning, which is exactly the point of Christians' understanding of stewardship. You and I do not own anything even if we bought it. Everything belongs to God and we all are just borrowing or renting it from God. Christians talk about your very breath (pneuma in Greek or ruha in Hebrew) belongs to God. We are born and the pneuma/ruha (which also means spirit) of God enters into us and animates our bodies. When we die that pneuma/ruha (breath/spirit) returns to the source - God. This idea that God owns all things is true not just for our breath but also for things like money, land, and even life itself. 

While it may be difficult in the "American dream", moving from owning to renting is not a difficult value leap for the Christian.

The one thing that unites us all

In the spirit of the new Hobbit movie that is out I would like to point out the one thing that unites every human being in the world. It unites the left the right. The theist, agnostic, and atheist. It unites the east and west, past and present and even the future. Everyone has it. Everyone thinks it.

Everyone has doubt. 

It is the thing that brings us all together. Regardless of creed, color, gender, status, or time you lived. We are unified in our ability to doubt. If you encounter a religious person who never doubts then I would say you are encountered a liar. 

If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself; “Can I believe it all again today?” No, better still, don’t ask till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer is always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and great laughter.
                                                                                                               -Frederick Buechner