183. Challenging a Commodifying Culture in Ministry, with Paul Louis Metzger, author of More Than Things

Spiritual Life and Leadership

We live in a world in which it is so easy to demonize and dehumanize people who are not like us. Or we categorize people and forget their humanity.
But that’s the exact opposite of what Jesus did. Jesus humanized people. He treated every human being as a beloved child of God. Jesus treated every individual he encountered as a person.

That’s what we're discussing in this conversation with Paul Louis Metzger, the author of More Than Things: A Personalist Ethics for a Throwaway Culture.
THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Paul Louis Metzger is professor of Christian theology and theology of culture at Multnomah University and Seminary and the author of More Than Things: A Personalist Ethics for a Throwaway Culture.
• We have a tendency in our society to turn people into things.
• The issue of treating people as things has become very personal for Paul Louis Metzger ever since his son suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident several years ago.
• Personhood, according to Paul Louis Metzger, has to do with inviolability, unfathomability, and unrepeatability.
• Attributing personhood to one another is a matter of seeking to affirm an individual’s agency, showing them respect, listening to them, and being present with them.
• Paul Louis Metzger reflects on the way those with Down’s Syndrome are often thought of as having a lower quality of life, when the opposite often seems to be true. And, yet, the value of their personhood is frequently in question.
• Markus Watson reflects on the ways churches tend to “thingify” people, both inside and outside the church.
• When we talk about people, communities, and families as giving units, that’s the language of commodification.
• People consume, but people should not be reduced to patterns of consumption.
• Paul Louis Metzger unpacks the Prodigal Son story as a way of thinking about treating people as persons.
• “When we gain a sense of our significance and worth—not because of how big our church is or how well-known we are or whatever the case might be, how many books we sell, how many this or how many that—but because we are loved. We exist because we are loved. That frees pastors up to evangelize better. To be better shepherds. They’re not going to be hired hands or wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:

• New Wine Institute
• Uncommon Good, Uncommon God (Patheos blog)
• Books mentioned:
  • More Than Things: A Personalist Ethics for a Throwaway Culture, by Paul Louis Metzger
  • The Way of Chuang Tzu, by Thomas Merton
  • Beyond Thingification: Helping Your Church Engage in God’s Mission, by Markus Watson
  • Life of the Beloved, by Henri Nouwen
  • Sharing Faith, by Thomas Groome

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