25 April 2007

Consumerigon, the monster god of our time




In following up in the previous post, I wanted to share how much more aware I am of consumerism in our society today.

I listen to talk radio on the way to work and a couple ads went something like this:

"I saw the (name of car) and just fell in love with it. I called my Dad, and said, 'Dad, I have to get this car', and before you know it I was driving the car of my dreams."

There was also a song that sounded remarkably like Matt Redmons "It's all about you Lord..." but it went like this:

"It's all about you!" It's like they took the song and loped off the Lord. Hey now it's all about me. I was so dumbfounded by the similarity I don't even remember what the ad was for.

I'm involved in an email Bible Study and I brought up the issue of consumerism. The response was tepid at best as no one seemed to realize how big Consumerigon really is. I ended my response with this:

So next time I have money to spend, will I buy the new software program that
I think I need, or will I give it to the single mom raising three kids?
The next time a church has money to spend, will they buy the latest Media
Shout, or help an orphanage in Africa?

How would Jesus spend his money? How does he spend yours?

There's not really a wrong answer to the questions above. The problem is,
is that we don't even ask the questions in the first place. Consumerism is
called consumerism because it consumes us and we don't even see it.

So my challenge is to simply ask the questions. That's how we can be in the
world and not of the world. At least it's a start.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post. Priceless picture. Thanks!

Peace,
Jamie

Unknown said...

love the post - Jason clark is doing his 2nd phd in this area -i had the fun on reading his review of some key books on consumerism and church - some real great diagnosis stuff.

My fave quote, which i might well have said before is no teaches us to consume just like no one teaches a fish to swim. It is the veryness of what we live in.

Some great stuff too about how God has collapsed in the market - so we now see the market in the same terms we once saw God etc.

All thinking stuff!

Unknown said...

oh and you might like this...

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2007/04/dancing_with_co.html

David said...

Sorry Paul, I can't get the post to come up.

I'm sure it's great (or funny!) :-)