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On Consumerism

Werner Kunz via Compfight
As we enter the upcoming holiday season, most of us will be bombarded with advertisements attempting to convince us that what we have isn’t enough, that our lives are incomplete without the newest and most updated products, and that our main goal is to find the “perfect” gifts for everyone on our lists. We are already hearing Christmas music on the radio. “Black Friday” sales now start on Thanksgiving evening. The relentless push of consumerism sometimes feels inescapable.
In this reflection, Tony Campolo encourages Christians to push back against consumerism, which he calls “the enemy of the church”.
Here is an excerpt:
I have heard a lot of teachers condemn the secular humanism of our world. The truth is that secular humanism is not the primary enemy of the Church. Instead, the enemy of the Church isconsumerism. We have made an idol out of the things that are being sold. We bow down and worship the commodities that are paraded before us on television. We are enslaved to a mindset that tells us that we must possess more and more because we can never have enough. These are the things that are dragging us away from Jesus.
Category: General
Tags: Discipleship, Social Issues
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