We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

On Consumerism

New York Times Square at Night
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.

Related Reading

Should churches have armed security guards?

Question: Recently (December, 2007) a security guard at New Life Church in Colorado Springs shot and apparently killed a man who was shooting people in the church parking lot. The pastor (Brady Boyd) hailed her as a “real hero.” Do you think churches should have armed security guards and do you think the pastor was…

Jesus’ Kind of Social Justice

For many, the primary way of building the kingdom is to influence politics in order to make America more Christian. Others take the opposite approach, concluding that Jesus didn’t try to overhaul the political systems of his day through political means; therefore Christian faith is only a private matter that has no social relevance. Both…

How Do You Balance Productivity and Spiritual Health?

In this episode Greg talks about balancing a productive life with a spiritually healthy one. Links: Book: Seeing is Believing http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0019.mp3

Christians and Politics: What are the different views?

How involved should Christians be in secular politics? Throughout history, Christians have embraced a number of different perspectives on this issue. These perspectives can basically be broken down into three groups. First, some Christians believe that one of the church’s jobs is to transform and ultimately control politics. This view has often been labeled the…

Costly Discipleship

Bob AuBuchon via Compfight Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus is doing a series of posts called “Blogmatics” in which he fleshes out the theological assumptions that inform his blog posts. A couple of days ago he discussed discipleship and the life that believers are called to in a post entitled Blogmatics: The Cost…

Lighten Up: When Social Media Gets in the Way of Love