The Poverty of Abundance

I have recently had a chance to spend time with a rather materialist person. Of course, they would deny that they are materialistic. In fact, I have yet to meet someone consumed with obtaining “stuff” who would admit that they are materialistic. Their consumerism is always wrapped neatly in excuses and justifications in order to allow them to continue to purchase and obtain possessions while convincing themselves that they are not shallow and self-absorbed. Yet the symptoms are there and the disease is evident.

Materialism - ma·te·ri·al·ism - \mə-ˈtir-ē-ə-ˌli-zəm\ - a preoccupation with or stress upon material rather than intellectual or spiritual things.

As I spent time with this person it was very evident that she was seeking to fill emptiness in her life and bolster her self-esteem through her possessions. And my heart broke for her because I know the emptiness of her pursuit. I know that no matter how many electronic gadgets and toys she obtains and no matter how expensive and abundant her wardrobe becomes she will never fill the hole in her heart. In fact, the more she fills her life with stuff the emptier she will be.

One of the greatest things God has taught our family over the last year is the joy of sacrifice. As we downsize our lives in order to follow God’s call and touch a dying world we are finding freedom, peace, and joy. Contrary to the mindset of the materialist, the more we give up the less we fear and the happier we become. I believe there are several reasons for this negative correlation:

1. No matter how hard we work to convince ourselves otherwise, we all know in our hearts that longing for and obtaining physical possessions is investing in the fleeting and temporary things of life. The fancy new I-Pad of today will become the obsolete, archaic device in the garbage in a short while. The greatest fashions of today will one day end up in a yard sale or Goodwill tomorrow. The brand new beautiful car of today will one day sit in a junkyard somewhere. And when that happens we can never regain the work, time, and money we spent to obtain those things. God created us to be people of eternity and we will never be happy as long as we are spending most of our time investing in the temporary.
2. Our possessions tend to isolate and distract us from the needs of the world. We surround ourselves with toys, gadgets, clothes, vehicles, and homes and pretend that most of the world is like us. We use these things as distractions to keep from seeing the world as it truly is. But God made us to be world changers. So when we insulate ourselves from the world and invest in our own comforts instead of loving and helping a dying world, we will always end up feeling empty. And we will eventually end up resenting the very things that we thought would bring us peace and happiness.
3. Possessions take a lot of time to obtain, maintain, and manage. The more we have the more time we spend keeping up with the work those possessions bring. Soon, we find ourselves becoming slaves to our stuff. Romans 1:25 says that mankind “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…” That sounds like an accurate description of a materialistic person. God created us to be people of relationships. Yet the more we want and have, the less time we have to invest in the relationships we need.

And while we spend our time amassing and serving our possessions the world dies around us. So we waste huge portions of our lives and miss the mission for which God created us.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can change, one step at a time, with God’s help. We can step off the hamster wheel of more, bigger and better, realizing that it is not getting us anywhere. We can say no to the counterfeit and temporary and embrace the real and eternal. We have to. The consequences to ourselves and the world are too great not to.

(More to come on this topic)