[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], January 2021]
Capitalism is driven by consumerism, and it has made western countries rich and comfortable. But in our want-consumed lives, where the goal is to own more stuff, have we lost peace and replaced it with worry?
Anyone that knows me will know that I’m really into my cars. In fact, I need to keep buying a new car every few years. Once I’ve got a new car I’m already thinking about what the next car is going to be. There’s always something better out there. When I look at the car I can’t go for the previous model, I’ve got to have the latest model with all the latest gadgets, the things I’ve just got to have in order for it to be the perfect car.
Maybe for you it’s not cars but perhaps for you it’s other things that you just need to have: clothes, shoes, gym membership, all things that we’re persuaded by the media and by advertisers that we have to have in order to make our lives better. Now this is what is known as consumerism and it’s what drives our economy. We are a must a mass consumption economy. In fact, in post-war America in the 1950s the government encouraged people to buy things. Good Americans, good citizens were those that bought lots and lots of things because when people buy things that drives our our capitalist economy, it makes us a richer wealthier country and it works. That’s exactly what it does and in the west most of our countries are affluent because of capitalist and consumerism ideals.
But I’m wondering that in our pursuit of wealth and comfort that we’ve actually lost something. I mean, before capitalism we didn’t have individualism, at least not as we define it now, and we didn’t have careers except when it came to race horses and yet that’s what drives our economy. What drives capitalism and consumerism is the individual and our need to fund our comfortable lifestyles.
I find that actually what it does do is fill our lives with worry – worry that we are keeping up with the Joneses, worry that we’re missing out, worry that if we don’t buy that new pair of shoes or eat that particular food then our life isn’t going to be as good as it could be. So we form careers, we pursue the best life in the support and then we worry that we haven’t got enough money or maybe we’ve borrowed money to buy more stuff. We worry that we’re not going to be able to pay it back and then we worry that our children aren’t going to have enough stuff or have a good enough quality of living. Our life is just full of worry mounting up when really we’re wondering why we’re not enjoying the comfortable lifestyle that we have.
There’s another thing about worry: worry makes us introspective, it makes us more concerned about our own problems and our own issues, and because of that we fail to look up and see the difficulties that other people find themselves in and we fail to see the suffering of people around us. We’re less generous because if we’re generous we haven’t got as much to keep for ourselves, we haven’t got enough money to spend on ourselves. Philanthropy has reduced significantly in the last 100 years. The latest generation, they’re the generation least likely to give money to church because they need that money to fund their lifestyles, to remain comfortable and to have all those things that society says that they need to have.
Surely there’s a better way isn’t there? Is there a way to escape this sinkhole of worry in our lives? Is there a way to live our lives where we’re not consumed with what we have or haven’t got, where we’re not constantly worrying about the things that we’re missing out on? A way where we’re not in competition with other people and we’re not pushing ourselves, driving ourselves so we can have a better and more comfortable life. Surely there’s got to be a better way – is there?
Thank you so much for watching our midweek message. If you want to find out more about this, if you want to go a bit deeper, if you want to find out what the Bible has to say about worry and possessions then do join us for our Sunday service where Rob Bell will be talking to us about trust and simplicity, and what Jesus said about it and how he lived. So do join us this Sunday on our YouTube channel to find out more about that. ‘bye!
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[1] YouTube link: Does more stuff make a better life?
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
