Joel Gillespie: "As a Christian pastor I have often said to my congregation that if Christians in the United States were to hear and listen to their own Scriptures the nation would almost certainly enter into recession. Our economy is built upon the foundational principle of normal everyday people being discontent with what they have and thus spending money on what they don’t need."

Comments

[drfranklives]

Amen

[Anthony]

Hallelujah

[Jon]

Maybe that, in a way, explains the research that the working poor and Christians are more inclined to charitable giving.

[Spag]

Joel sounds a lot like Tyler Durden.

[Mike K.]

Some members of our church have started studying the book "Affluenza" which gets right into this same point. I fully set out one Christmas a couple of years ago to basically request that money that could be given to me in the form of presents be instead donated to local charities. It came across as kinda odd to some family members and was totally out of step with the bajillion ads and other commercial things at Christmas, yet was a time I closely approached some of my core Christian beliefs at that moment. I ended up with some presents but we made additional contributions to Greensboro Urban Ministry and Greensboro Habitat that year was somewhat of a compromise. Maybe I'll try this again and see what happens.

[Fec]

This is folly. Consumption is the opiate of the masses.

[Andy Vance]

Slowly he turns.

[Anonymous]

I think a quote sums up that philosophy nicely:

"What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?"

[Spag]

"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

-Tyler Durden

[Fec]

As you've pointed at before, Durden speaks eloquently to the emotionally stunted and intellectually challenged. Isn't wrestling on somewhere?

For the rest of us, the unrelenting appeals to our consumerism leave me, at least, with the notion that everything is a lie. The Bible, being one of the best marketing campaigns ever devised, must therefore and also be a lie. Therefore, God, or at least the conventional portrayal of Her, must be a lie.

[Ivan Karamazov]

If God is dead all things are possible.

[Fec]

I'm not suggesting that God is dead, only that She has been terribly misrepresented and used to sell things like political candidates and Saviors.

[Britt Whitmire]

I do agree that God really doesn't give a shit if the Redskins miss a last-second FG to lose to the Cowboys. Having said that, Satan owns 21.5% of the NY Yankees and 16% of the Red Sox, just to fuck with people.

[cara michele]

britt makes me laugh out loud.

i love fec. Jesus does, too.

stir it up, pastor j.

own less, love more.

peace.

[Jeffrey Sykes]

I think what Ivan is saying, as was Nietzsche when he said "God is dead", is that the original notion of God has been distorted so badly by generations of power brokers and king makers that it no longer represents anything close to the original intent.

Joel is closing in on the tangential edge of that discussion, but within the subset of American Christianity and its mixture of sentimental patriotism and avarice cloaked by the cloth.

He is right to express the view that the Gospel and rampant consumerism are incompatible.

Luther made the same points in the 1500s.

[Doug H]

Ivan, if God is dead, then I'm going after Napoleon Solo.

Signed,

Illya K.

[winstongator]

A couple years back, my sister asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I gave my generic, 'peace on earth and goodwill towards men'. She paused a second, and then said, "I know the perfect gift". She made a donation to Heifer International, and it was probably the most thoughtful gift I got that year.

[Brian]

How does Pastor Gillespie know what other people do and do not need?

[Ed Cone]

Wanting and needing are different things. We are free to seek things we want beyond our needs, but it is not always wise or healthy to do so.

Finding the healthy level of wants to satisfy is to some degree a moral or spiritual task. This area is the Pastor's line of work.

I don't see him prescribing a specific consumption pattern for individuals, but calling on us all to pause and consider our wants and their costs.