Consumerism. Everywhere I turn, I confront articles, blog posts, and books reflecting on the evils of consumerism. There is concern that consumerism has overtaken the church. A cottage industry now exists to address these issues, offering resources and seminars for your … well … consumption. So what, exactly, is consumerism?
Wikipedia says, “Consumerism is the equation of personal happiness with consumption and purchasing material possessions.” That is about as good as any definition. In the church context, it centers on people shopping for churches that meet their “needs” and churches marketing products and programs tailored to meet “customer” needs. I think most of us could give an example we would call consumerism. But there is something not quite right here.
Consumption is a verb. Verbs need a subject and an object. The subject is a consumer … me, for instance. But what is the object? “Things?” I can’t recall ever having had the urge to buy a “thing.” The target of my urge is something specific … a top-of-the-line home theater system or front-row seats at the ball game. Happiness does not come from the consumption of generic things but rather from the perceived need that specific things satisfy in our inner world. Those things produce something for us.
We learn that we are world builders when we look at the biblical narrative. We were made in God’s image. As his image-bearers, we create physical and cultural worlds. We were given dominion … made vice-regents over creation. But we were created to live our world-building calling in relationship to God.
With the fall comes the disruption of relationship and the world-building project for which we were made. Adam and Eve are cast from the garden, and things quickly go downhill. Cain kills his brother. He is banished from the presence of God. Then Genesis 4:16-17 records these words:
Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and named it Enoch after his son Enoch.
The two primary social institutions in ancient cultures were kinship and politics. Cain starts a lineage and establishes a city. He names his son and the city Enoch, meaning “initiated.” Cain initiates the building of a new world apart from God. This is an attempt to give meaning and purpose to his life. But note where Cain builds the city: Nod. “Nod” means “wandering.” Cain has “settled” in the land of “wandering!” An exercise in futility if ever there was one, but Cain’s project is now the prototypical human project … building a world in the land of wandering.
Ancient societies built their worlds around kinship and politics. Kinship and politics aren’t evil. They were redirected toward his project of building a world apart from God. Ancient cultures tended to be totalitarian world-building projects infused with divine qualities. We have entered a different time. World-building projects are more individualized. Rather than building one world through domination, we cooperatively engage each other in exchange to create our customized worlds with their own customized deities.
There is nothing inherently wrong with consumption. Every living thing on the planet consumes. There is nothing wrong with seeing to our needs. God created a world of abundance but made us participants in our provision as we “till the garden.” There is nothing wrong with taking delight in material pleasures. We are material beings who create things, and it is appropriate that the material items we form bring us happiness. There is nothing wrong with exchange. Exchange gives us access to things that can enhance our lives that we otherwise would not have.
Corruption enters the picture through the values by which we approach consumption, meeting needs, experiencing happiness, and exchange. Those values emanate from the world-building projects that have formed in our minds. This means that any given act of consumption can be legitimate for one person and idolatry for another. Reshape the world-building projects, and you reshape the values through which all else is done.
Enter the Kingdom of God with its new (or is it the original?) vision of a world-building community … a place where consumption, meeting needs, experiencing happiness, and exchange are redirected to their intended place in the order of things. How do we participate in, and invite others into, the original world-building project? It seems to me that this is the question.
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