Consumerism and Spirituality

Am I the only one who feels a little uncomfortable when people joke about retail therapy?

Did anyone else feel uneasy about the masses lining up for days to get their hands on an iPad as soon as they went on sale?

Is our happiness really dependant on the power to buy items that will soon be outdated or superseded?

I don’t have a problem with the iPad and would probably enjoy using one if I could afford it, but I was quite concerned by the hype that drove people to stores around the world to participate in a buying frenzy. The latest I heard is that they’re still selling at one every three seconds. They may be quite wonderful but they’re not the answer to the world’s woes.

Whether it’s shoes, clothes, electronic gadgetry, food or whatever else, we seem to repeat the process of purchasing as much as we can, growing dissatisfied with it, then going out and doing it all over again in the hope that the next purchase will bring the contentment we’re seeking.

To a great degree it doesn’t even matter what we’re buying. Consumerism is all about the purchasing. We gather together to worship at shopping centres that have become our cathedrals.

We need to purchase a variety of items just to live our lives but we can so easily cross the line and let that purchasing process become an end in itself.

My regular Wednesday morning guest on 98.5 Sonshine FM is Rev Dr Ross Clifford who is the Principal of Morling College in New South Wales and Vice President elect of the Baptist World Alliance. Each week we chat about a range of issues relating to spirituality and belief.

Today we talked about consumerism and the way it is affecting so many lives. We live in a world where millions are dying because they don’t have enough, yet just as many are dying due to excess.

If you want to hear what Ross had to say about the spirituality of consumerism just click the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.

It’s hard not to get caught up in consumerism when we’re surrounded by it constantly but I’m working towards the kind of attitude that Paul talked about in the Christian Scriptures.

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. – Philippians 4:12

What we own or what we can buy shouldn’t define who we are. Satisfaction, deep satisfaction, doesn’t come from consuming more and more. Purchasing will never add more meaning to our lives.

Are you ready to fight back against the lie of consumerism?

[audio:http://mpegmedia.sonshinefm.ws/feeds/SPI060910_1056.mp3]

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Are you richer than a millionaire?

Australian MoneyI read something today that is a perfect reminder of something that I think is so very important.

Trey Morgan wrote a post titled I’m richer than a Millionaire. He talks about a recent encounter with a mulit-millionaire. I don’t want to spoil it for you so please read Trey’s post.

Once you’ve read the post I hope you’ll be able to join Trey in saying that you’re richer than a millionaire. I know that I can say that I am.



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Release the brakes …

… and let’s push this thing down the hill.

One thing history teaches us is that we don’t learn from history.

Australia wasn’t hit as hard by the global financial crisis as other countries but we’ve certainly been affected. Now that there are promising signs of recovery, it seems that we’re getting ready to go out and start the cycle all over again. We’re addicted to spending and trying to fill our lives with ‘stuff’ and so many feel that we’ve got the green light to heat up the credit cards again.

Recent positive economic signs from the US make me wonder whether the same is about to happen all over the world.

We made the mistake of being too careless with money, mostly other people’s money, and it seems we’re getting ready to do it all over again. Rather than learning the lessons and starting to live within an adjusted budget, we just want to spend, spend, spend.

News.com.au is reporting that confidence has returned and we haven’t learnt a thing. They say that research is showing that Australians are “over” the global financial crisis and are again ready to worry about the things that troubled them in the last boom.

Almost two out of three consumers (65 per cent) are prepared to spend the same amount or more this Christmas, the report found. But the reprieve for the economy, and the boost for the Federal Government, is tempered by the return of old concerns, The Weekend Australian reported.

“The three issues that came up in discussions were all about health, roads and transport, and education – the failure of state governments and the public system in general to provide decent services,” research director Rebecca Huntley said yesterday.

“These were the things that people were worried about leading up to the last federal election and, unlike petrol and food prices, expect federal governments to do something about, especially in a second term.”

In a separate report, they’re saying that our biggest bank is telling its staff to push more debt onto its customers through loans and credit cards.

So how about you? Has the financial downturn caused you to look at your spending habits? Are you more concerned about budgeting than you were, knowing that financial circumstances can change overnight?

I wonder if we’ll all just return to spending more on the latest and greatest ‘stuff’ for ourselves and forget that people in developing countries, through no fault of their own, were hit the hardest by the crisis and will be the last ones to ‘recover’.

Are you ready to release the brakes, push this thing down the hill, and hope that it doesn’t go wildly out of control and crash once again?



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Giving it all away

aussie_money.jpgIt’s fairly widely known that Bill Gates has given away a large part of his $US40 billion ($AU48.7 billion) fortune in the fight against poverty and disease. Not content to miss the opportunity to do even more to make a difference, he’s once again encouraging other billionaires to follow his example and give away most of their money.

At a public debate in Oslo, the Microsoft founder has told the world’s richest people that they will find that they enjoy giving their wealth away.

I think all billionaires should give away the vast majority of their fortune.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t leave anything for their kids or to have a little bit for themselves but yes, I think they would enjoy it, I think their kids would be better off, and I think the world would be better off.

I’m a great believer that great wealth should go from the richest to the poorest. – Bill Gates

It’s easy for those of us without great wealth to look at Bill’s example and admire him for what he’s doing while at the same time thinking that the call to support worthwhile causes is only for those who can afford it.

I think the attitude is the same whether we have great wealth or not. We can have an attitude that says we’ve got to hang on to every cent we make or a generous attitude that looks for ways to help others with whatever we have. If we don’t develop a generous attitude when we have little we’re not likely to be generous if we ever find ourselves with wealth.

In the post Thinking about compromise by Seth Godin, he points out the fact that a lot of people who have more than enough are still trying to scrape together every dollar they can.

I know people with $50,000,000 in the bank who still don’t believe that they have enough, who still grind away at a job they don’t like trying to earn another penny.

Seth’s post is talking about attitudes to life and the way that rich and poor alike have to set their own values.

Are you waiting until you can afford it before you develop a generous attitude or are you already being generous in whatever ways you can already?

You and I may never be able to give away billions of dollars like Bill Gates has but we can still give away our time, our experience and our money to help those we can. I believe that we’ll find, just as Bill has found, that a generous attitude is far more fulfiling than the kind of attitude that only seeks to build our own empire.



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A Surprising Bank Bungle

bankonline.jpgI was reading this morning that a Swedish woman was rather surprised at her bank balance when she checked out her account on line recently.

The balance was the equivalent of $1.76 billion higher than she expected.

Cornelia Johansson logged on to her internet bank to pay some bills. I guess you could pay a lot of bills with that kind of money. The amount had supposedly been deposited as a correction for a credit card purchase. The money was still credited to her account the following morning but a few hours later it was gone as mysteriously as it had arrived.

A spokeswoman for Nordea Bank later explained the mystery as “a technical mistake made by a company”.

What would you do if you found that much extra money in your account? Buy a small country? Would you spend wildly and hope that no one noticed? Would you be straight on the phone to your bank to get things sorted out?

I wouldn’t mind if I had $1.76 billion in my account for just one day as long as I got to keep the interest it accrued for the day.

I admit that I do sometimes get surprised when I check my balance online but it’s not because there’s any extra money in my account.



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