A BATTLE

I recently watched an incredibly fascinating online video that speaks with great clarity and eloquence about the issues of consumption and justice and sustainability inherent in our current economic model and American/world lifestyle.

The video is http://www.storyofstuff.com/ and I would really recommend it to anyone who has ever purchased anything.

Every part of it was eye-opening, but there was one quote that just rocked me to the core. The video explained how we have become a nation of consumers, starting in the 50s, we determined to become a people who got all our identity from consuming. They quoted an economist, Victor Lebeau, who articulated this vision before it came about so perfectly....

He said, "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption of goods our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption."

Just reread that quote a couple of times, please, and ponder it. Give some thought to this culture we find ourselves in. This quote seems to me to very much sum up what is true in our culture.
It's incredible to me that this was articulated with such prescience--- and now... how we entertain ourselves, how we think about our time, how we think about our community relationships, how we think about our church, how we think about where we live, our jobs, our relationships-- all of these have become twisted and affected deeply by our identity as consumers and addiction to consumption.

I'm still stuck on the fact that people planned this for us. It didn't just happen. It was intentional. I feel like I am seeing something almost as diabolical as some of the quotes and stated intentions of Hilter and Stalin here. I have this sense that there was real demonic power involved.

I don't want to say this to be over emotional, reactive, and overly excited. But when I read that quote it was like a little epiphany for me.

I hear the words of Jesus in gentle, loving, and diametric opposition== "I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly." and I want desperately to join in with Paul in warfare against these demonic plans that have brought God's beloved people into such bondage that we have found our spiritual, ritualistic and ego worth only in consumption.

These words ring in my mind... "We destroy arguments and every pround obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God. And we take every thought captive to obey Christ."

I want to join in a warfare for a new word about our culture...

that we will not be first consumers but rather first, in submission to Christ, creators and redemption lovers and justice-bringers and light-bearers and joy revelers....