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September 25, 2011 -   Pent 15
Philippians 2:1-11

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The Religion of Consumption and the Mindset of Jesus

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”  (Philippians 2:5)

I made the point to someone in conversation a couple of weeks ago that as Marcia and I have grown older, we seem to have an increased commitment to simplicity – to making our lives less complicated and cluttered with superfluous and sundry things.  I explained that other factors have gradually risen in our lives to a place of higher priority; most importantly giving more.   As we have intentionally simplified and eliminated certain things, it has empowered us to give more of our time, talent and treasure; and from those self-giving activities we have experienced an even greater measure of fulfillment and happiness.    

The person quipped back at me that didn’t I know that the most meaningful contribution I could make to society right now is to spend and shop;  to do my part to stimulate the economy; to litter my life with as much stuff as I can.  Even though his comment was made in sarcastic jest (at least I think it was), I started thinking more seriously about what he said.  Of course, he is correct – that is – from the point of view of the values of the consumption paradigm to which our culture has submitted, and of which we have convinced ourselves leads to authentic fulfillment and happiness.   

The choir is singing as their anthem for today a piece called “Simple Gifts.”  The older I get the more I experience and affirm the truth of the words: “Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free; Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be;  And when we find ourselves in the place just right, we’ll be in the valley of love and delight.”

I acknowledge that perhaps I am deluded.  When I look at the landscape of my life, I suppose I should be burdened with guilt and low self-esteem according to the values of the consumption paradigm or the “Religion of Consumption” as I will henceforth call it.  We drive old cars that are well into the six figure mileage category and double-digit in age.  Our lives are relatively devoid of the plethora of gadgets, gizmos, toys and endless selection of  doohickeys and thingamajigs that are available to us consumers.  We live in a culture that equates personal value with personal consumption.   Good heavens, Marcia and I haven’t even been to the newest temple of the religion of consumption - IKEA!   I admit that perhaps I am missing out on a level of fulfillment and happiness that makes such a venture as giving look naive and pale in comparison.    

There is a quote that has been rather widely distributed on the internet over the past couple of years.  It was written by a man named Victor Lebow.  Lebow was a marketing consultant after WWII.  In the 1955 Spring issue of the Journal of Retailing, he wrote an essay that contained this salient quote: 

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals; that we seek our spiritual satisfactions and our ego satisfactions in consumption.  The measure of our social status, social acceptance and prestige is now to be found in our consumptive patterns.  The very meaning and significance of our lives is expressed in consumptive patterns...   We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, and live in every way, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption.” 

Readers of Lebow disagree as to whether his words were to be taken as advocacy for greater consumption, or a warning about its dangers, or merely descriptive.  But whichever it is, his words fittingly describe the religion of consumption that has prevailed in our culture since World War II.  With 5% of the world’s population we consume 30% of its resources.  If the whole planet were to consume resources at the rate we do in North America, it would be the equivalent of a world population of 72 billion people – which the planet cannot sustain! 

To foster and advance this religion of consumption over the decades, a couple of strategies have been aptly employed by product engineers and marketing and advertising entities.

The first is planned obsolescence.  To put it simply, product engineers design things to wear out and break, but not so fast so as the consumer loses faith in the product, but soon enough so that they will replace it keeping the machinery of consumption running smoothly.

The second is far more devious and subtle. It is called perceived obsolescence.  This involves creating the perception in me, the consumer, that my stuff is insufficient, lacking, not good enough, deficient, out of date, out of style and wrong.  It is to create the perception that if my stuff is wrong then I am wrong, because one of key commandments of the religion of consumption is that I am my stuff.   My identity and sense of self-worth are to be so wrapped up with my stuff that I cannot  distinguish myself  from it.  If my stuff is deficient, then I should feel deficient.  But if I go out and get the right stuff I will be right and happy – at least until that stuff becomes obsolete – and then the whole process repeats in an endless rhythm.

Studies that have explored the relationship between self-worth and materialism have shown that the lower the sense of corporate/community self-worth the higher people invest in materialism as the antidote.  So, it is the role of marketing and advertising to make us feel lousy about ourselves and deficient;  that is until we get the right stuff, and then we feel good for awhile, but then we are made to feel bad again when it becomes obsolete.  At this point, for me, a picture emerges of a hamster in a cage running on its little treadmill wheel to nowhere. 

There are other inherent dangers and destructive patterns that emerge as a result of the religion of consumption.  The religion of consumption ultimately extols greed as a virtue.  Christianity has historically framed greed as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but the religion of consumption worships greed.  Greed, simply defined, is the exclusion of the other; the diminishing of the value of the other and the elevation of self and its desires as the center of reality.  Greed is generated from a deep  place of low self-esteem that is impotent and incapable, in any way, to celebrate, affirm and recognize the intrinsic value of others. 

Wherever greed waxes and increases, things like compassion, the common good and social justice wane and decrease.  We saw the ultimate end result of greed unmasked at one of the candidate debates a couple of weeks ago. The moderator posed the question to one of the candidates, “What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance?  Who pays for his coverage?  Are you saying society should just let him die?”   At that point several members of the audience shouted out, “Yes!” (Let him die)    

There is much more that can be said about the implications of the religion of consumption.  The religion of consumption has left a devastating record of exploitation of natural resources and people, especially in third world countries, as well as monumental problems caused by the tremendous amount of waste generated by throwing away that which has been deemed obsolete.

There is even a kind of phony Christianity that has been developed that cherry picks a few scripture verses from here and there to advance the idea that self-indulgence is an entitlement or reward from God for those deemed righteous.  What is interesting to me is that the proponents of this “prosperity gospel”, as it is sometimes called, leave out a critical component of the Christian faith – only Jesus, his life and teachings and most certainly his cross of self-giving love – and that brings us to our epistle scripture for today. 

The apostle Paul wrote the faith community at Philippi, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”   The word in Greek for mind, φρονέω, means mindset, attitude, or world-view.   Paul challenged this young Philippian faith community to live, not with the Roman imperial mindset, but the mindset and world-view of Jesus.

Philippi (located in modern day Greece) was a prosperous city on a Roman main thoroughfare called the Via Egnatia.  A thriving commercial center with an active the gold mining industry, it had attained significant status.  Caesar desired for it to be a "miniature Rome" and veteran soldiers were relocated to reside there by Caesar and given special privileges.  Paul desired for this little faith community, living in the midst of the Roman imperial mindset, to embody the very essence of the life of Jesus as a critical component of their witness to the wider community. 

For Paul, following the mindset Jesus was a call into a very different kind of life than what he saw and experienced in the Roman mindset and life-style.  This applies to us as well.  The mindset of Jesus is, to a great extent, the anti-thesis of the mindset of the religion of consumption that we are immersed in everyday. 

The mindset of the religion of consumption ultimately embraces greed and self-indulgence as its dance partner in life.  It equates happiness, fulfillment, and personal worth with an outside-in direction of flow. All the arrows point inward to self. 

The mindset of the religion of Jesus moves in the opposite direction. It moves counter-culturally; it moves against the prevailing current. It is not an outside-in direction of flow, but an inside-out direction of flow.  It is about growing the positive energy of love from within that bursts forth outwardly!  Rather than being oriented inwardly around the self, the religion of Jesus is oriented outwardly towards others and the world.  

Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Look not to your own interests, but the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God… emptied himself… humbled himself… to the point of death… on a cross.” 

When I answer the call of Jesus to follow him, it has been my experience that he calls into question and causes me to reconsider the core and most sacred values of my life beginning with the religion of consumption to which I all too frequently have succumbed.

He leads me down a different path – the path of self-giving love – which is most certainly a road less traveled in our consumption obsessed culture.  He teaches me and mentors me over and over again that, “Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free; Tis the gift to come down where I ought to be;  And when I find myself in the place just right, I’ll be in the valley of love and delight.”

That “place”, for me, is the mindset and world-view of Jesus.