The Appetite of North America

by Kyle Luck

The Bible depicts the early church as a flourishing community: a body of individuals devoted to Christ and committed to each other. In Acts 4, specifically, we read that the believers were of one heart and one mind, sharing everything that they had–even going as far as selling their land and houses in order to redistribute wealth to those who were in need. Not one of them claimed their possessions as their own. Imagine that. Imagine your world today: your house, your car, your laptop, and your cell phone shipped to a stranger, becoming homeless so someone else can be housed.

The thought doesn’t sit well with any of us. We love owning stuff. In North America, we are culturally wired to call things “ours” as soon as we possibly can–a habit birthed from our over-consumption that can interfere with our willingness to give. While this strategy of hyper-ownership may work for narcissistic children in the toy aisle, it doesn’t appear to be what worked for the apostles.

You don’t have to look hard to discover that the Early Church praxes were abandoned long ago. Sadly, westernized culture has perverted the Lord’s vision for His community. In the name of renovation and relevance, we have transformed many of our church buildings into entertainment centers replacing fellowship, prayer, and social interaction with coffee shops, computers and HDTV. That’s not to say a warm cup of coffee or a Google search is inherently bad (in fact, I’ve enjoyed both while writing this article). When amenities decide the quality of a church, however, it might be time to make some changes.

All Christians have made a commitment to lead lives marked by our allegiance to the Kingdom. We aren’t commanded to make more money than our neighbor. We aren’t required to pack our closets and dressers with clothes we will never wear. And we aren’t ordained to fill our churches with media or to load our plates with food that we cannot finish. Of those things we are supposed to be living for, not one of them involves abundance through tangible accumulation. Rather, we are called to live in an abundance acquired through experience–learning to know and love God; caring for the widow and the oppressed. This is where I believe we may be missing the mark.

Capitalism runs so deep in the veins of North American culture that almost no one (not even the Church) is stopping to ask when, or if, we should stop consuming. Paul wrote, that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” Peculiarly, contemporary psychologists are saying the same things. According to University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener, “Materialism is toxic for happiness.” If the Gospel isn’t enough of a deterrent regarding over-consumption, there are a number of studies indicating that the correlation between wealth and happiness is minimal, or even negative. In other words, an event like winning the lottery will leave you feeling worse than before you won (see: sudden wealth syndrome). So why do we desire gross wealth when it is clearly discouraged by both science and our theology?

Personally, it’s hard to imagine turning down millions of dollars. The daydreamer in me lives on in spite of scripture and modern psychology. I can picture myself winning the lottery, standing on my doorstep surrounded by local news cameras with a big smile and one of those obnoxiously large checks. Scratching a $5 piece of paper with a coin could pay the whole of my college tuition. The point is that we all struggle with the same social tensions regarding wealth and consumption, regardless of our attempts to live intentionally. No one is exempt from the influence of our culture. It may not be a glamorous or radical statement but I think it’s true. It’s what we’ve been left to wrestle with.

Our response to over-consumption, then, is not anti-consumption but right consumption. It’s simply not pragmatic to assume that all Christians will (or can) just stop consuming. The way forward involves discipline. Understanding how much we have and what we need is a useful skill in keeping ourselves from over-consumption (and fun to practice, too). If you’re going out to shop with friends, see who can spend the least. Challenge each other and hold each other accountable. If you have plenty of clothes, don’t buy new ones (unless you plan on giving them away). It’s amazing how quickly the pressure to “keep up” with material trends dissolves.

Commit to using permanent dishware and bring a travel set with you if you suspect you might need it. Some of the silliest consuming we do involves a long and materially exhaustive process of production and distribution, 20 minutes of use, and a few thousand years of collecting dust in a landfill (see: Styrofoam cups, plates, napkins, straws, etc). If we want to be good stewards of God’s good earth and our resources, then we need to find creative ways to bypass the bad habits.

Buying used is another great way to curve the repercussions of over-consumption. One of the most contemptible, unintended consequences of our appetite in North America are sweatshops. The oppression of the poor is almost always related to our insatiable desire for more. In most every case, buying used means buying neutral. That is, the money spent on second-hand goods will not go to a corporation who employs unjust business practices, but to a local thrift shop or non-profit that likely provides meaningful and necessary goods and services to your community. Not to mention, buying used helps the environment by keeping perfectly useful goods out of the garbage.

Fixing things, making stuff, teaching each other, and leaving room for grace along the way will lead us to a more faithful way of life. Perhaps it seems frivolous, but these are exactly the types of acute issues that are too often overlooked because of our cultural defaults.

Simple practices of self-discipline can help us to break the cycles of over-consumption. They help us to reduce the amount of waste we are producing and discover spaces in our closets that we didn’t know existed. They cultivate good stewardship and obedience. But most importantly, they remind us that God is our sustenance–encouraging us and freeing us to give more of ourselves, and of our resources, to those with need.

Luck shared some really simple solutions to becoming less of a consumer. What are other practical ways you can be more Kingdom-minded in regard to your things?
Where do you see materialism seeping into your ideas about God and community?

Editor's Note: A version of this piece first appeared in Catapult magazine. This image was found here.

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