Politicians in recent elections outdid themselves to convince us that we are wallowing in misery. In a quieter moment, now that the votes have been cast, we can see that no candidate has our best interest at heart who would advance his own cause by teaching us to be discontent.
The truth is, of course, that in America we are better off than any generation before us. Our problem is not how much we have, but our attitude toward our possessions.
After the dust of the elections settled, Thanksgiving came. It seemed to me a good time to set the record (and our hearts) straight.
“Godliness with contentment is great gain,” the Bible tells us. But the art of being content has proved to be an elusive talent in a society where we are brainwashed daily to rush to the nearest discount store and bust our budgets buying the latest gadgets, the sexiest cosmetics, or the drug industry’s newest improvement on an aspirin.
Could it be that Americans are called consumers because we are totally consumed by our lust for things we don’t need?
Many of us spend every dime we can get our hands on buying bargains we can’t afford. Mistakenly we assume that Christ’s warning about “laying up treasures on earth” could not possibly apply to us because we certainly are not managing to lay up treasures anywhere.
Unfortunately, many of us spend every waking hour violating the spirit of our Lord’s warning as we scrape and scrounge desperately to acquire enough dollars to pay for the trinkets we Master-Charged three years ago.
I know it sounds almost un-American to suggest that we could survive without a bigger house or a newer car, that we don’t really need the latest, fastest, fanciest computer, or the flashiest set of threads.
Panic will grip the hearts of corporate cashiers if Christian consumers ever decide to pay more attention to Christ than to the folks who wear grey flannel suits. The ad people would have us believe that happiness is a Honda or a hunting rifle or a house with five bathrooms. Jesus would like to convince us that the quality of our lives does not depend on the things we possess.
If we ever learn this lesson of our Lord, our souls will be set free from the ruinous pressures of discontent, and our godliness can indeed be “great gain.”