RIGHT OR WRONG? Buying a ‘replica’ watch

Posted: 4/13/06

RIGHT OR WRONG?
Buying a 'replica' watch

I received an e-mail from a company that sells “replicas” of famous brand-name watches. They sell a watch for about $200 that would cost many times more if it were the “original.” I’d like to buy one. What do you think?

Some issues are fairly straightforward. A business professor here at East Texas Baptist University tells me businesses lose billions of dollars a year through copyright and trademark infringement. Plain and simple—buying “replicas” of brand-name watches contributes to the worldwide problems of theft and piracy.

“Thou shalt not steal” pretty much covers that.

It often occurs, though, that some issues we raise are only the tip of the moral iceberg. That was so when a man approached Jesus and said, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me” (Luke 12:13). Jesus’ response bypasses the obvious issue and targets something evidently more significant: “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions” (12:15). While the distribution of family inheritance is important, Jesus is concerned more to challenge the underlying matters of greed and a distorted sense of what life is all about.

It seems to me that the “replica” question is not just about trademark violations. The question betrays confusion about what matters in life and what counts for true fulfillment. We live in a world that measures meaning in terms of what dollars can buy. At the same time, we live in a world that teaches us (through advertising) never to be satisfied. So we buy more stuff. We work more so we can buy more so we can appear to others and ourselves to have lives that are counted as worthwhile. Can Chris-tians fall into this trap?

Sociologist Robert Wuthnow, in his book God and Mammon, speaks of “the ambiguous impact” of religious belief on economic behavior in our society. On the basis of survey data, he concludes: “When we are influenced by our faith, we are more likely to say we feel better about what we do than to do anything differently. We do not look to the churches to tell us what career to pursue or what purchases to make but to tell us that whatever choices we have made are OK. Our spirituality is little more than a therapeutic device. … We have domesticated the sacred and stripped it of authoritative wisdom by looking to it only to make us happy.”

Jesus’ words do not intend to make us happy, but holy, and they challenge both the incontinent heart (“greed” is pleonexia in Greek, which simply means “have more”) as well as the corrupt notion that life can be measured in terms of possessions. To free us from such errors, Jesus reminds us that defining life in terms of accumulation is a dead-end street and is the opposite of the simple life that trusts in God’s provision and puts God’s will first (12:16-31).

I honestly do not know what it is like to run in circles where executive-class clothes, watches and cars are the stuff of everyday life. Maybe Jesus’ words show that world for what it is. To buy a “replica” watch to seek to impress that sort of world is to compound the superficial with the superficial. Perhaps this sounds a bit harsh, but so does Jesus’ double-warning: “Beware, and be on your guard.”

Jeph Holloway, professor of religion

East Texas Baptist University

Marshall

Right or Wrong? is sponsored by the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to btillman@hsutx.edu.