Lately, I've been reading Daniel Vestal's terrific new book, Being the Presence of Christ: A Vision for Transformation. Vestal is a former pastor in Texas and Georgia, and for a dozen years has been executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. This book reflects themes that have marked his ministry for 40 years.
In the introduction, Vestal contrasts today's world from the context in which the first Christians lived. One sentence particularly jumped out at me: "Roman paganism is not popular, but different kinds of paganism are, such as the unbridled pursuit of sexual gratification and the quest for material possessions."
Never enough
That sentence prompted me to write in the margin of that page, "sex/greed = materialism."
I'm sure I've seen the connection between sex and greed before. How many times, after watching a TV commercial, have I heard myself or friends say, "Sex sells"? Thousands, I'm sure. But in light of Vestal's statement, I couldn't stop thinking about how sex and greed are linked inextricably in today's society. America just can't get enough, whether it's sex, money, cars and trucks, food, entertainment, big houses or just about any other "thing."
From the earliest philosophers forward, people have pondered and debated the relationship between spirit and matter. We won't dig into all those discussions here, but type "spirit and matter" into just about any search engine, and see what happens. Some philosophies cast them against each other, while other perspectives blend them together.
A balanced perspective
Christians and Jews hold a balanced approach. Material is not evil in and of itself, because God is the creator of all things. People were created, in part, to be caretakers and stewards of matter—the world, which God proclaimed to be "good."
But the story of creation reveals humanity sinned when it refused to abide by the limits God place on creation. From the very beginning, enough wasn't enough, or so people thought.
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Today, the majority of humanity's problems stem from rampant materialism—from sex-saturated media to oil-soaked international relations. That's not so much an indictment of any kind of economic theory as it is a judgment against the first and most abiding sin, greed.
Living with "enough"
Can we train ourselves to live with "enough"? (Obviously, since I've mentioned sex already, I need to point out a caveat: Most sexual sins have to do with the type of sexual activity, not simply the amount of activity.)
What if Christians learned to live within the boundaries of "enough"?
We would not be crushed by staggering debt.
We would weigh less and be in better health.
We would have time to focus daily on God, Who created us.
We would have time for family and friends.
We would have the means to live generously.
And those are just starters—"enough" to begin a new quest.
Oh, and how to start: Begin with gratitude.
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