The thing that amazed me was that people would actually pay me to take stuff that should have actually been tossed away years ago. Most people did not realize that by 1:00 p.m. I was ready to give stuff away. One of the last things to go was my parent’s old dresser and bed tables, which they probably paid $500 or more for thirty years ago. I sold it for $15.00, and if truth were told, I would have paid the lady $25.00 just so I wouldn't have to move it back into my garage. You see we did not have a garage sale to make a lot of money (as you can tell we were not disappointed). We did it to get rid of stuff that we could not bring ourselves to throw away.
It struck me in the midst of this Garage Sale experience that in a consumer culture where things are everything, that things are really nothing. We have so much that we find it extremely difficult to assess what really has value. It didn't help matters that at about this time I was reading in Alan Hirsch's, The Forgotten Ways. He worte the following:
"I have come to the conclusion that for we who live in the Western World, the major challenge to the viability of Christianity is not Buddhism, with all its philosophical appeal to the Western mind, nor is it Islam, with all the challenge that it poses to Western culture. It is not the New Age that poses such a threat; in fact , because there is a genuine search going on in new religious movements, it can actually be an asset to we who are willing to share the faith amidst the search. All of these are challenges to us, no doubt, but I have come to believe that the major threat to the viability of our faith is that of consumerism. This is a far more heinous and insidious challenge to the gospel, because in so many ways it infects each and every one of us." Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, (Grand Rapids, Bazos Press, 2006) , p. 106 (emphasis mine)
Arrgh! I to, am infected. I would like to say that this sale was a tangible demonstration of a penitent heart, but it wasn’t. And please don’t tell my children, but I spent the vast proceeds on plants for my backyard (The good news is that that by the end of summer all evidence of my squandering their future will probably be dead or indistinguishable from the overgrowth).
Consumerism is epidemic in our Christian culture. The symptoms of our malady pour over into the church, where it is seen in the architecture and décor of our facilities. But an even more insidious indication is the invasion of this consumerism in our thinking as demonstrated in our talk. It is heard in the critique of the message – even the positive comments - or the assessment of the music – good or bad. Listen to others, or more importantly listen to yourself. It is the talk, the language, of a consumer. The last thing Jesus was is a consumer. In fact His life is the antithesis of consumerism.
Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Ephesians 5:1-2 (NIV)
My problem is that as a consumer it is all about me, rather than about the things of God. It is what I like or dislike, it is about what I value … or about what I want to put in my next Garage Sale.
