This is the second week in a nine-week class entitled “The Killer-Isms: A Christian Look at Lethal Philosophies.” This session looks at consumerism, an “ism” that has saturated the Western world.
From Pastor Phil:
Consumerism: A Working Definition
Consumerism is an incredibly popular, frighteningly subtle philosophy that infects nearly everyone in the Western world. Evidence of it can be seen worhin our entertainment industry, were we have evolved from sponsored television programs to commercial breaks to rampant product placement within the programs. Our society revolves around getting people addicted to consuming. If we wanted to, we could also look to our landfills for further verification, where the products of consumerism lay in miserable heaps of wasted resources, squandered wealth, and ultimate dissatisfaction.
That’s all fine and good, but where’s our working definition? In his Guardrails series, Andy Stanley makes this statement, “Greed is the assumption that it’s all for my consumption.” While that does not define our killer-ism for us, it does help us understand that behind it lies a very thick root of greed. Greed says its all for me, that it all belongs to me, and that no one should be allowed to keep it from me, and consumerism largely says the same thing, though it goes a bit further. Consumerism is the belief that everything and everyone is available for my consumption, that nothing is sacred, and that it is all free to be used up (consumed) for my pleasure and satisfaction.
And yet, we should not over simplify this. Consumerism is not just about using/consuming whatever you want. A very strong component of this philosophy is my right to pick and chose, from a wide variety of options, whatever I want. I can have whatever I want, and I get to have whatever I want however I want it. This is “the customer is always right” gone awry. Surely, the customer has prodigious rights with regard to how his or her money is spent, but consumerism takes it to a whole other level by granting the consumer with the power of choice in all situations. In a limited sense, this gives the consumerist a sort of “god complex,” wherein they have the power and the right to choose.