Skip to main content

Responsible Consumerism

Matthew 6.25-34

Christians have long argued that consumerism is disastrous. There are two arguments for this. 

The first says that it is spiritually corrupting. We end up in an endless quest for more things and new experiences, but this will never satisfy us. Better by far to emulate the natural world and take life one day at a time, because it is only spiritual fulfilment that will really make us content with our lot. 

The second argument says that consumerism is irresponsible and drives us to use up more and more finite resources while releasing more and more pollutants into the atmosphere and the seas. The catastrophic consequences are already all too apparent.

But what’s the alternative to consumerism? For better or worse, a certain amount of consumption keeps the economy afloat because - as Karl Marx observed - workers are also consumers and if they aren’t consuming anything many of them will inevitably be thrown out of work. Advocates of a ‘circuit breaker’, to try to stop Covid-19 in its tracks by imposing another albeit shorter lockdown, have been met with complaints that shutting down the economy again will lead to mass unemployment.

Is there a middle way - consuming enough, but not using consumerism as the only driver of economic growth and instead using things like tackling climate change to grow the economy instead - a sort of carbon neutral consumerism? Advocating the wholesale abandonment of consumerism is reckless and dangerous. Advocating carefully targetted and more responsible consumption might be a more realistic approach.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Matthew 28.1-10, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 I like Nick Cave’s song because of its audacious first line: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’. What an unlikely way to begin a love song! He once explained that he wrote the song while sitting at the back of an Anglican church where he had gone with his wife Susie, who presumably does believe in an interventionist God - at least that’s what the song says. Actually Cave has always been very interested in religion. Sometimes he calls himself a Christian, sometimes he doesn’t, depending on how the mood takes him. He once said, ‘I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.’ But his lyrics often include religious themes and he has also said that any true love song is a song for God. So maybe it’s no coincidence that he began this song in such an unlikely way, although he says the inspiration came to him during the sermon. The vicar was droning on about something when the first line of the song just popped into his ...
14 comments
Read more

On "Crazy People", By Casting Crowns

On Crazy People, by Casting Crowns When I heard the song, I liked it. It’s funny. I’m not sure it’s woke, though. If you know what I mean?  Woke means ‘being alert to racial discrimination and other kinds of prejudice’. And some people feel that the word crazy is un woke because it stigmatizes mental health issues.  According to woke people, calling someone crazy seems to imply that he or she isn’t living in the real world and can’t make rational decisions, that they’re mentally deranged.  I looked up the politically correct alternatives to crazy. A woke dictionary suggested, ‘ irration al , r idiculous , s illy and a bsurd’. If you think it actually is absurd to suggest that the word crazy can be replaced by the word absurd then I guess you’re un woke. But crazy does have wider meanings that have nothing to do with mental health. It can mean ‘to be infatuated with someone’ or ‘to be passionately excited or very enthusiastic about something’.  I guess the song wr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Giotto’s Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds

John 1.10-18 In the week before Christmas the BBC broadcast a modern version of The Nativity which attempted to retell the story with as much psychological realism as possible. So, for instance, viewers saw how Mary, and Joseph especially, struggled with their feelings. But telling the story of Jesus with psychological realism is not a new idea. It has a long tradition going back seven hundred years to the time of the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone. This nativity scene was painted in a church in Padua in about 1305. Much imitated it is one of the first attempts at psychological realism in Christian art. And what a wonderful first attempt it is - a work of genius, in fact! Whereas previously Mary and the Baby Jesus had been depicted facing outwards, or looking at their visitors, with beatific expressions fixed on their faces, Giotto dares to show them staring intently into one another’s eyes, bonding like any mother and newborn baby. Joseph, in contrast, is not looking on with quiet a...
1 comment
Read more