Affluenza, Part 4: Our Unique Vulnerability

As we have been looking at Jesus' parable of the rich fool in Luke 12 and discussing the deceitfulness of greed and how it ultimately destroys us, let's now look at how we can guard against greed. There are at least four ways that we should be vigilant. The first is this:

We must recognize our unique vulnerability.

We live in the red zone of the affluenza pandemic.

In a book entitled Affluenza, the authors note that in 1986 there were more high schools than shopping centers in our country. Just 20 years later, there are twice as many shopping centers as there are high schools. We spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches than we do on higher education. When you think about how much higher education costs these days, that is a lot of jewelry, clothes, and watches.

And we can't get enough. Americans have a billion credit cards. We carry over a trillion dollars in debt—not including mortgages and real estate—because we can't get enough, because we want more, because there's all this great stuff to fill our big houses with.

If you live in California, you face the reality of earthquakes. You don't pretend them away. You plan for them; you know they're going to happen. If you live in south Florida, you do the same thing for hurricanes. You prepare. To ignore either is utter folly.

In the same way, as Christians living in America at the start of the 21st century, we have to face the great spiritual danger of materialism and greed. It is the air that we breathe. It's obvious from Jesus' words in this parable and in other passages of the New Testament that greed is a serious spiritual problem for every Christian in every generation, but we need to recognize that it is uniquely our temptation.

If Jesus spoke this solemn warning to Jewish men and women in the first century, many of whom lived from day to day, how much more strongly would he speak it to us today, as Americans living in the most prosperous nation in the history of the world? Suppose we could, from heaven's vantage point, identify the greatest spiritual peril that Christians in each nation face. Don't you think heaven's "greatest challenge" verdict over American Christians would be the danger of loving the things of this world more than God himself? Is there any question that our greatest peril is having the possessions and the wealth of this world cling to us so much that we take our eyes off the heavenly city to which we're called? Those of us here in the States must acknowledge our unique vulnerability to affluenza if we are going to be vigilant against greed.

In the next post, I'll share another way to be vigilant...