Friday, December 07, 2007

Values


There’s a popular bumper sticker that says: “He who dies with the most toys wins!”

This slogan speaks to what many, many people have come to believe either consciously or unconsciously. Materialism is the dominant value of our culture these days. Think of the people that will spend millions on some artifact or piece of art just to be able to say they own it. Then weigh that against how much money they spend giving back to the world, feeding the poor, curing a disease, housing the homeless... Too many of us live our lives completely devoid of any greater meaning than acquiring more stuff…as if life were some kind of competition to ‘die with the most toys’. How empty our lives have become…how devoid of any real meaning.

Our culture is set up to value only one thing…the ‘so-called’ bottom line. Profit is the ultimate goal. Profit has become the very definition of success. It’s become more important than our quality of life. It’s become more important than the health of our planet and even the health of our children to some. Just witness the recalls of various products found to have been made with cheaper, less safe, ingredients all for the sake of profit.

There are old, beautiful neighborhoods all across America that are being destroyed because investors are buying properties in them, tearing the old homes down, and putting up duplexes and other monstrosities to wrench out every possible penny in profit. The air we breathe and the water we drink are being polluted to produce more and more products that we have become convinced we need. We crave more and more energy to produce more stuff…and that means greater dependence on fossil fuels and more nuclear power plants, both of which have their own set of problems and both of which harm our home...the planet earth.

We can’t turn on a TV, drive down a highway, or flip through a magazine without being bombarded with ads trying to sell us the latest gadgets or services. They want to convince us that to be happy we must have what they are selling! We are drowning in our own greed and lust for more stuff! What we are losing in the process is beyond any monetary value. As a culture, we’ve forgotten that there are things far more important than money and the stuff it can buy. The quality of our lives isn’t improved one bit by having the latest fads. We have begun to use stuff to fill the voids in our lives.

Materialism has replaced spirituality as the defining character of the American people and it is destroying us. People, at one time, came to these shores to better their lives. They believed in the principles that America was founded on. Now they come here only to get rich…and many couldn’t care less about the principles this nation was built on.

America used to stand for something deeper and more meaningful than gross materialism. This nation was founded, not only on free enterprise, but on freedom of religion. It was so important to our ancestors that they be able to freely express their religious beliefs that they left their homelands and came here to build a nation on that principle. Their religious beliefs were in the forefront of their minds and at the center of their lives. That was the foundational value that built the greatest country in the history of the world. It wasn’t about who has the most stuff. Think about that…