Materialism

Stuff…everybody has it, most of us want more of it. We have come to think of it as a sign of wealth in America. The fact is that we could live without most of it.

Corporate America leads us around like sheep with commercials. They love it when they see people line up overnight to buy an X-box or watch a new movie.

When someone habitually or chronically shops all the time it is an indicator that something is wrong in their life. Perhaps they have lost any concept of purpose for their life and are attempting to fill the void by buying more stuff.

This is NOT a good thing.

I have seen people so wealthy that they spend millions of dollars on their homes…and they do this while people across their own town are going to be hungry. Something is very wrong here.

This is NOT what America was supposed to be about. People from other countries used to come here because they believed in the principles that our society was built on. Now, many will tell you openly, they come here to get rich…and then go back to where they came from.

We have become a country about greed…instead of living up to the true meaning of the principles our nation was founded on.

Fewer and fewer Americans actually make anything these days. Manufacturing and production jobs are shipped over seas. Americans look down on people that work with their hands and see the ‘best’ jobs as ones where they can wear a suit to work and look into a computer screen…then go golfing in their leisure time.

We are setting ourselves up for a great fall here. China has become the factory for the world. We send jobs there because they can make things cheaper. They work for pennies on the dollar. And, make no mistake about it, it is because of corporate greed that we want things made cheaper. One of the, many, problems with that is that China is NOT our friend. Every dollar we send to the Chinese strengthens the Chinese army and one day…we will regret that.

For now our greed for material goods is simply feeding an emptiness in us. It’s an emptiness that was left when we, as a society, threw out the values that made us great and opted instead for immediate gratification.

We have lost our way. With it we’ve lost any claim to American exceptionalism. I fear America is headed for a fall unless we turn our hearts back to God. More stuff is just more stuff.

We have lost our way.