Consumerism Vs. Christianity

As we move into the holiest week in most Christian churches' calendars, I feel that a look at how some dominations view the consumer world as opposed to the Christian world and how both use each other for their own ends is needed in these uncertain economic times..

There is a movement within certain strains of Christianity (most notably Pentecostalism) which preaches what is colloquially called a "prosperity Gospel." In this version of the Gospel, one need only "name it and claim it" - if you want something badly enough, in other words, all you have to do is affirm repeatedly that it is yours, and you will get it. After all, the prosperity Gospel preaches, God gave us all these wonderful things in His creation, and it is perfectly all right for us to have as much of it as we can get our hands on.

That is consumerism at its finest. The problem is that it is diametrically opposed to what Christianity really teaches - that we are to sacrifice some of the things we want, perhaps even doing without the basics at times, in order that others might have the basics themselves. This is done voluntarily, because we love our neighbors and we want to do what Jesus wants us to do.

One of the biggest proponents of that prosperity Gospel was Jim Bakker, who operated the PTL Club for many years. He got caught in a scandal in the late 1980s; let's just say he couldn't keep his zipper zipped. Also, he was accused and convicted of mail fraud; he offered free space in a hotel he was building (something like the equivalent of a weekend getaway) if you donated a certain dollar amount toward the building of that hotel. The problem was that there was no way on God's good green Earth that he could possibly keep his promise; there were too many people donating, and not enough days of the year or hotel rooms to accommodate all donors according to the promise Bakker made.