8 Materialism
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
JONATHAN SWIFT7
The designer sneakers
The hot sports car
The top-tier filet mignon
The exotic vacation
The $75,000 remodeled kitchen
The huge suburban home
The expensive watch
The gorgeous dress
The new nose
The toned body
The next tattoo
The carefully collected antiques
The well-manicured lawn
The sixty-inch flat screen
The lavish wedding
The beautiful garden
The seldom-used set of fine china
What do the things on this list have in common, and what in the world do they have to do with the topic of this book? Above is a seemingly random list of material things. None of them is inherently evil, but together they may depict a massive problem many of us have with the material world. I am not about to suggest that you jettison all the beautiful material things in your life. I am not about to suggest that it is evil to possess or enjoy these things. But I will suggest that street-level materialism is capturing our hearts and eating up the time, energy, and resources of our lives. For many of us, something is fundamentally amiss in our relationship to the world of physical things with which we come in contact every day.
I am deeply persuaded that the problem lies not with the things that attract us, addict us, and eat up our lives. Rather, our problem is what we bring to those things, which renders us unable to control our desire for, and our seemingly endless acquisition and enjoyment of, them.
The Search for Life
Why do we keep acquiring more possessions when we clearly already have enough?
Why do we so often envy what other people have?
Why do we eat more than we need to eat to be healthy?
Why do we tend to live in a house way larger than our family truly needs?
Why are we so obsessed about our physical appearance and fitness?
Why do we employ modern medical technologies to ward off old age?
Why are so many of us in debt?
Why do we stare into overstuffed closets and tell ourselves that we have nothing to wear?
Why do we eat out so often?
Why do we invest so much time and money in our vacations?
Why does illicit sex seduce so many of us?
Why? I am deeply persuaded that materialism is not first a “thing” problem but an awe problem. We cannot control our lust for things because our capacity for awe has been kidnapped. We find it nearly impossible to be content because the vertical awe that produces contentment is not functioning in our hearts the way God intended it to. Only when awe of God is in its rightful place in our hearts will the physical things around us be in their appropriate places in our lives.
Let’s examine the underlying spiritual dynamics of our struggle with material things.
1. Everyone is searching for life. It’s hardwired inside all of us. Because God created us as spiritual beings to have a relationship with him, we are all on a bit of a frantic, personal, story-shaping quest for life. We are hunting for contentment, satisfaction, joy, hope, courage, meaning and purpose, a reason to get up in the morning, peace of heart, confidence that we are on the right path and doing the right thing, fulfillment, security, an internal sense of well-being, freedom from fear and dread, and identity. We are searching for life, and there are only two places to look. You can look to the Creator for life or you can search for life in what he created. But there is one thing for sure: you will search for life.
2. You will be in awe of what you think will give you life. Your search for life is at the center of your world of awe. You and I will tend to be captivated by, controlled by, and in awe of whatever we think will give us awe. The future bride is in awe of her fiancé because she thinks he offers her life, life as she has never known it before. The new hire is in awe of his new job because he thinks his job will be a major component in the “good life” he has always hungered for. The couple is vibrating with excitement as they turn the key to their new house because they think they will find and make life there. The athlete can’t believe he has just signed his first professional contract; it’s all he ever wanted out of life. The wealthy businessman has gained lots of weight over the past several years pursuing and enjoying too much success. The Hare Krishna convert is so excited because he thinks he has finally found the key to life. The old man is depressed and bitter because he feels that life has passed him by. The teenager will cross any boundaries you try to set for him in his anxious and immature search for life. The divorced woman can’t deal with the fact that the unfaithfulness of another person has taken life from her. The couple loads another several thousand dollars on their credit card in yet another attempt to buy life. Thousands of us look over the fence every day at someone else and envy their existence because we think that they’ve found life. No matter who you are, no matter where you are, and no matter your gender or age, you either tell yourself that you have life or you are on a quest to find life, and you will tend to be in awe of whatever you think will give you life. God made us to search for life.
3. Material things are a miserable place to look for life. The mistake we all make is the moment-by-moment, day-to-day loss of our awe. This tragic mistake is the overarching theme of every word in this book. It is why we tend to be so spiritually empty, so consistently unfulfilled, and so driven to fill up our lives with so many things. It is why we tend to be anxious and depressed. It is why we tend to be more jealous than thankful. It is why so many of us are unhappy. It is why we all tend to be looking for the next big thing. We make the profound mistake of looking horizontally for what can only be found vertically. Material things capture our awe and, in so doing, dominate our lives because we mistakenly think they can give us the one thing that they will never give—life. I find myself saying to people, “Earth will never be your savior.” We know it theologically, but it seems to get lost in the pursuits of everyday life. And because it does, we repeat to ourselves, “If only I had ________, then my life would be ________.”
So let’s consider God’s purpose for material things.
1. Material things are for your sustenance. You and I literally could not live without the material world that surrounds us. The flora and fauna around us provide nutrition and health for us. The liquid in our world keeps us hydrated. We could not live if there was no physical air to breathe. Material things provide shelter and warmth for us. Material things protect and transport us. Material things give covering to our bodies and shade to our eyes. Material things defend us against disease and help cure the diseases that have inflicted us.
The proper relationship to the physical world is not to hate it, to separate yourself from it as much as possible. No, you should celebrate how God in his infinite wisdom and love built a physical world that sustains you. You and I should be amazed at the grace that is exhibited by the fact that the world God made sustains us even in those moments when we ignore him, are angry with him, or rebel against his will for us. It should astonish us that we don’t have to earn the right to have the earth sustain us. This is God’s good gift to us all. The physical realm is not just designed to give God glory but is also carefully designed to provide for us what we physically need.
2. Material things are for your pleasure. Biblical faith doesn’t curse the material world, and it is not antipleasure. God created a gloriously beautiful and pleasurable world. Consider the multihued vista of a sunset. Think about the gorgeous coat of a zebra. Listen to the melodious songs of the birds. Consider the vast array of colors, textures, and tastes of the food you eat. Imagine standing in front of a masterpiece painting or listening to a famous piece of music. Think of the beauty of the grain of wood or the swirling stripes that course their way through a piece of marble. Remember the pleasure of a kiss or the succulence of a ripe piece of fruit.
God designed his world to give you pleasure every day in a variety of ways. And God carefully built pleasure gates into your physical and emotional being. Your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, mind, and emotions all enable you to take in and enjoy the pleasures that God has embedded into the physical world that surrounds you. For instance, God did not decide that you would be physically fed by a tasteless gray pill. He unleashed his creativity on your diet so that you can consume an almost endless variety of smells, tastes, colors, and textures. So eating is not just a habit of sustenance, it is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
You should never feel guilty for pursuing, participating in, and enjoying the pleasures of the material world God created. What you and I need to guard against is allowing awe of those pleasures to become the principal motivator of our hearts. When awe of material things rules your heart, then you will live for material things, and when you live for material things, you will do just about anything to gain them, maintain them, keep them, and enjoy them. This is precisely what Jesus is addressing in Matthew 6:19–33. (It would be helpful if you would stop now and read this passage). Such a materialistic attitude is not only morally dangerous but is also a violation of the reason for which you and I were created. It is wrong for material cravings to dominate our hearts and lifestyles.
But this is what sin does to all of us. It causes us to exchange awe of the Creator for awe of the created thing. We try to fill our spiritual hunger with the material world. We end up defining ourselves and the good of our lives by the size of our pile of physical stuff. We say we love God, but our lives become controlled and directed by the frenetic pursuit of material satisfaction. We live with worry about what we have and envious anxiety about what we don’t have. We possess much, but we always feel needy. We own much, but we’re always acquiring. We tend to find much more pleasure in receiving than in giving. In our individual economic worlds, no matter how much we make, income always seems to chase lifestyle. We live in debt, but we don’t stop spending. We own so much that we have no more space, so we rent storage units for more stuff. We get fat and addicted and fall into debt, but that does not stop us. Our obsession with material things brings trouble and heartache into our lives. So we tell ourselves that we’ll do better—we commit ourselves for a time to new budgets, we go on temporary diets, we hold garage sales. But none of it lasts for long because deep inside us, we treasure the creation more than we treasure the Creator.
Material pleasure is one of spirituality’s most significant battlefronts between the “already” of our conversion and the “not yet” of our home going. This deep spiritual war rages in our lives every day. And it rages not because we have a pleasure problem but because we have an awe problem that produces a pleasure problem. When awe of the creation replaces awe of the Creator in your life, you will have a very difficult time controlling your desire for and pursuit of material things. Our material addiction is rooted in awe replacement. Only when awe of God rules your heart will you be able to keep the pleasures of the material world in their proper place.
I can’t leave this discussion without again saying that God provides grace for this struggle. God’s grace aims for the rescue, transformation, and deliverance of your heart. God’s grace works to free you from bondage to your own desires. God’s grace battles for your thoughts and desires even when you don’t. God’s grace is powerful and unrelenting. You and I have no ability whatsoever to liberate ourselves from ourselves, but God’s grace does. And this grace—our only hope—is not something you earn by your prayers of guilt or by your material asceticism; you and I can never earn this grace by anything we do. It is God’s eternal gift to us. We will only find hope for our battle with material things in the forgiving, liberating, and transforming power of this grace. And this grace will fight for us until it finally wins the war of awe so that material things will never again lay claim to our hearts. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!
3. Material things are for your remembrance. All the variegated glory of the material world has a purpose in God’s plan. The One who made us owns us and loves us. He knows how quickly we forget. He knows how quickly awe of him is replaced by awe of what he made. He knows that we all tend to be recovering from or heading toward our next moment of vertical awe amnesia. So in tender love and grace, he purposefully designed the material world to point to him. He doesn’t hide his existence, character, and glory from us, keeping it only for the superspiritual elite. No, everyone who has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to receive encounters him every day in and through what he made (see Psalm 19 and Romans 1). The physical world itself is meant to be one big constant reminder of the One of infinite power and glory who fashioned every part of it and holds it together by the power of his will.
Now this means you should have two types of awe in your life. First, you should exercise remembrance awe. This is the kind of awe you are to have for the created world. The physical world is amazing. It should leave you in awe but in a specific type of awe. It should produce in you the awe of remembrance. Every beautiful vista, every intriguing sound, every amazing thing should remind you of the God of glory who created and stands behind it all. It’s wrong not to be in awe of what God created, but it’s even more deeply wrong when you can look at created glory without remembering God.
Here’s the point: remembrance awe should immediately stimulate in us the second and deeper awe, worship awe. The glories of the created world are intended to cause you to worship the God of glory who made and controls them. Remembrance awe is meant to awaken and stimulate your heart. Worship awe is meant to capture your heart and bend your knee in humble, joyful adoration. We all get into spiritual difficulty when remembrance awe becomes worship awe, when we begin to worship the creation and forget the Creator. As I stated earlier, this is the battle of battles, that the thing created to stimulate worship in you becomes instead the object of your worship. In little mundane moments, we do this again and again. Craving for the next physical thing that we think we need becomes more important to us than God’s existence, character, plan, and grace.
I say it jokingly, but I am serious at the same time: there are days when I don’t care about redemption; all I want is a good steak. There are days when I don’t care about God; I just want nice weather for a change. There are times when I don’t care about God’s will; I just want the people in my life to like me. There are moments when I don’t think about the beauty of God’s grace; I just want a little control over my schedule. It’s sad, but I must confess that I sometimes stop at remembrance awe and don’t allow it to stimulate worship awe in my heart, and because I do, I still need the grace that alone has the power to rescue me from me.
4. Material things can never give you life. You and I need to remember that the physical world around us was never designed to give us life. It can give us temporary fulfillment. It can give us a short-term emotional buzz. It can give us beauty that provides momentary distraction and retreat. It can entertain and educate us, but it cannot offer the one thing every human being desperately craves: life. This whole discussion begs the question asked in Isaiah 55. The first nine verses of this passage contain one of the most beautiful word pictures of God’s free gift of grace in the entire Bible. It’s a passage that you and I should return to again and again because we need this picturesque language to reorient our minds to the gospel. In the middle of the amazing glories of the created world, you can lose your mind and become obsessed with cravings, thinking that you’re desperately needy when, in fact, you are both well loved and lavishly supplied.
The question in this passage is the question. It really does capture the everyday battle that we all have with the material world. Here it is: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” (v. 2). In words that paint pictures in your mind, the prophet essentially says that God is the only food that will ever satisfy your heart. Eating anything else will leave you hungry and dissatisfied. But that’s what we all do at some point. We tell ourselves that if we only had __________, then we would be happy and content. But we never are because our souls will never be satisfied until they find their satisfaction in him.
Could it be that you struggle with material things because you’ve stayed at remembrance awe and stopped that from leading you into worship awe? Is there evidence in your life that you are looking for life where it will never be found? Here’s the bottom line: when awe of the creation replaces awe of the Creator, you will have a terrible time controlling your craving for and pursuit of material things. Biblical literacy and theological knowledge won’t help you, because, at the deepest level of the motivation of your heart, a deadly exchange has taken place, and because it has, you keep running after the created world, hoping that it will be your personal messiah. So you look to your possessions or your marriage or your job or the next location or the next experience to give you life, but it never does—you always come up empty. And Isaiah would ask, “Why do you labor so hard for what does not satisfy?”
Grace to Beat Guilt
Now all this could be very discouraging to consider if you were left to the limited resources of your own wisdom and strength, but as God’s child, you’re not. The Creator of the physical world is also your “I am with you always” Savior. He not only offers you resources, he gives you himself. He makes you the place where he dwells, in powerful protecting, rescuing, transforming, and delivering grace. He meets you with strength in moments when you are weak. He graces you with wisdom in moments when you’re acting as a fool. He fights for your soul even when you don’t fight for yourself. He doesn’t wait for you to measure up. No, he measures up for you in every situation and in every way so that, when you don’t measure up, you receive mercy and not judgment.
So you don’t have to hide your materialism in shame. You don’t have to hide the guilt of your material craving. You don’t have to work to explain away your debt. You can run into God’s presence in weakness and failure knowing full well that you will receive his love and his restorative grace. Admit it. You’re like me. At times your awe of the material world replaces your awe of the God who made the material. But as you admit this, don’t run from God. Run to him, and find mercy and grace that form-fits to your particular need and your unique struggle.