Spending is Therapeutic???

Just this last Sunday we challenged our church to spend less and give more during our Advent Conspiracy series.

We talked about living differently than our consumer driven culture pushes us to - how it makes us feel less important if we don't have lots of stuff. Funny how spending makes us feel better... for a while. I was unhappily content to read the following from an article in today's Gazette about Consumers in 'survival panic'. Check out what it says:

"People that have been ... identifying with and defining themselves by their material objects and expenditures are losing a definite piece of their identity and themselves," he said. "They have to learn how to replace that."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, killed thousands and shuttered U.S. financial markets, consumers were encouraged by politicians and business leaders to spend as a way of saving the economy and proving capitalism could not be crushed.

"We're getting these messages that it is, in effect, patriotic to spend money," said Stuart Vyse, a psychology professor and author of Going Broke: Why Americans Can't Hold On To Their Money.

The United States is deeply dependent on such spending, with consumption generating two-thirds of economic activity. But problems arise when consumers become dependent on buying goods and services to cope with their emotions...

WOW... talk about prophetic, not me, but the reality that it's so easy to get sucked up into a consumerist mindset. So... make a choice: spend less and give more, this Christmas, hopefully more so in 2009.