"The increasingly affluent standard of living in the god of twenty-first century North America..." _Ron Sider
Imagine the pain, the fear, the cynicism, the stress, the depression, and most of all the indifference that can come to us from a belief in that god. Christians have the fatal tendency of syncretism--blending the God of the Bible with the god of affluence thus making out God to be a god of stuff, a god who wants to "bless you financially" and a god who curses the poor... a belief in this kind of god will leave us hopelessly trusting in wealth which is so very uncertain, as we surely should have learned from the past months of economic downturn. Thank God that he is the God of the poor who loves life and community and rejects the temptations of wealth and materialism.
2 comments:
Phewww...I agree. I saw a sad example of this yesterday that would take too long to post here, but I thought the same thing as Sider.
While I applaud man of the efforts of our founding fathers, and am grateful for the freedoms I have today, there was this sense of entitlement that seems to have been passed down. I could be wrong...I'm not an American History scholar, but I have read several works and this is the impression I get.
Nate,
I share your sentiments. I love the U.S. and I enjoy the ability to speak out, gather, etc. without the government arresting me. But we do have an addiction to stuff and an addiction to understanding life and truth in terms of quantity and finances.
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