It’s something I could hear the wolves of Wall Street saying: “For the economy to be “healthy”, America has to remain unhealthy.”
All of America’s well-publicized problems, including obesity, depression, pollution and corruption are what it costs to create and sustain a trillion-dollar economy. For the economy to be “healthy”, America has to remain unhealthy. Healthy, happy people don’t feel like they need much they don’t already have, and that means they don’t buy a lot of junk, don’t need to be entertained as much, and they don’t end up watching a lot of commercials.
This guy is on to something. It may not be a popular theme to harp on, but CAN we divorce capitalism from consumerism? Can evangelical American Christians legitimately defend capitalism (as we do and have done) while the tenterhooks of consumerism are constraining it? Should not our aim be, as God always directed His faithful in Israel or Rome, to work to alleviate the shortcomings of whatever economic system we are found in? It seems, increasingly, there is no way to achieve top-down transformation in our system; it might SOUND nice and efficient, but you WILL be corrupted and perverted on the way to the top. “Be wise and get wealthy, young man,” they say, “so that you do good in the world,” and then snicker as you become like them. How long before we relearn the reason why Jesus didn’t incarnate to be a political or commercial power…
The Roads Scholar 