Would you like to be as rich as John D. Rockefeller? The founder of Standard Oil Company would be worth $23 billion in today’s dollars. “You can be as rich as Rockefeller was in 1916 if you will consent to live in 1916.” “As a 1916 billionaire, you would be materially worse off than a 2017 middle-class American. An unhealthy 1916 billionaire would be much worse off than an unhealthy 2017 American…. In 1916, life expectancy at birth was 54.5 years (today, 78.8), and fewer than 5 percent of American were sixty-five or older…. There were four renters for every homeowner… Less than one-third of homes had electric lights. Small electric motors—the first Hoover vacuum cleaner appeared in 1915—were not yet lightening housework. Iceboxes, which were the norm until after World War II, were all that 1916 had” (Economist Don Boudreaux in George Will, The Conservative Sensibility, 288-290). So who’s richer?
This Thanksgiving, turkeys are being stuffed with commercials to buy this or that, turkeys filled with reports that the supply chain can’t get us enough stuff, turkeys filled with vain hopes government printing presses will save us. On and on it goes, ubiquitous consumerism trying to fill people’s emptiness but only multiplying dissatisfaction and envy. Do we church people see this?
“Take care…lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 8:11-14). “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21).
“When you have Christ as the foundation and chief blessing of your salvation, then the other part follows: that you take him as your example, giving yourself in service to your neighbor just as you see that Christ has given himself for you.” (Martin Luther, “A Brief Instruction,” LW, 35.120). “If among you, one of your brothers should become poor…, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be” (Deuteronomy 15:7-8). Spirit of Christ, with more blessings than Rockefeller, lead us away from the creaking table of consumerism to share with those in need. Amen.
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