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Watching the Oscars last weekend I was struck by the number of commercials for Cadillacs. I\u2019m not usually that perceptive, but I wondered aloud, \u201cWhy are they showing all these commercials? How many people watching the Oscars would be thinking, I need a car, and that seals it, I\u2019m buying a Cadillac?\u201d\u00a0 Then returning to my reading it started coming together, they aren\u2019t selling Cadillacs, their changing the horizon we gaze upon. Watching the famous, rich and (mostly) well dressed creates a desire for more than what we currently have. We see the commercial for the car and it creates a desire for more than what we currently have. \u201cClose examination of the texture of desire in consumer culture reveals that it is not simply about fixing one\u2019s heart on material things or sensual pleasure. Indeed, it is about never being satisfied with them.\u201d [1]<\/a><\/p>\n We won\u2019t satisfy that desire today, but planting that desire is enough. General Motors doesn\u2019t care whether we want the Cadillac, they are happy to sell us the Chevrolet that shares the car lot, because it keeps us dissatisfied with our current circumstances and sets us off on a divergent path, pointed at a different horizon; one of continual dissatisfaction while increasing our consumption patterns. We\u2019re not being sold a product, but life choices.[2]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0The question that we need to answer, as those who claim to follow Jesus Christ, is: are we glorifying God with those desires?<\/p>\n Each deepened desire toward one direction is a desire that is turned away from another direction. The exchange that continuously takes place in the marketplace of our hearts is more intense even than the exchanges that take place in the world in which we live.<\/p>\n \u201cThere would not be a market for all the goods that are produced in an industrialized economy if consumers were content with the things they bought. Consumer desire must be constantly on the move. We must continually desire new things in order for consumption to keep pace with production.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n Both authors, Miller and Cavanaugh, point back to religious traditions and point to current consumer patterns to sound an alarm about the dangers that already seem to be diluting the influence of our religious frameworks; sending their leaders to spend their time and energy clinging to a symbolic presence in society to which they seem relegated\u2026unless something changes.<\/p>\n In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus shares the details of the distant eternal horizon. In so doing He also challenges our perspectives on the suffering around us and our capacity to respond. It\u2019s a Kingdom picture, a global picture that is shaped by our everyday individual choices.<\/p>\n \u201cThis integration of suffering into the broader flow of the media diffuses its challenge to the dominant sense of evolutionary time. But there is more to the relation between suffering and spectacle. Human suffering is neither ignored nor comprehended as a necessary part of some larger ideational totality; rather, it is packaged and sold as media spectacle.\u201d [4]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n That the global world in which we live includes those who suffer needs no elaboration. Interestingly, it\u2019s the understanding that the local world in which we live that also includes suffering that we seem to need more convincing.<\/p>\n Many would say, \u201cbut of course, I donate food and drink, I give my old clothes for resale or even to someone in need and certainly I support care agencies that reach the sick and imprisoned.\u201d In fact, some would say, \u201cisn\u2019t that what we\u2019re supposed to do, give?\u201d My concern is that we\u2019ve reduced Jesus\u2019 call to a transactional relationship rather than a transformative relationship.<\/p>\n Here are some of my reflections of Matthew 25:31-46<\/p>\n To read these words again, listen, not for the product being exchanged, but the relationship being enhanced. Notice the nearness of the hands coming together around a dinner table, a glass, clothes. Notice the hand being held at a bedside or a comforting, assuring smile of a true friend.\u00a0 But then ask yourself this, if engaging in these actions is like ministering to Jesus, who among us would hurry past Him or quickly replace what we\u2019ve given with newer, brighter, faster, better? Wouldn\u2019t we want to talk to Him, learn from Him, understand Him? Has our consumption culture deafened and blinded us to see the needs and relationships Jesus is waiting for us to engage in?<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem calls for something akin to the immersive methods of ethnography, whereby the anthropologist spends extended time with members of a culture, attending to the implicit logics of their practices and the texture of their daily lives.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s interesting that even in this message, Jesus understands our consumer tendency and invites us to delay our gratification for a reward that He has been preparing for us from the dawn of creation. Perhaps it could even be called the Great Transaction.<\/p>\n\n
Note: Since we\u2019ve been quite lyrical these days, here\u2019s a song by two of my favourite artists that sum this up well:<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n