Quotes about Materialism

Though I live in a world that sells false happiness at newsstands, websites, and big-box stores, I thank God for authentic happiness in Jesus.

Even if materialism brought happiness in this life (which it certainly does not), it would leave us woefully unprepared for the next.   Materialism blinds us to our spiritual poverty. It's a fruitless attempt to find meaning outside of God, the Source of all life and the Giver of all good gifts.

Ever seen that bumper sticker "He who dies with the most toys wins"? Millions of people act as if it were true. The more accurate saying is "He who dies with the most toys still dies—and never takes his toys with him." When we die after devoting our lives to acquiring things, we don't win—we lose. We move into eternity, but our toys stay behind, filling junkyards. The bumper sticker couldn't be more wrong.

Every item I add to my possessions is one more thing to think about, talk about, clean, repair, display, rearrange, and replace when it goes bad.

a solemn reminder not to make our goal in life one of sheer material pursuit. The allurement is great, and the disappointments are proportionate.

We trivialize the body in our indulgences. We treat it as a means to other ends. But when death comes, we grasp at it and cling to it because it is all we have left.

Life is lived out in self-contained compartments with nothing to connect them. Their bowing recognizes the sacred. Their expoiting grants the material. In living they desecrate others without a twinge of conscience. Yet if anyone were to hint at desecrating that shrine, his life sould be in peril. Such is the amputation of religion that pays homage to God but would be the most surprised if God were ever to show up.

In that world where jingles replace doxology, God is not free and the people know no justice or compassion.

When a god is fashioned into a golden commodity (or even lesser material); divine subject becomes divine object, and agent becomes commodity.

There will be no peace without a lowering of consumerism to match the banishment of arms. For the arms serve primarily either to usurp what belongs to others or to guarantee an arrangement already inequitable. The arms cannot be given up without abandoning swollen appetites as well.

The way of mammon (capital, wealth) is the way of commodity that is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath. Jesus taught his disciples that they could not have it both ways.

It is so easy to become more attached to the gifts of God than to the Giver—and even, I should add, to the work of God than to God Himself.