Do Not Conform

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭12:2‬ ‭NIV‬‬

When I was a child, my parents didn't conform to the pattern of the world... But not in a good way!  I remember wishing we could be more like the families of my friends. So when I got out on my own, it was important for me to conform.  I could finally be more like everyone else. Of course, I lost much of my true self on the way.  It is only in my empty nester years that I am finally finding time to be more me. I've become a bit of a hippy and you can't get much more non-conformist than that!

One of the hardest things in our society to fight is commercialism and advertising. In his book, The More of Less, Joshua Becker talks about advertising and some of the tactics they use:

If you think you are immune (or too smart) to be influenced by the power of advertisements, you are wrong. Corporations do not spend $171 billion in advertising hoping to influence you; they spend $171 billion in advertising because they know they will influence you.

Becker gives many examples of advertising tactics that easily rope us into wanting things we don't need, but I thought this was particularly insidious:

The Instant markdown. The CEO of JCPenney was fired because he decided to remove sale prices from items in their stores. His strategy was to mark every item as low as it could be priced all the time —no hassles or sales, just low-priced items. Unfortunately, the strategy failed as sales plummeted. Lowering the original prices resulted in lower sales. How could this be? Eventually, researchers determined that consumers were more likely to purchase an item marked “on sale” than they were to buy the exact same product at the same price without a “sale” sticker on it. They went on to conjecture that most consumers have no idea how much a product should cost in the first place. By artificially inflating the original price of an item, retailers are able to trick consumers into thinking they are getting a deal on the item at the sale price, even if they aren’t.

It's really hard to not conform to the world of consumerism.  Companies are paying millions of dollars to make sure that we WILL conform.  God wants us to stop and think.  Do we really need it?  Why? How often will It be used? Can something I already own be used instead?

If we are buying it because we think it will make us happy, we need to stop right there, because it won't.

God, give us strength to say no to buying more and more and more stuff. We know deep down that it can't make us happy.  Amen.

A Full Life

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I come that they may have life, and have it to the full. - John 10:10

Stuff is addicting.  Once you buy something you think will make you happy, you soon find out that happiness is fleeting.  So you have to get something else.  And then something else. And again and again and again. "Stuff" is a thief that steals and kills and destroys.  It lies to us to make us believe that we need it and that our lives are happier with it. 

In reality, it takes our life away, making our life meaningless.  We spend our time, effort and money protecting, organizing and cleaning our stuff.  But once we get rid of it, we find we have more time, more money and less fear.  We can experience life to its fullest when we don't have things holding us back. 

When Jesus talked about having a full life, he didn't mean, "full of stuff"; he meant full of experiences.  And we can't fully experience life as long as we are slaves to our stuff.

Lord Jesus,

Give us a thirst for a full life of experiences, not a life full of stuff. Amen.