Love And Consumerism

Challenges The most significant challenge to living a life of love rooted in the Christian narration of reality is the dominant competing narration of reality in American culture, modernity. The ultimate narrative of modernity consists of two main subplots: consumerism and American nationalism. Each of these subplots presents significant challenges and obstacles to living a life of rightly-ordered love. Consumerism presents myriad problems in regard to developing a rightly-ordered love. Advertising appeals to people’s desires, selling the lies, whether explicitly or not, that products can fix their problems or bring fulfillment to their lives. In addition, implicit in consumerism is the idea that economic prosperity is equivalent to human …show more content…
While the vision of the good life inherent in the Christian narration of reality involves sharing in a rightly-ordered love with God, the vision of the good life in modernity differs depending on what each person constitutes as self-fulfillment. Thus, consumerism and American nationalism both demonstrate a straining to find purpose and fulfillment on earth through economic prosperity, the acquisition of power, and an extremely shallow version of freedom (freedom to act in whatever way one desires). All of these values detract from the development of rightly-ordered loves, causing the journey toward our telos in modern America to be increasingly …show more content…
For example, when we begin to realize our identity as beloved in times of solitude, we refuse to identify ourselves by the things we consume and own. When we consistently fast, we realize that it is God who sustains us, not our possessions. Likewise, when we practice hospitality, we begin to realize that all are created in the image of God; this commonality fights against the tribalist notions of American nationalism. These are only a few examples of how we can overcome the challenges of modernity by allowing our practices to form our love; I cannot imagine how many other examples we may uncover. If we are able to create and maintain these habits, our loves will certainly begin to order themselves. However, we must remember that we cannot will ourselves to love God more; rather, he must grant us the ability to love Him. Amidst all of this focus on disciplines, it is easy to begin to speak of disciplines as if they grant us the ability to love God, when it is only He himself who can do this. We must realize that the true purpose of disciplines is to cultivate the love with which God has already gifted us. Once we come to this realization, the practices will likely prove even more