Hoarding isn\u2019t just a grotesque curiosity for TV voyeurs. It\u2019s a real and present danger for Christ\u2019s Church.<\/p>\n
C.S. Lewis once said, \u201cThe safest road to hell is the gradual one \u2014 the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.\u201d In today\u2019s prosperous America, we\u2019ve made hoarding just as easy, and the danger to our souls is just as real.<\/p>\n
A new article in The Atlantic by Alana Semuels lays out the grim details. In 2017, Americans spent $240 billion on jewelry, watches, books, luggage, telephones, and related communication equipment \u2014 twice as much in inflation-adjusted dollars as in 2002. During the same time, the population grew only 13 percent. Spending on personal care products also doubled.<\/p>\n
To hold all this stuff, we\u2019re supersizing our houses and storage facilities. Last year, the average size of a single family home in the U.S. was 2,426 square feet \u2014 a 23 percent increase from 20 years ago. Meanwhile, two decades ago there were 26,000 self-storage units around the country. Today there are 52,000 of them!<\/p>\n
All this acquisitiveness, Semuels says, is because online retailers such as Amazon have made buying stuff so easy, and because the global economy has made stuff so cheap. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s partly true, but I think the cause is deeper.<\/p>\n
Too many of us, and this includes Christians, have bought into the lie that the pursuit of happiness necessarily includes the pursuit of stuff. \u201cWe are all accumulating mountains of things,\u201d says Mark A. Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia University\u2019s Graduate School of Business. \u201cAmericans have become a society of hoarders.\u201d<\/p>\n
And what about the harm of all this sludge to our souls? I\u2019m uncomfortably reminded of Jesus\u2019 parable of the rich fool in Luke 12. This man had received an abundant harvest, and what did he do? He built bigger barns to store it all and said to himself, \u201cSoul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.\u201d But what did God say to him? \u201cFool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?\u201d The man couldn\u2019t even enjoy all his earthly treasures.<\/p>\n
And just so we wouldn\u2019t miss the point, Jesus administered the sobering coup de gr\u00e2ce: \u201cSo is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.\u201d The problem wasn\u2019t that the man was rich \u2014 many of the Lord\u2019s choicest saints have been abundantly blessed with the world\u2019s goods. It wasn\u2019t that he had stuff, but that his stuff had him, and that he wasn\u2019t rich toward God.<\/p>\n
Are we, who have been blessed far more abundantly than most of God\u2019s servants around the world, as rich toward God as we need to be? I cannot tell you an amount that you must share if you don\u2019t want to be a Christian hoarder \u2014 that\u2019s between you, the Lord, and perhaps a wise Christian friend or financial adviser. What I can tell you is that, if our giving doesn\u2019t hurt at least a little bit, if it doesn\u2019t curb our seemingly insatiable urge to hoard, then it probably isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
And in this time of material abundance, a lot of worthy churches and ministries face a chronic shortage of funds. Why is that? According to nonprofitsource.com, Christians today give only 2.5 percent of their income; during the Great Depression, it was 3.3 percent. The average giving by adults who attend Protestant churches in America is about $17 a week, and 37 percent of regular church attendees and evangelicals don\u2019t give any money to church.<\/p>\n
There are all kinds of Christians in this world, but the category \u201cChristian hoarders\u201d doesn\u2019t exist in God\u2019s economy. Let\u2019s check our hearts, and our wallets, and set aside more treasure in heaven.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Copyright (c) 2016 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. \u201cBreakPoint\u201d is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hoarding isn\u2019t just a grotesque curiosity for TV voyeurs. It\u2019s a real and present danger for Christ\u2019s Church. C.S. Lewis once said, \u201cThe safest road to hell is the gradual one \u2014 the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.\u201d In today\u2019s prosperous America, we\u2019ve made hoarding just as easy, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1222,1223,1220,1221,776,436],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8023"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}