Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], January 2021]

Capitalism is driven by consumerism, and it has made western countries rich and comfortable. But in our want-consumed lives, where the goal is to own more stuff, have we lost peace and replaced it with worry?

Anyone that knows me will know that I’m really into my cars. In fact, I need to keep buying a new car every few years. Once I’ve got a new car I’m already thinking about what the next car is going to be. There’s always something better out there. When I look at the car I can’t go for the previous model, I’ve got to have the latest model with all the latest gadgets, the things I’ve just got to have in order for it to be the perfect car.

Maybe for you it’s not cars but perhaps for you it’s other things that you just need to have: clothes, shoes, gym membership, all things that we’re persuaded by the media and by advertisers that we have to have in order to make our lives better. Now this is what is known as consumerism and it’s what drives our economy. We are a must a mass consumption economy. In fact, in post-war America in the 1950s the government encouraged people to buy things. Good Americans, good citizens were those that bought lots and lots of things because when people buy things that drives our our capitalist economy, it makes us a richer wealthier country and it works. That’s exactly what it does and in the west most of our countries are affluent because of capitalist and consumerism ideals.

But I’m wondering that in our pursuit of wealth and comfort that we’ve actually lost something. I mean, before capitalism we didn’t have individualism, at least not as we define it now, and we didn’t have careers except when it came to race horses and yet that’s what drives our economy. What drives capitalism and consumerism is the individual and our need to fund our comfortable lifestyles.

I find that actually what it does do is fill our lives with worry – worry that we are keeping up with the Joneses, worry that we’re missing out, worry that if we don’t buy that new pair of shoes or eat that particular food then our life isn’t going to be as good as it could be. So we form careers, we pursue the best life in the support and then we worry that we haven’t got enough money or maybe we’ve borrowed money to buy more stuff. We worry that we’re not going to be able to pay it back and then we worry that our children aren’t going to have enough stuff or have a good enough quality of living. Our life is just full of worry mounting up when really we’re wondering why we’re not enjoying the comfortable lifestyle that we have.

There’s another thing about worry: worry makes us introspective, it makes us more concerned about our own problems and our own issues, and because of that we fail to look up and see the difficulties that other people find themselves in and we fail to see the suffering of people around us. We’re less generous because if we’re generous we haven’t got as much to keep for ourselves, we haven’t got enough money to spend on ourselves. Philanthropy has reduced significantly in the last 100 years. The latest generation, they’re the generation least likely to give money to church because they need that money to fund their lifestyles, to remain comfortable and to have all those things that society says that they need to have.

Surely there’s a better way isn’t there? Is there a way to escape this sinkhole of worry in our lives? Is there a way to live our lives where we’re not consumed with what we have or haven’t got, where we’re not constantly worrying about the things that we’re missing out on? A way where we’re not in competition with other people and we’re not pushing ourselves, driving ourselves so we can have a better and more comfortable life. Surely there’s got to be a better way – is there?

Thank you so much for watching our midweek message. If you want to find out more about this, if you want to go a bit deeper, if you want to find out what the Bible has to say about worry and possessions then do join us for our Sunday service where Rob Bell will be talking to us about trust and simplicity, and what Jesus said about it and how he lived. So do join us this Sunday on our YouTube channel to find out more about that. ‘bye!

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[1] YouTube link: Does more stuff make a better life?
Bible references: ~

Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.

Bible dates: Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.

[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], January 2021]

How do you choose your friends? Who do you hang out with? Are you willing to step out of your normal comfort zone with regards to friends in order to break down divisive barriers?

Some people say that dogs can recognise their own breed; if you put a load of different dogs in a pen together they’ll end up grouping in their breed. Now I think that’s actually a bit of a myth and that wouldn’t really work with my dogs because they’re mixed breeds. But actually, that probably works with us. As humans we tend to be attracted to, drawn to, people who are like us, similar. As the saying goes “birds of a feather flock together” and those divisions can be all sorts of things, you know, type of football team that you support, the clothes you wear the music you listen to, but those divisions can be much bigger. I mean race, class, the country you live in.

^[01:14]Of course there’s always people that will push the boundaries a bit. People will move to other countries, try out different cultures but nine times out of ten – possibly more than that – people will stick with people that they know, places they know, places they feel comfortable with, people they feel comfortable with and can understand.

^[01:38]That’s fine to a certain extent but where it becomes a problem is when those divisions become a way of not only dividing us but causing us to look down on other people who aren’t like us. We draw away from them because we view them with suspicion, we view them with distrust, maybe even hate and anger, and that’s why – you know – last year in particular things came to a head with the differences and divisions in race in the States. Well actually we’re just as guilty of divisions in our own country and the things that divide us – politics, race, religion – can cause us to look down on others, to even hate others and to keep as far away from them as at all possible.

^[02:36]But if you’re a Christian that can cause some significant problems. It is a reality for the UK church because if you look at the UK church most of our UK churches are mono-cultural and they’re full of slightly older middle class people. Actually the group which is least attractive to church, the group that churches do the worst job of reaching out to, are white working class males and perhaps it’s because we tend to draw in people that are like us. That’s certainly part of the problem but actually also part of the problem is that we are drawn to people who are like us, that we’re not willing to step beyond the boundaries of our own culture, we’re not willing to make friends with people who aren’t like us, people of a different colour, people of a different religion, people of a different class. You see, who you eat with says a lot about who you are and also a lot about what you believe.

^[03:56]Jesus ate with people who were the outcasts of society. Jesus associated with people who were looked down on, they were the people that if you wanted influence, if you wanted power, if you wanted a good reputation you didn’t hang out with. I wonder how concerned we are about our reputation when we choose who it is that we hang out with, who we eat with. You see, if those early followers of Jesus had been really concerned about sticking with their own culture and not straying outside the boundaries of that then Christianity would never have taken off, it would have stayed within the boundaries of a Jewish sect.

^[04:43]But that’s not what happens and Christianity is now the largest religion in the world, crossing all cultures, all races, all countries so the challenge to us really as a UK church is “what are we doing to do the same, to be the same, to draw into our friendship circles as individuals as well as our church those people on the boundaries, those people who are different, those people who are left out?” We need to buck the trends that are so readily adhered to of distrust and hate.

Hey guys, thank you so much for watching this midweek message. Do remember that this message is really just an introduction to some of the ideas that we’re going to be exploring in our Sunday sermon so do tune in to watch that either at 10:30 on our service or you can watch it later online on our YouTube channel this week. This Sunday we have got Dr Chris Tilling who is a lecturer at the largest Anglican training college in the country and he’s going to be talking to us about good food and friendship as we continue our “living like Jesus” sermon series.
Cheers, ’bye
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[1] YouTube link: Who do You Eat With?
Bible references: ~

Bible quotations: Unless otherwise specified, quotations are taken from the resources of Bible Gateway or Bible Hub, in accordance with the licencing conditions outlined on our Site Policies page.

Bible dates: Where appropriate, the dates given for Biblical events are based on the Bible Timeline resource
and are subject to the constraints defined on the corresponding webpage.