Joe Carter, in a post titled Conversion of the Purse, criticizes a friend for being too concerned about the economic peril of the middle class. I think I understand what his friend was trying to say, but Carter is surely right that much of that peril his friend is concerned about the middle class in America has brought upon itself by its excessive committment to a materialistic, consumerist, hedonistic lifestyle that is a poor fit with the basic adjurations of the Gospel of Christ.
I'm not sure that Carter is quite saying this, but I think it bears saying: Our greatest fault, in my opinion, is not so much that we don't do enough for the poor, but that we over-indulge ourselves. We lavish upon ourselves all manner of trinkets and baubles, eliminating every discomfort from our lives, indulging in a narcissism that makes us at once soft, selfish, and egotistical.
The temptation to yield to this decadence is unrelenting, it goes on every waking moment of our day, and the battle against surrendering to it is not fought just once and for all but must be re-fought constantly throughout our lifetimes. The cultural forces of consumerism and narcisssism arrayed against us exert overwhelming pressure, and it's so easy to just give up and give in. Yet we're called by Christ to shun the blandishments and seductions of the advertisers and keep our focus not on ourselves and our wants, but on the "higher things", what Paul called the things of the Spirit and what Plato identifies with the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Too easily, however, we're mesmerized by the allure of things we don't need and of comforts from which we don't benefit.
I know whereof I speak, I'm embarrassed to admit, because the above criticism is uncomfortably autobiographical. I write this not so much for those who are going to read it on Viewpoint but for myself because I need to remind myself of what I've said in the previous two paragraphs far more than I need to be chiding others about it.
