Genesis I is a song of praise for God's generosity. The Bible starts out with a liturgy of abundance. It has become a demonic spiritual force among us, and the theological question facing us is whether the gospel has the power to help us withstand it. Consumerism is not simply a marketing strategy. We have a love affair with "more" - and we will never have enough. Though many of us are well intentioned, we have invested our lives in consumerism. They study it, think about it, explain it well. Robert Wuthnow, sociologist of religion at Princeton University, has studied stewardship in the church and discovered that preachers do a good job of promoting stewardship. The great contradiction is that we have more and more money and less and less generosity - less and less public money for the needy, less charity for the neighbor. We hardly notice our own prosperity or the poverty of so many others. And as we Americans grow more and more wealthy, money is becoming a kind of narcotic for us. The majority of the world's resources pour into the United States. It is the author’s thesis that God created a world of great abundance. This text was prepared for Religion Online by John C. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission. This article appeared in the Christian Century, March 24-31, l999. Walter Brueggermann is professor emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.
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