Spiritual Consumption
God likes things in threes. There’s the Holy Trinity of the Christian God (that’s the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost). There’s the three big religions based on “the God of Abraham.” And there’s that line in “The Hunting of the Snark” that goes, “What I tell you three times is true.” Okay, maybe that last doesn’t have anything to do with God but it should.
Anyway, my point is that this will be the third time in a row that God and I talked about things that religions do that can be readily compared to things that capitalists do. Actually what he told me about this week isn’t so much what capitalists do as it is what they try to get us to do. We talked about conspicuous consumption.
According to Wikipedia, conspicuous consumption describes lavish spending that is done mainly to display ones wealth. Or, as it was put in “The Producers,” “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
A lot of people seem to take that approach to religion. They deck their cars with line drawings of fish. They wear crosses, and put them up in their homes and even get them tattooed on their arms.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But God and I would just like to say that if you go to dinner at In’n'out not because they make one of the best fast food burgers around, but because they hide little references to Bible passages in their packaging… Well, you might want to examine your priorities.
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