These words in big bold print took up most of the newspaper page: ‘Makes you feel good’. Though this was the advertising slogan for a tourist destination, it summarised the marketing strategy in most forms of advertising. It’s all about you being entertained, doing what you feel like and having a good time. Why is our society so keen to promote the idea life is about pleasure and having fun? One of the major reasons would have to be money.
Money drives our society – commerce and money. To make money we must sell something; and to sell something we must get a consumer and people who pursue pleasure are great consumers; they will spend money on anything that gives them a fun time or makes them feel good. Advertising has sold people the lie that satisfaction is found in material things and the next ‘feel good’ experience. If you want it – you should have it. If you feel like it - just do it. Don’t wait - get it now! When people adopt this attitude to life, they become consuming monsters. The down side to this pleasure-based consumerism is eventually it will destroy the society that created it.
Our society is self-destructing. Sure, there may be plenty of money around but look at what we are doing to get it. In our effort to gain more we have jumped the guardrails of morality, which is what holds the world together (we live in a moral universe). There is no line we won’t cross to gain more money. On a current affairs program they were questioning a wealthy, American, porn movie director about the rapes and beatings in her videos. Her response was, and I quote, ‘Yeah, I exploit people, but it’s good for me and that’s what matters’. Multi-national companies willingly destroy the environment just to increase profit margin. What about abortion? Don’t think for a minute the issue is just about so-called ‘family planning’. Abortion is a multi-million dollar industry.
‘For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness’ (1 Timothy 6:10 NKJV). Don’t kid yourself, the love of money will separate you from Jesus and cause you to do all kinds of evil. This issue was one of the few things that made Jesus really angry. Matthew 21:12 says He drove out from the temple of God those buying and selling, and overturned the tables of the moneychangers. Make no mistake about it, Jesus was absolutely furious. It would be like charging into a major department store and smashing the till with a baseball bat, knocking over all the clothes racks, turning the elevators off, physically throwing the manager out on the street and closing the centre down. What Jesus did was monumental. Throughout His life He never did anything else like it. It was almost as if Jesus lost His temper. Why did this make him so angry? The next verse gives us a clue. After He cleared out the money people verse 14 says, ‘Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.’
Jesus didn’t come to earth to make money. He came to show compassion and to heal a lost, dying, sinful world. This was His priority. We must follow His example. When the House of God pays more attention to money, offerings and building funds than needy people it will attract Jesus’ attention. We often overlook this, but Jesus destroyed many prospering businesses that day, and they weren’t ’secular’ ones either. They were the ones in His house. May I suggest we drive the love of money from our lives before Jesus does? It upsets Him, because He knows when pleasure is our passion and money becomes our love, we will exploit His gospel, other people, and do all kinds of evil. And we will use the line ‘God wants me to prosper’ to justify it all.