contentment

Yesterday was Cyber Monday. In addition to Black Friday, the mega retail shopping day after Thanksgiving (which I hear started on Thursday evening this year), we now have a second day devoted to the binge-buyer in all of us.

Much as I like a good deal, I don’t like these days. Estimates are that somewhere around seven billion dollars were spent by Americans yesterday on Cyber Monday deals. It’s hard not to think what good that amount of money could do to, say, ease the plight of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh or feed starving Yemeni women and children.

It seems to me that we’re a long way from the ideals of the early church. As Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:6-8: “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.”

I can’t think of a single person I know who would be content with that. In fact, we consider people who have only those things to be poverty stricken and disadvantage. Yet in Puerto Rico, in Somalia, in Haiti, and in a dozen other places there are people we no longer think about who don’t have regular access to either food or clothing. And while they shoo the flies from their starving babies’ faces, we splurge on our iPhones, new outfits and 4K TV sets. Sometimes I’m not so proud to be an American.

Godliness with contentment would be great gain. I wonder if we’ll ever achieve it?