TONY BENSON

“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (1 Jno. 2:15-17).

The world in this passage is not the planet on which we live, but rather the society which man has established upon the earth, for this is the meaning of the Greek word kosmos used in these verses. The world in this sense is opposed to God and is therefore a hostile environment for believers, who nevertheless have to live in it and overcome its evil influences.

This threefold division of “the things that are in the world” goes back to the time when sin first entered into the world, in the Garden of Eden. When Eve was tempted to disobey God by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the attraction of the tree to her was expressed in a threefold form (Gen. 3:6). It was “good for food”, that is, it appealed to “the lust of the flesh”; it was “pleasant to the eyes”, that is, it satisfied “the lust of the eyes”; and it was “a tree to be desired to make one wise”, that is, it pandered to “the pride of life”. So both Eve and then Adam ate of the fruit, and “sin entered into the world [kosmos], and death by sin”. Thus the world became a place in which sin reigned.

Then God, in His own good time, caused His Son to be born who, at the age of thirty, having been acknowledged by God in the words, “Thou art My beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased” (Lk. 3:22), overcame temptation in the wilderness. His temptation is expressed in three forms in Luke 4:1-12. First, there was the temptation to turn stones into bread, to use the power God had given him to satisfy his bodily needs, to give in to “the lust of the flesh”. Secondly, in seeing all the kingdoms of the world before his mind’s eye, he was tempted to use God’s power to seize them for himself and reign like an earthly monarch—”the lust of the eyes”. Thirdly, he was tempted to use God’s power to perform a spectacular death-defying miracle and receive the acclaim of the multitude, pandering to “the pride of life”. All these temptations Jesus overcame, and continued to overcome until his death upon the cross.

In the purpose of God, Jesus Christ is to return and rid the earth of these things for ever. The present order of things with its lusts will pass away. Only those individuals who have identified themselves with Christ in repudiating these things, and who strive in their lives to overcome them, will live on for ever in the new age which is coming. However, we cannot overcome the world if we do not first identify it. We need to know what we have to overcome; we need to be aware of the pressures to conform to the thinking of the world in which we live.

Materialism—the new religion

A survey of “all that is in the world” would obviously be a very long one if it went into every aspect of the subject. In this article we shall concentrate on the major issue, materialism—the love of material things to the exclusion of the things of God.

In the Old Testament Israel was condemned for idolatry, the worship of gods other than the one true God. In the New Testament the desire for material things is presented as a form of idolatry: “covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). The essence of idolatry is putting one’s trust and hope in something other than the true God. Although in the Western World people no longer believe in the false deities of the ancients (although much of the ancient idolatrous worship has been incorporated into false Christianity), they have to trust in something, and that something is man himself in the form of the goods he creates. Jesus personified this as Mammon, and said that no one can serve God and Mammon (Mt. 6:24), just as it was not possible to serve God and a pagan deity.

Having money and the things that money can buy as a god is very much a characteristic of today.

Consider the following:

Those words were written in the 1970s. How much more are they true of post-Thatcherite Britain. We live in a society dominated by the profit motive, a society in which accountants reign supreme, a society in which everything is measured in financial terms.

An American economist, Ralph Glasser, carried the religious analogy further in writing a book called The New High Priesthood. The thesis of his book is stated to be “that the reins of leadership in our society have now passed into the hands of the marketing function in business; the marketing men are, collectively, the new High Priesthood. They map out the way we think, the targets we think are worth achieving, the values we regard as important”.

The marketeers referred to by Glasser operate through the medium of advertising. This is the means by which people are persuaded to buy the goods produced by our society. To do this the advertisers must convince us that we need these goods, that our lives would be incomplete without them. Since advertising is everywhere we cannot escape its influence. If we wish to heed the warnings of Scripture about the dangers of materialism and covetousness we must regard modern advertising as evil, as our enemy. To defeat an enemy it is necessary to know him and the methods which he is using to achieve his ends.

At this point the reader may be thinking that the case is overstated. Advertising is surely necessary, otherwise how would anyone ever know what to buy or where to buy it? Admittedly advertising may go too far at times, but it serves a purpose.

It is, of course, necessary that we should be aware of how to obtain things that we need. There is nothing wrong with being able to find out that a particular item can be obtained at a particular place. What we have in modern society is the phenomenon of branded goods. Even with the necessities of life we have competing brand names which require advertising to persuade us to buy one or the other.

The reader might think that it is of no consequence whether butter is sold as butter or as So and So’s butter. Either way it remains butter. This is true. However, the method used to sell such products may leave much to be desired. Advertisements are subtle and play on the less desirable traits of the human character. Advertisements for food may suggest that unless a certain brand is purchased the housewife is not doing the right thing for her family, or that all the best people use that product, or that the consumption of a particular product is part of ‘the good life’.

Surely it is undesirable that people should be encouraged by such means to buy even the necessary things of life. Even worse, however, is the persuasion exerted by advertisers for us to buy goods which are not essential but which make life more comfortable, allow more leisure, look nice in our homes, and so forth.

Naturally all this is done in very subtle ways. There is a constant repetition of the same picture, that happiness is concerned with material things. It is the actual repetition which provides the danger. The subconscious mind comes to accept that happiness lies in material things. Here are three quotations from three different books which show how materialism has gained a grip over our society largely through advertising:

Here then we have three writers, all of whom recognise that materialism has come to dominate our society largely because of the methods which the manufacturers of our growth society have used to sell the goods they produce. Mammon has become the great religion of our times because it has filled a vacuum left by the decline of Christianity and belief in the Bible. In this connection we again quote Ralph Glasser: “The vacuum of belief is like a great gaping void of appetite which the puzzled mind is busy trying to fill with material satisfactions, each merely a passing palliative of a deep unease”. Here is the danger to ourselves. If we neglect the Truth, the reading and study of the Word of God, prayer, the assembling of ourselves together, the continual striving to fulfil God’s commands, then the subtleties of the marketing men may begin to affect us, and Mammon will begin to replace the Truth in our lives.

The parable of Matthew 12:43-45 (in which an empty house represents an empty mind) needs to be studied and applied to ourselves. We are taught at school that nature abhors a vacuum. Likewise our minds cannot be a spiritual vacuum. If they are not filled with the things of God’s Truth then other forces must fill them, and the strongest of these forces is materialism.

One of the greatest changes in our society since the Second World War has been in the purchasing power of young people. All ages have received their share of the general increase in prosperity in Western society. At one time parents struggled to provide the essentials of life for their children, and there was little left to provide for their amusement. Young people had to start work early in their teens; the wages they received were mere pittances, and were almost entirely swallowed up in payment for board and lodging, fares and clothes.

Now things are vastly different. Children generally speaking are brought up to have an abundance of toys, games, books, sweets, ice cream and so on. They are given quite substantial sums for pocket money, and when they begin work there is usually a considerable surplus left over from wages or salary after essentials have been paid for.

Whether or not young people of today feel themselves that they are well off is another matter. Very few people are content with their standard of living; this is one of the undesirable features of our society. An impartial study of the facts, however, reveals that the purchasing power of young people today is much greater than ever before.

Essentially all this is a dream world with no substance in it. The advertisers picture happy smiling young people, dressed in the latest fashions, enjoying themselves to the beat of pop music. No doubt a great deal of temporary pleasure is obtained by such things. However, pleasure is not the same thing as happiness or contentment, yet the teenage market cannot provide anything beyond pleasure. Pleasure and enjoyment are temporary things; happiness and contentment are deeper and more lasting.

At this point there is a question which comes to mind. Have the producers and marketers of these ephemeral products entirely created the demand for them, or have they merely fulfilled a need? There is no doubt that well-aimed advertising has considerably increased the market for teen and twenty products; but this is not all. There has been a fundamental change of outlook in the world which has driven many young people into preoccupation with material pleasure. The decline in religious conviction and the failure of governments or society to solve the problems in the world has led to the acceptance of the philosophy “let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die” (1 Cor. 15:32).

How can we drive away the relentless pressures of the advertising man, urging us to enjoy to the full all the products of our society? First, of course, we must recognise that what they say is not true; it is merely an attempt to make us buy their products. Secondly, we must develop an alternative philosophy from the Scriptures. The Apostle Paul will be our guide in this. From the point of view of today’s society the Apostle Paul had a very miserable life. He had none of the benefits of modern civilisation. He did not even enjoy a comfortable life by the standards of his day, let alone the comforts of these days. He describes his life as follows: “ . . . in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness” (2 Cor. 11:27). Not much material enjoyment there! By the standards of modern society we would conclude that Paul must have been remarkably miserable.

Yet Paul himself has a vastly different story to tell. Writing from imprisonment in Rome he says: “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need” (Phil. 4:11,12). Paul knew that his personal possessions and opportunity to enjoy material things were irrelevant to his happiness. This did not come automatically to him, for he says that this was something which he learned. Likewise such a philosophy will not come naturally to us, but it is one which we must learn if we wish to counteract the persuasion to think otherwise which comes at us from all directions.

Writing to Timothy Paul says: “. . . godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content” (1 Tim. 6:6-8). Here we are urged to be content with the mere necessities of life without desiring other things. This does not necessarily mean a life of complete austerity; merely that we be content with what we have, whether it be great or small, without hankering for more or thinking that life would be more complete if we had this or that or the other.

Paul faced up to life; he did not try to hide from it in a dream world like that of the pop culture of today. The hope which burned strong within him meant that he could accept whatever situation he found himself in knowing that all would work out for the best in the long run in God’s purpose. If we develop Paul’s attitude we can live free from the pressures of our materialistic age.

The pithy phrase, ‘Buy now, pay later’, briefly sums up one important aspect of this materialistic society. There is no need to save up first before being able to enjoy new furniture or electrical goods. What is more, this fact is dangled very prominently before our eyes. The attractions of a low deposit and many weeks to pay are displayed in every furniture and electrical shop. The chairman of a large company extolled the practice of buying goods by hire-purchase by saying: “Today’s consumer insists on having whatever he or she wants at once”. That statement is worth considering. Is it a good thing to be able to have what we want at once without waiting for it? How does this crude philosophy of materialism correspond to Bible teaching? Yet do we not sometimes feel we have a right to our share in the things of this world? When Access credit cards were introduced the advertisements were very revealing. “Access takes the waiting out of wanting”, screamed one. Another showed a young couple relaxing, having just fitted a superb new carpet on the floor of their new home. The text pointed out that “Access can help you buy most of the things you’ll need for your new home because Access is a credit card. With it you can buy the things you want and pay for them over a period of time”. The very name ‘Access’ implies that it makes a whole host of material benefits immediately available without needing to pay for them, and so constantly the advertising media are trying to persuade us to buy a bewildering array of items for the home.

What in fact the buy-now-pay-later philosophy means is that more is paid out in the end because of the interest rates which are involved. Yet this is less important to us individually than the danger to our spiritual lives which lies in the philosophy which urges us to enjoy as much as we can as soon as we can. The pressures to conform are there day by day; they come via the mass media and via other people who do not share our hope. They must be resisted.

Disagreement over money has been proved to be a great cause of disharmony in marriage. This is especially the case where hire-purchase commitments cause financial problems. However, more fundamental than this is the fact that two people dominated by a desire for heaping up material things are bound to disagree over these things and have no lasting spiritual ties on which to build a life together.

In any case, the acquiring of possessions does not lead to satisfaction but to a desire for more and more. Research on this matter in the U.S.A. has shown that practically everyone has a desire for about twenty-five per cent more than he has actually got. The Bible was clearly teaching this same point three thousand years ago, as the following quotation proves: “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity” (Eccl. 5:10).

Great empires in the past have collapsed because their ruling classes have become obsessed with heaping up material wealth and enjoying pleasure. Now we have a situation where not just ruling classes but whole nations are dominated by these things. In this we see the decay of man’s civilisation ready for the establishing of the Kingdom of God. As potential rulers of this Kingdom we must keep ourselves away from the corrupting influence of materialism. The Apostle Paul’s strong warnings in 1 Timothy 6 are helpful in convincing us of the frame of mind we must strive to live in if we would live lives acceptable to God:

“For men who set their hearts on being wealthy expose themselves to temptation. They fall into one of the world’s traps, and lay themselves open to all sorts of silly and wicked desires, which are quite capable of utterly ruining and destroying their souls. For loving money leads to all kinds of evil, and some men in the struggle to be rich have lost their faith and caused themselves untold agonies of mind” (1 Tim. 6:9,10, J. B. Phillips).

Our lives are very much regulated by massive companies who devote their efforts to making us content with standardised products whilst at the same time desiring to make us want to consume more and more of these products. We are perhaps all familiar with the takeover bids, followed by the disappearance of well-loved products and the arrival of the new ‘improved’ products which turn out to be more expensive yet worse in quality. Bit by bit we are being conditioned to think and buy alike.

On any evening most of the population of the country are seated in front of their flickering television sets watching the same programmes, usually those of a trivial and valueless nature. Everything is being standardised: modern housing looks the same all over the country; it is difficult to tell one new model of car from another. Much of this results from the development of the computer, perhaps the most powerful aid to standardisation and uniformity.

In some ways this trend towards standardisation and uniformity should not concern us. The followers of Christ should not be unduly bothered with the things of this life, and can therefore be indifferent to the trend to uniformity in material things. However, it should concern us that there is a trend in society today to make us all think alike, because there is a danger that we too might come to think the same way. We might of course be inclined to belittle the dangers involved, thinking that we are too independently minded. However, let us not underestimate the power of the modern communication system. Millions of people can daily be influenced by the same ideas at the same time. This has been true of no other age in history.

Our life in the Truth can, if time and energy is devoted to it, be the antidote to the uniformity of the materialistic world around us. It is of course true that we share the same basis of belief and conduct, and it is true that we are all one in Christ. This is by no means the same as the uniformity which is developing in this age, however. The kind of uniformity which is affecting the world is one imposed from outside, by subtle means, and without those who are most affected knowing what is happening. Unity in the Truth results from voluntary conformity by the disciple of Christ to God’s way. It is a unity which still leaves room for individuality; it is diversity within unity, as the Apostle Paul clearly brings out in such passages as Romans 12:4-9, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4:3-13. Here the principle is laid down that each individual brother and sister, by voluntarily devoting his own particular abilities, contributes towards an effective and united body, the ecclesia of Christ.

Jesus said on one occasion: “Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Lk. 12:15). The society in which we live constantly affirms the opposite, especially through the medium of advertising.

To prove his statement, Jesus told the parable of the rich man who built great barns to store up all his material goods and then died before he could enjoy them. “So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God”, he concluded. To what are we devoting our lives? Are we laying up treasures on earth or in heaven?

As our opening quotation states, this world is passing away. There are signs already that the present material prosperity cannot last. Those who trust in it will find their hopes dashed and their prospects for eternity lost. The true riches are “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:18), and it is in these we must trust and to these that we must look for true fulfilment.

1. Article by Nirad C. Chaudhuri entitled “Britain Through an Indian’s Eyes”.

2. Vance Packard, The Wastemakers, p. 159.

3. Robert Millar, The Affluent Sheep, p. 37.

4. Ralph Glasser, The New High Priesthood, p. 9.

5. Peter Laurie, Teenage Revolution, p. 9.