Good Luck

Recently I graded the final exams for a Christian ethics course. On a question about premarital sexual intercourse, I found that I was generally giving higher grades to students who took the position that for Christians sexual intimacy is to be entered upon only after marriage. Concerned that I might be grading according to my own ethical values, not according to classroom standards of analysis, use of resources, and the like, I reread a number of papers.

After examining the essays afresh, I was satisfied that most of the students who argued the traditional position had, indeed, been more analytic and had struggled more intelligently with the issue. Those who had argued in favor of premarital sexual relationships -- many of them Christians -- had tended to make assumptions about human relationships which allowed them to avoid analysis and struggle. Why? Because, I think, they simply accepted our consumption-based society's basic assumption: all needs require instant gratification.

My students are products of a culture that does not question that constantly repeated theme. Neil Postman, professor of "media ecology" at New York University, estimated recently that children in America see 750,000 TV commercials during the formative period of their lives from six to 18. Is it any wonder that immediate gratification is built into our perceptions? It is an idea taught 15 times an hour, six hours a day, seven days a week.

What we see in our country today is a perfectly good economic process -- the mechanisms for producing and consuming goods -- made into a religion. Production is good: How could humans live without producing food, clothing, housing? Consumption is good: How could we live without consuming food, wearing clothes, living in dwellings? The means by which we produce such abundance are good: Who would argue against making human toil easier by means of machines? But taken together, they constitute America's other religion. The struggle between consumer religion and the Christian faith is a battle at least as old as that of the prophets against Baalism or the early church against the divinized Roman Empire.

Indeed, we have only to look at the change in Rome from the year 58 or so, when St. Paul wrote Romans, to about 85 when John wrote Revelation, to see a good thing become bad by assuming an aura of divinity. In Romans 13 Paul calls the empire's officials "ministers [deacons] of God to do his will." Twenty-five years later in Revelation 13, Rome has become "the beast," the creation of the devil, with an accompanying beast that stands for the religion of the empire: "He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed" (Rev. 13:15 [NIV]). From the reign of Domitian onward for over 200 years, Christians were killed for refusing to offer a pinch of incense to the religion of the empire. Like our modern "beast," a good thing had arrogated to itself divine powers and had to be resisted.

For the modern Christian who does not want to worship God and Mammon, the difficult thing is to recognize that our system has gradually taken on divinity. Note that it fits these characteristics of a religion:

1. A religion responds to basic human anxieties, such as feelings of guilt. Christians once called gluttony a sin, something to be guilty about. But our system of instant production, consumption and disposal makes us feel guilty if we do not consume. "I owe it to myself," we are taught to say about vacationing in the south in winter or owning the latest gadgets, the right auto, the proper food supplements. It makes a difference to a young person whether her jeans have "J. C. Penney" or "Calvin Klein" imprinted on the rear. "Ring around the collar" is shameful. Our new religion defines guilt and sells the products that will purge the soul.

2. A religion brooks no rivals, but destroys or converts or lives in uneasy tension with different ways of understanding human life and destiny. It rewards faithfulness and punishes the slacker. One has only to look at those who cannot produce or consume in quantity to see that punishment at work. Children produce nothing and consume little; we have moved from the youth-regarding society of the 1950s to the youth-denying society of today. Fewer people want children; no one wants very many. When America reached a state of zero population growth a few years ago, the cheers were heard from all sides. For this society has made it all but impossible for a young couple to have children and yet maintain the requisite pace of consumption. Both spouses must work, unless one of them has an exceptionally large income. Luxuries are beyond the means of a one-income family. The successful family -- the one rewarded in our new religion -- works hard at two jobs, postpones childbearing and plans for a one-child family. Even that child will be raised mostly outside the home. What to women's rights advocates is the right to a meaningful career is, seen from another angle, simply worship of the Baal of consumption.

The new religion destroys the symbols of the old. A good example is the holy day. If Christmas has become a purely pagan spectacle, look what has become of national holy days. Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving -- all are simply occasions for travel, consumption and waste. Before the advent of televised football on Thanksgiving, that day remained the "purest" mixture of civic and religious celebration in the land. Now, it is a day for a hurried meal and hours in front of the TV screen, watching football and absorbing the urgings to buy. (Football, with its long moments of inaction -- plenty of time for commercials -- could almost have been invented as a part of America's other religion.)

Indeed, a religion seeps into all human activities. For instance, the religion I refer to permeates athletics so totally that it is almost impossible to separate the two. That is why college athletics has become so professional, and why only losers seem to follow the NCAA rules for recruiting players.

It is not facetious to call our system of technologically stimulated production and consumption a religion. An economic process defines for millions of Americans what it is to be truly human, what the meaning of life is, how to avoid guilt.