stories on Consumerism

If you ever find yourself sympathizing with Charles Dickens’ character Ebenezer Scrooge regarding the commercialization of Christmas, you’re not alone—this has been a common complaint for quite some t...

You might have heard the story about the dog food company. They launched a new line of dog food, stocking it on shelves nationwide, but it didn’t sell well at all. Sales plummeted and the leadership d...

A group of fourth-graders at a Christian school was given an assignment to draw what they would like to do if Jesus spent a day with them. After working diligently on their pictures, one little girl a...

One Sunday morning at a Colorado prison, a group of inmates was being led to the Catholic and Protestant chapels. One young man, however, kept walking past them and headed toward the main gate. A guar...

On his hundredth birthday, a reporter asked the man the inevitable question: “What do you attribute your long life to?” The old man replied, “I haven’t decided yet. I’m still negotiating with a supple...

I heard of a funeral in California where a man requested to be buried seated behind the wheel of a brand new Cadillac, dressed in a tuxedo, with a two-dollar cigar in his mouth. He left the money to i...

Sometimes in the West, we assume we have more options available to us, or, we assume more options=better experiences. I recently heard a true story of an American overseas in Italy who tried ordering ...

Find the room where your family spends the most time and ruthlessly eliminate the things that ask little of you and develop little in you. Move the TV to a less central location—and ideally a less com...

I’ve served on staff at a few different churches throughout Silicon Valley for the last decade and a half, including a medium-sized church, a young church plant, and a multisite megachurch. At each, w...

One of the early hits of the internet had to be eBay. Suddenly getting rid of your old junk, or otherwise unnecessary “stuff,” could be sold, not just to your neighbors in a yard sale, but to anyone w...

The story is told of Socrates walking through the market in Athens, with its groaning abundance of options, and saying to himself, “Who would have thought that there could be so many things that I can...