Tithes, Taxes, and Materialism

I was reading a friend's blog post yesterday on misunderstandings about consumerism and it got me thinking about an idea that has been swimming in the back of my mind for a while. This is a repost of a comment in response to his post.

I think that a lot of times Christians concerned with materialism can get on such a guilt trip about materialism that they refrain from purchasing an item, but they don’t necessarily use the opportunity as a means to offset the socioeconomic divide, both in our culture and in foreign cultures. I do this myself from time to time. I give, but couldn’t I give more?

What if the average person decided, instead of abandoning their materialistic tendencies cold turkey (which is hard enough to do anyway), why not adopt a hybrid lifestyle? Why not make a pact to donate X% of a material purchase toward making a difference in someone else’s life? For example, if you’re buying that iPod (which I would say, look to the alternatives) for yourself, why not commit to spending 10% more as a wealth tithe (or tithe tax, whatever you’d like to call it) to support the homeless or the social injustices in the world? Now, whenever you make a non-essential purchase, you are committing yourself to making a difference.


Sure, others might still try to judge you, but the truth is that if you adopted this practice, you may likely be exhibiting a more giving attitude than the naysayers. Additionally the idea of a tithe tax could serve to curb some of your materialistic tendencies, while encouraging you to be giving. Essentially, you’re allowing yourself to begin the journey of seeing and acting on the needs of others, instead of standing with the iPod in one hand and child sponsorship brochure in another.


And now, to practice what I preach.

Red Friday

Black Friday is normally a busy time of the year. Our consumeristic fever breaks 105° and in our delusion, we travel at ungodly hours to purchase obscene quantities of stuff -- that is, if we beat the crowds. So this year, I was contemplating faring the seas of disgruntled shoppers that light up the beginning of our Christmas season by going to Circuit City. Though filing for bankruptcy earlier this month, they still released an ad with some pretty good deals. Sadly, Jenn's brothers did not want to go Black Friday shopping at 5:00 am to cash in on the deals. So I went to bed and didn't get up until 8:00 am.

Around 9:00 am, Jenn and I decided to check out Circuit City anyway. I figured that there wouldn't be any deals left, given our nation's history of psychotic shoppers mowing one another over for pieces of metal and plastic (though that still happened this year). Alas! when we arrived at Circuit City, we were surprised to see a proportionately small number of shoppers -- and even managed to get all of the Black Friday sales we wanted.

This absurd phenomenon has become what I now coin "Red Friday." With our nation's economic crisis, there is no feasible way that most companies could recouperate their losses with the terrible shopper turnout. My hopes is that this will start becoming a trend; people purchasing fewer things that they don't need. Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise, once we get past the "crisis" part and people start regaining their senses about their ill purchasing habits.

We all need a change in that arena, especially with the crazy levels of poverty in the world.