Wednesday, June 06, 2007

The Trouble With Paris

During Living Room, we have watched the four-week DVD on "The Trouble With Paris", which talks about popular culture, consumerism, hyper-reality, reality and God's reality.

Media, marketing and advertising have a lot of impact upon our lives, dreams, values and expectations. So how are we supposed to live out our faith in a world like this? Some good questions are explored in this DVD, which keep me thinking. Eg: where do I find contentment and happiness, in a society where hyper-reality is often portrayed as the ideal? How do we as Christians express our faith in a meaningful and relevant way? How is Christianity related to a consumer world?

6 comments:

Ross said...

Consumerism tells people that their identity is derived from their possessions. As Christians, we can offer people an alternative. Their worth comes from their being made in the image of God. How right Jesus was when he said, "a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." (Luke 12:15)

I write this as I think of my flat full of entertainment equipment. Sometimes I feel guilty for having acquired all that stuff. I've met other Christians, especially when I was in the Philippines, who made do with far less than what I have.

That experience challenged me a lot. I don't deny myself the necessities of life, such as decent food, clothing, shelter, etc, but I reject affluence, and try to live well within my means. I don't want or feel the need to have the best of everything that money can buy.

Kitty Cheng said...

I agree with you totally there Ross. Many of my missionary friends and indigenous Christians in the third world not only live on minimal wage in the mission fields, and don't even have the basic entertainment we have in the west, most of them don't even have enough food to eat.

I also live within my means, and don't need to have the best of materials. But I do believe that if I had more money, I could better help people in poverty. However, more and more, I don't think spending lots of money to build church buildings is necessarily the best way to advance God's Kingdom.

Corry said...

In answer to your questions:
Your happiness comes from within yourself, knowing you are living by God's word and doing what He commanded you to do and expressing that by the way you live, act and with what you say. That is totally unrelated to a consumer's world. The last is based on possession/greed, the earthly things. I would refer to them as Satan's temptations to try to lead us off our path, appealing to our wants. God provides all we need and it's up to us to see the blessings in that and be happy with it. Ain't always easy, is it? :-)

Have a very blessed day, dear sister.

God's Grace.

Kitty Cheng said...

Hi Corry, you're right! It ain't always easy to live our lives totally unrelated to a consumer's world. I believe contentment is the key.

You have a blessed day too, dear sister! :)

audrey` said...

Yeah!
I agree with our dearest Corry =)

Kitty Cheng said...

I agree with Audrey ;)