By James M. Rochford

A close friend of mine spent several weeks teaching at a church in Ireland last summer. During his visit, he noticed a major weakness in this particular church: their excessive drinking. Of course, the Irish are known for their Guinness, and one particular night, my friend noticed one of the leaders gulping down a six pack in a matter of a couple of hours. My friend pulled this leader aside, reproving him privately. But the Irish pastor looked completely shocked at this, arguing that drinking a six pack was considered moderate drinking in Ireland! Of course, there is nothing wrong with drinking a beer or two (c.f. 1 Tim. 5:23), but drinking six is a different story.

We tell this anecdote to point out that our culture can very easily impact what we consider to be normal. When you’re in a culture that drinks heavily, you might not read the Bible’s teaching on drunkenness correctly (Eph. 5:18). All of us are biased by our culture, and this carries over into our reading of Scripture. In Radical (2010), pastor David Platt illustrates this concept in this way:

I can think of at least one glaring blind spot in American Christian history. Slavery. How could Christians who supposedly believed the gospel so easily rationalize the enslavement of other human beings? Churchgoers with good intentions worshiping God together every Sunday and reading the Bible religiously all week long, all the while using God’s Word to justify treating men, women, and children as property to be used or abused. They actually thought they were generous when they gave their slaves an extra chicken at Christmas.[1]

Platt is right. In the antebellum South, the Baptist Church divided their theology of slavery right down the Mason-Dixon Line. The culture dictated what believers practiced. Author Randy Alcorn compares this to a frog boiling in a pot of water.[2] If you throw a frog into a boiling pot of water, it will quickly leap out. However, if you put the frog in lukewarm water and slowly increase the temperature, it will sit complacent until it has completely boiled to death.

Could such a thing happen to believers today? Is it possible that we could be the frog in the proverbial pot—slowly getting cooked? As believers who live in American culture, could we have a “blind spot” of which we are unaware?

The Blind Spot of Materialism

We contend that materialism is the central issue facing believers today. We define “materialism” as the excessive desire to acquire and consume material goods. Alcorn defines it in this way: “God created us to love people and use things, but materialists love things and use people.”[3] As we study various different aspects of American culture, this conclusion becomes unavoidable. In Affluenza (2005), Graff, Wann, and Naylor write,

70 percent of us visit malls each week, more than attend houses of worship.[4]

We Americans now spend six hours a week shopping and only forty minutes playing with our kids.[5]

93 percent of teenage girls cited shopping as their favorite activity.[6]

The average size of new homes is now more than double what it was in the 1950s, while families are smaller.[7]

In 1967, two-thirds of American college students said “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” was “very important” to them, while fewer than one-third said the same about “making a lot of money.” By 1997, those figures were reversed. A 2004 poll at UCLA found that entering freshmen ranked becoming “very well off financially” ahead of all other goals. Juliet Schor surveyed children age ten to thirteen for their responses to the statement “I want to make a lot of money when I grow up.” Of those children, 63 percent agreed; only 7 percent thought otherwise.[8]

Nearly 30 percent of Americans buy Christmas presents for their pets; 11 percent buy them for their neighbors.[9]

Americans are so entangled in materialism that it becomes difficult to get an accurate perspective of it. Like being immersed in a bad smell for hours on end, we eventually just get used to it. Advertisers in our culture aren’t any help. Consider the message behind several recent commercials:

Dwayne Wade’s Lincoln Navigator Commercial (found here): The commercial opens with an inner city basketball team with their coach, looking at a broken basketball hoop. Dwayne Wade enters in his brand new Lincoln Navigator. He gives the kids a new basketball hoop and basketballs, and he gives the keys to the SUV to the coach. Wade states, “My dream is to leave the world a better place than I found it.” Of course, the message of the commercial is clear: inner city youth need basketball and brand new SUV’s. This will make the world a “better place.”

Cadillac’s “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit” Commercial (found here): For years, Cadillac has pushed the slogan “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit.” Of course, this is a clever way for the viewer to finish the maxim in their own mind (“…of Happiness!”). This leads the viewer to connect “Cadillac” with “Happiness.”

2011 Toyota Highlander (found here): The young boy says, “I don’t tolerate dorkiness very well. Yet my parents still cart me around in a car that says, ‘We’re the geek family.’” Here the boy is “tolerating” his parents’ decision to not buy a new Toyota Highlander, and he isn’t doing a very good job at it either! But, surely we should ask, “Since when should a nine year old be consulted on which car the family should buy?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDOvopLRkFI

We might ask why Toyota would have a young boy as the protagonist of this commercial, when he is half the legal driving age! But the answer is clear: advertisers target children in commercials. In The Media Monopoly (2000), Ben Bagdikian writes,

Children between the ages of two and seventeen watch an annual average of [1,500] to [1,800] hours of television, compared with [1,200] hours spent per year in school. Children are also major targets for TV advertising, whose impact is greater than usual because there is an apparent lessening of influence by parents and others in the older generation.[10]

Graff, Wann, and Naylor write (2005),

From 1980 to 2004 the amount spent on children’s advertising in America rose from $100 million to $15 billion a year, a staggering 15,000 percent![11]

Children under seven are especially vulnerable to marketing messages. Research shows that they are unable to distinguish commercial motives from benign or benevolent motives. One 1970’s study found that when asked who they would believe if their parents told them something was true and a TV character (even an animated one like Tony the Tiger) told them the opposite was true, most young children said they’d believe what the TV character told them. Both the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics say advertising that targets children is inherently deceptive.[12]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04_KjC11s8g&t=45s

Reasons for Rejecting Materialism

While our culture certainly values materialism, so what? Why should we strive to resist something that is so normal in our culture today? We contend that there are four major reasons for rejecting materialism.

1. Materialism is Unbiblical

For those who are believers in Christ, the Bible’s repeated teaching should be reason enough to resist materialism. Jesus spoke on the subject of materialism repeatedly throughout the NT. Randy Alcorn claims that the Bible contains twice as many verses on money (2,350) than on faith and prayer combined.[13]

Alcorn also claims that Jesus spoke about materialism in 15 percent of his recorded words.[14] We did our own count on this to double check his work. We discovered that of the 2,041 verses that Jesus speaks in the NT (i.e. red letter verses), he spoke on materialism in 204 verses or ten percent of his total recorded teaching. We recorded our research in an earlier article (“Jesus and Materialism”). Either way (whether 10 or 15 percent), Jesus spoke on materialism frequently.

As believers, it shouldn’t surprise us that materialism leads to spiritual ruin for the soul. Jesus himself said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt. 6:21). Here Jesus teaches that our wealth will occupy our emotional life. Wherever we place our wealth, our heart will inevitably follow it. If our money goes into our house or car, then our emotional life will be wrapped up with those things. If we give our money over to God, we will become emotional about those things as well. In fact, Jesus’ teaching on wealth (Mt. 6:21-24) was immediately followed by a teaching on anxiety (Mt. 6:25-34). Paul writes,

(1 Tim. 6:9-11) But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. 11 But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness.

Notice how Paul goes further than merely saying that money doesn’t buy happiness. Instead, he claims that money causes unhappiness (e.g. “harmful desires… ruin… destruction… evil… pierced themselves with many griefs”). Later, he writes,

(1 Tim. 6:17-19) Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸ Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. ¹⁹ In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

Here Paul speaks of the uncertainty of riches. Rather than providing security, we actually find that abundant wealth causes depression, anxiety, and stress (see also “The Bible and Materialism”).

2. Materialism Leads to Depression, Anxiety, and Loneliness

Could the modern day, pop culture prophet be right in saying, “Mo’ money… Mo’ problems”?[15] Consider the testimony of these multimillionaires:[16]

John D. Rockefeller: “I have made many millions, but they have brought me no happiness.”

W.H. Vanderbilt: “The care of $200 million is enough to kill anyone. There is no pleasure in it.”

John Jacob Astor: “I am the most miserable man on earth.”

Henry Ford: “I was happier when doing a mechanic’s job.”

Andrew Carnegie: “Millionaires seldom smile.”

It’s easy to see why materialism and affluence would lead to a sense of dissatisfaction. Whatever we have, we wish that we had more. To the materialist, it isn’t enough to be wealthy; we need to be wealthier than those around us. Even those of us who aren’t wealthy can identify with this principle. For instance, right before the new iPhone 5 hit the shelves, the late-night Jimmy Kimmel Show took the old iPhone 4s out on the street and gave it to people on the street (watch video here). Comically, one person after another believed that it performed much better than the old iPhone 4s!

Many secular thinkers have demonstrated how materialism and wealth have not led to happiness at all—but to depression, anxiety, and loneliness. For instance, according to one study (1978), lottery winners were temporarily elated to win their money, but they returned to their former emotional state only eight weeks after hitting the jackpot.[17]

In their psychological study on the effects of materialistic pursuits and goals (1993), psychologists Tim Kasser Ph.D. and Richard Ryan Ph.D write,

The relative centrality of aspirations for self-acceptance, affiliation, and community feeling were associated with greater well-being and less distress, this pattern was reversed for financial success aspirations. Highly central financial success aspirations in the first two studies were associated with less self-actualization, less vitality, more depression, and more anxiety.[18]

The results of these three studies begin to demonstrate that not all goals are equivalent in terms of their relationship to well-being. When goals for financial success exceeded those for affiliation, self-acceptance, and community feeling, worse psychological adjustment was found… Finally, the data suggest that, relatively speaking, the desire for money does not necessarily bring happiness.[19]

In his book The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies (2000), Robert Edwards Lane writes,

Amidst the satisfaction people feel with their material progress, there is a spirit of unhappiness as and depression haunting advanced market democracies throughout the world.[20]

Most people believe that a 25 percent pay increase would make them much more satisfied with their lives—but those whose incomes are now at that higher level are not, in fact, happier or more satisfied with their lives. Why are we so easily deceived about something that is central to our happiness?[21]

In Bowling Alone (2000), Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam writes,

In the mid- to late 1970s, …the average American entertained friends at home about fourteen to fifteen times a year. By the late 1990s that figure had fallen to eight times per year.[22]

Between 1974 and 1998 the frequency with which Americans ‘spend a social evening with someone who lives in your neighborhood’ fell by about one-third.[23]

Psychologists Richard Ryan Ph.D. and Edward Deci Ph.D. (2001) write,

The more people focus on financial and materialistic goals, the lower their well-being. This result has been confirmed both in developed countries such as the United States and Germany and in less economically developed nations such as Russia and India… Money does not appear to be a reliable route to either happiness or wellbeing. The relation of wealth to well-being is at best a low positive one, although it is clear that material supports can enhance access to resources that are important for happiness and self-realization. There appear to be many risks to poverty but few benefits to wealth when it comes to well-being.[24]

In The High Price of Materialism (2002), psychologist Tim Kasser writes,

Evidence suggests that, beyond having enough money to meet our basic needs for food, shelter, and the like, attaining wealth, possessions, and status does not yield long-term increases in our happiness or well-being. Even the successful pursuit of materialistic ideals, typically turns out to be empty and unsatisfying.[25]

In Affluenza (2005), Graff, Wann, and Naylor write,

The rate of clinical depression in the United States today is ten times what it was before 1945. Over any given year, nearly half of American adults suffer from clinical depression, anxiety disorders, or other mental illnesses.[26]

Study after study shows that teens want more, not less, time with their parents, yet parents regularly overestimate the amount of time they spend with their teenagers… In affluent families, where social and professional demands can be highly time consuming, there is often a lack of “family time.” In what some researchers call the “silver spoon syndrome,” affluent kids are often painfully aware that they rate low on their parents’ “to-do” list. As a result, there is an inverse relationship between income and closeness to parents. Lower-socioeconomic kids are far more likely to report feeling close to their parents than kids from high socioeconomic homes.[27]

In Simple Prosperity (2007), David Wann writes,

A recent study by the National Science Foundation concluded that one-fourth of all Americans have no one to confide in.[28]

Since the 1970s, despite an economy that keeps expanding and personal incomes that have more than doubled, the number of people who report being ‘very happy’ has actually gone down, according to the General Social Survey… After reaching a certain level—often estimated to be about $50,000—additional income is not proportional to additional happiness. What matters most about money, according to many psychologists, is not how much of it we have, but whether we have more (or less) than other people.[29]

In a more recent study (2008), Kasser writes,

A growing body of research suggests that to the extent people have strong goals and values for money and possessions, they care less about social relationships and act in ways that are more damaging to those relationships. For instance, studies of values and goals consistently demonstrate that the more individuals care about materialistic goals, the less they care about goals such as affiliation and benevolence… Other studies document that an orientation toward extrinsic, materialistic goals is associated with being less agreeable and empathic, and with being more Machiavellian, socially dominant, and competitive (vs. cooperative) in social dilemma games.[30]

Research shows that a materialistic orientation toward life is associated with lower levels of personal well-being, as well as with more damaging social and ecological attitudes and behaviors.[31]

None of these scholars cited are advancing a Christian worldview or agenda. Instead, this is secular research for what the Bible has taught all along: once our needs are met, additional money doesn’t cause happiness, but instead, stress, depression, and anxiety.

3. Materialism Leads to Debt

It is fair to note that materialism doesn’t always end with affluence. Instead, it often ends with debt. David Wann writes, “From 1998 to 2005, U.S. consumer debt almost doubled, from about $1.3 trillion to $2.16 trillion, according to Federal Reserve analysts, and in 2006, Americans spent one percent more than they earned, the worst ‘savings’ rate since the Depression.”[32] According to USA Today, credit card debt is worse than ever. Kathy Chu writes,

The average undergraduate carried $3,173 in credit card debt last year, the highest level since Sallie Mae began collecting this data in 1998. In 2004, the last time the study was done, students carried an average of $2,169 in card debt… The higher the grade level, the greater the card debt… In 2008, college seniors with at least one credit card graduated with an average of $4,138 in card debt, up 44% from 2004. By comparison, freshmen’s average credit card debt jumped 27% to $2,038.^[33]

In Affluenza (2005), Graff, Wann, and Naylor write,

Each year, in fact, more than a million and a half people—up from 313,000 in 1980, and including one of every seventy Americans—file for personal bankruptcy, more than graduate from college.[34]

Say you spend $2,000 on a typical credit card (at 18 percent interest), and make minimum payments to pay it off. It will take you eleven years, and you will end up paying double the original price.[35]

Americans now save only 0.2 percent of their personal income—about $1.50 a week on a salary of $40,000. Meanwhile, residents of the European Union save 12 percent, and impoverished Chinese, Indian, and Pakistani workers save a quarter of their incomes.[36]

In Money, Possessions, Eternity (2003), Randy Alcorn writes,

The average American family devotes one-fourth of its spendable income to outstanding debts. Since 1945, consumer debt in the United States has multiplied thirty-one times. The IRS calculates that the average filer spends ten times more paying off interest on debts than he gives to charitable causes.^[37]

In 2000, ‘The American Credit Counselors Corporation estimated the average American credit card holder owes $13,000 to credit card companies.’ The National Association of Colleges and Employers reports that 22 percent of college students owe more than $7,500 on credit cards.[38]

There are striking comparisons between debtors and drug addicts. The way out of both addictions can be very difficult. Those in debt with one income will almost always go into debt with two incomes, just as they will if the one income is doubled. Ninety-eight percent of the time debt is an internal problem, not an external one. It isn’t a matter of insufficient funds but insufficient self-control.^[39]

Before he died, Michael Jackson was in massive debt. After his death, a popular magazine wrote, “Yet after selling more than 61 million albums in the U.S. and having a decade-long attraction open at Disney theme parks, the ‘King of Pop’ died Thursday at age 50 reportedly awash in about $400 million in debt.”

The Bible often speaks against debt (Prov. 1:13-15; Prov. 17:18; 22:7, 26-27; 27:13), and it’s easy to see why: debt can ruin the spiritual life of the believer. Alcorn writes, “Stress experts say that the bigger a person’s mortgage (or any debt), the bigger the stress. Debt is a serious enemy of mental health.”^[40] Not only does debt lead to extra anxiety and stress, but it can begin to control the decision-making for the believer. For instance, we have seen many young men fiercely struggle to provide for a family due to their debt. Others work 80 hours a week to pay off their debt. This can have horrific effects on the believer and their family life.

We heard of one recent story of a Christian couple who was unable to help their kids with college tuition, because they themselves were $50,000 in debt. As it turns out, the couple made a combined income of $200,000 a year! Needless to say, the lust for more affects all of us—from the poor to the rich—and none of us are immune to the plague of unrighteous debt.^[41]

4. Materialism Ruins Families

Most affluent parents claim that they pursue materialism for the sake of their families. Of course, we should provide for the needs of our families. Paul writes, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. 5:8 NIV). Paul also warns that believers should be able to provide for their own material needs (2 Thess. 3:10; Gal. 6:5).

However, materialism isn’t the pursuit of providing for our needs at all. Remember our definition above: materialism is the excessive desire to acquire and consume material goods. Materialism doesn’t deal with need—but with greed. Most parents who are knee-deep in materialism claim that they are pursuing affluence for the sake of their family, but we contend that materialism is actually poisonous to leading a healthy family. We hold this view for a number of reasons:

First, materialism has been correlated with depression and anxiety in kids.

Materialism is poisonous for kids. In The Price of Privilege (2006), Madeline Levine Ph.D. writes,

Researchers, led by Dr. Suniya Luthar of Columbia University’s Teachers College, have found that America has a new group of ‘at-risk’ kids, or, more accurately, a previously unrecognized and unstudied group of at-risk kids. They defy the stereotypes commonly associated with the term ‘at-risk.’ They are not inner-city kids growing up in harsh and unforgiving circumstances. They do not have empty refrigerators in their kitchens, roaches in their homes, metal detectors in their schools, or killings in their neighborhoods. America’s newly identified at-risk group is preteens and teens from affluent, well-educated families. In spite of their economic and social advantages, they experience among the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, anxiety disorders, somatic complaints, and unhappiness of any group of children in this country. When researchers look at kids across the socioeconomic spectrum, they find that the most troubled adolescents often come from affluent homes… It is becoming increasingly clear as research accumulates, that past age eleven or twelve, increases in material wealth do not translate into advantages in emotional health; on the contrary, they can translate into significant disadvantages.[42]

Studies of public school students have shown that as many as 22 percent of adolescent girls from financially comfortable families suffer from clinical depression. This is three times the national rate of depression for adolescent girls. By the end of high school, as many as one-third of girls from these families can exhibit clinically significant symptoms of anxiety. Boys from affluent families also have elevated rates of anxiety and depression early in high school, although less pronounced than their female counterparts. However, once these boys enter eleventh and twelfth grade, their most significant problem appears to be the regularity with which they use drugs and alcohol to self-medicate their depression.[43]

Our most current data sug­gest that as many as 30 to 40 percent of twelve- to eighteen-year-olds from affluent homes are experiencing troubling psychological symp­toms. This epidemic, in addition to causing great suffering for chil­dren and their families, also carries a significant risk for premature mortality. Ten to 15 percent of those who suffer from depression eventually commit suicide… Researchers studying this group of financially comfortable kids regularly note that their findings are “surprising” or “startling.” No one expected that children of privilege would be exhibiting rates of emotional problems significantly higher than the average child, and certainly not rates comparable to, or greater than, chil­dren living in dire poverty.[44]

Research and common sense tell us that anxious parents make anxious children. Children take their cues from their parents… Of all the things parents are likely to be anxious about, academic performance is invariably near the top of the list. Parents’ anxiety about school performance leads to children who are pressured and anxious, but perhaps most dangerously it also leads to children who are perfectionists. Research shows that parents’ emphasis on achievement is linked to their children’s maladaptive perfectionist strivings. Maladaptive perfectionism (that is, perfectionism that impairs functioning-the child who can’t sleep, who throws up, or who feigns illness because he is anxious about a test) is highly cor­related with depression and suicide. Notably, there is a particularly strong relationship between perfectionism and suicide among those adolescents who are gifted.³³ Adolescent suicide is often precipitated by a perceived failure-at school, with parents, or in a relationship. Adolescents are idealistic and highly self-critical; additional parental pressures to meet harsh performance demands, while perhaps temporarily successful in driving academic achievement, are ultimately destructive.[45]

Depression, anxiety, substance abuse, rule breaking, and psychosomatic disorders are all elevated among affluent teens.[46]

When depression occurs in adolescence, there is a strong likelihood that it will recur later in life as well. More than half of all depressed teens have a recurrence of depression within five years… Psychological problems, particularly when they are untreated, tend to endure over time.[47]

Affluent parents hesitate to seek professional help more than other groups of parents. They have strong feelings about protecting privacy and fears about sullying their children’s academic records… wealthy parents react much more defensively and negatively than do middle—and low-income parents.[48]

Another consistent finding on the unhappiness of affluent youth is the fact that they feel both physical and psychological isolation from adults—from their parents in particular… Affluent teens are less likely to feel close to their parents than children in poverty—less likely than any other group of teens for that matter.[49]

In one study, only 13 percent of preadolescents from affluent homes felt close to their parents, rating their relationship as ‘optimal,’ while an additional 27 percent said their parents were “adequate.”  This leaves 60 percent of eleven—and twelve-year-olds who were studied feeling distant from their parents. This is not simply a harmless example of preadolescent whining. Follow-up studies on the 60 percent of youngsters who reported low levels of closeness to their parents showed particularly high rates of depression, anxiety, delinquency, and substance abuse.[50]

Second, materialism has led to a high correlation with nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI).

Psychologists Tuppett Yates (University of California), Suniya Luthar (Columbia University), and Allison Tracy (Wellesley College) noted higher levels of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) among privileged youths—such as cutting or self-mutilation.[51]

These researchers noted that parental criticism enforcing “perfectionistic beliefs” and parental alienation were correlated with cutting and self-injury.[52] Instead of parenting their children based on their relationship with them and based on grace, parents of privileged youth often reinforce etiquette, polite behavior, and performance (e.g. sports, grades, etc.). Yates, Luthar, and Tracy write,

Nearly a third of these adolescents reported engaging in NSSI during the previous year, with approximately three quarters of injurers endorsing recurrent episodes of NSSI… rates of NSSI may, in fact, be elevated among upper-middle-class, suburban youths, perhaps as a function of increased pressure to contain their emotions and achieve at superior levels.[53]

The data support the assertion that critical parenting may contribute to negative representations of others, thereby decreasing youths’ motivation to turn to others in times of duress and increasing the likelihood of NSSI as a self- and body-based coping strategy.[54]

The present findings join a broader cadre of evidence that distress and pathology are thriving within seemingly pristine and protected communities. Moreover, the driving forces underlying adolescent NSSI among upper-middle-class, suburban youths (and likely other youths) extend beyond the individual to include the family system and, perhaps, broader systems of influence (e.g., peers, media). In closing, we echo prior calls to offer multifaceted services targeting these “privileged” yet pained youths, their families, and their communities.[55]

Third, materialistic drives lead to higher chances of moving families for career advancement, which is highly damaging.

Americans see no problem with picking up and moving to a new city—especially if there is a significant pay increase. In fact, “Americans are highly mobile… Roughly half of Americans move in any 5-year period.”[56] Moving the family to another city only makes sense to the materialistic mindset (“If I could make more money in another city, why wouldn’t I move?”). However, research strongly suggests that moving is very painful for kids. Psychologists Shigehiro Oishi (University of Virginia) and Ulrich Schimmack (University of Toronto Mississauga) write (2010),

Adolescents who moved frequently as children are more likely to smoke, consume alcohol, and attempt suicide. These associations were observed even when other demographic variables such as parental education and race were statistically controlled.[57]

There are several potential consequences of frequent residential moves in childhood. First, peer rejection is a common experience among new transfer students in childhood. Peer rejection in turn can create academic as well as psychological problems such as withdrawal and loneliness in childhood and could have long-term consequences such as dropping out of school and criminal activities in adulthood. Social withdrawal is further known to be associated with a smaller number of friends and a lower quality of friendship (e.g., lack of helpfulness, guidance)… When individuals have to repeat residential moves, then, many of them also have to suffer from the lack of intimate friends repeatedly. Namely, repeated rejection experiences and the relative lack of intimate friendships associated with frequent residential moves in childhood could create difficulty in forming intimate social relationships as an adult… Considering that having companions is one of the strongest predictors of subjective well-being, it might be the difficulty of having and maintaining longterm companions among frequent movers that makes their wellbeing as adults lower on average than nonmovers.[58]

Sometimes people are forced to move by external factors (e.g., victims of Hurricane Katrina), while others move in search of better opportunity. The present finding suggests that when people do have the option to stay or move, they might want to consider the potential negative psychological correlates of childhood residential moves, especially if they or their children are introverted or neurotic.[59]

While the research suggests that moving families is damaging to kids, American parents regularly sacrifice the health of their children on the altar of career.

Fourth, materialism leads to less time spent with children and spouses.

In Affluenza (2005), Graff, Wann, and Naylor write,

We now work more hours each year than do the citizens of any other industrial country, including Japan… Ninety-five percent of our workers say they wish they could spend more time with their families.[60]

One study found that American couples now find just twelve minutes a day to talk to each other! Others suggest that ten to fifteen minutes of conversation a day would be an improvement![61]

The number of families regularly eating dinner together and taking vacations together has dropped by a third since 1970.[62]

Fifth, materialism negatively affects marriages, leading to divorce.

In The High Price of Materialism (2002), Kasser writes,

Research shows that divorce is also related to a focus on materialistic values. Aric Rindfleisch and his colleagues surveyed 261 young adults ranging in age between twenty and thirty-two, from a medium-size Mid-western city. When the 165 participants from nondivorced families were compared with the 96 from divorced families, the latter were more likely to be materialistic.[63]

In Money, Possessions, and Eternity (2003), Alcorn writes,

80 percent of divorced people indicate that financial issues played a primary role in ending their marriage.[64]

If we really take this biblical and secular research seriously regarding wealth and affluence, we shouldn’t be surprised at these statistics on divorce.

Conclusion

A Russian pastor once said, “In my experience, 95 percent of the believers who face the test of persecution pass it, while 95 percent who face the test of prosperity fail it.”[65] We agree wholeheartedly. Jesus himself said, “Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. ²⁴ “Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mt. 19:23-24). Materialism is the central obstacle to radical faith in the Western church. We hope that the reader will begin to realize the dangers and deceitfulness of affluence and wealth. As Alcorn writes, “We should not think that we’re immune to the value-changing nature of wealth: To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave the way the rich behave, is like saying we could drink all day and stay sober.”^[66]

Further Reading