So it’s Advent. The season of expectation
and the season of celebration and if I am to believe what I see on television
this season – the season of shopping. Probably the last thing you need to read
is another pontificating hypocrite telling you how bad you are for spending all
that money on gifts that you and your loved ones don’t need and probably won’t
appreciate by this time next year anyways. I’m not going to sit here from my
keyboard and lecture you on your consumer choices this Christmas, because
frankly I have no moral authority to do so.
Over the years I have spent far more than I
should have on things that do not last, and even more than that on myself for
things that probably have an even shorter shelf life of significance. Lately
I’ve been feeling very convicted of this fact and realize that perhaps I need
to change something in my life before I dare talk to anyone else about changing
theirs. And that doesn’t mean that I make one grand gesture and feel I’ve
earned the right by doing so to look down on people who haven’t done the same –
but rather I need to enact sustained life change that alters my priorities and
makes me a person more in line with what Jesus wants to do through me. So over
the next week I want to share with you some things that I have realized I need
to repent of and change in my life if I want to be the type of person that I
think honours Christ by my consumer choices. Today I start with my toys.
“…When
I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”
–
1 Corinthians 13:11
If you have ever been in my office you will
understand that I have a ‘hobby’ of collecting Transformers. I am enamoured
with the toys, the fiction, the engineering that goes into them and the
characters that I grew up with as a child. Over the years my collection has
grown, and shrank, and grown and shrank. I have culled the herd once by parting
with a toy every day of the season of Lent in 2011 and I culled the herd a
second time when I sold about 30 figures last Christmas to pay for my wife’s
iPhone (which is really just trading one sort of consumerism for another). For
those who have known me over the years it would certainly seem that I have
curbed my enthusiasm for the toys but up until the end of this summer I was
still spending money on buying toys that largely just sat on display in my office.
This September I came to a point of
internal crisis when I decided that I couldn’t any longer justify spending my
hard-earned money on children’s toys that aren’t being played with by children.
So I haven’t spent a dime on Transformers since August and it feels great. But
I still have all these toys sitting on my shelf, many of them in unopened
boxes, imported from Japan. Many of them the same toy over and over, just with
minor colouring changes to incite schmucks like me to spend 4-5 times the average
retail price for a toy I already have just so I can have the special edition
limited-release version of a toy that I will never open an play with for fear
of diminishing it’s value. How does any of that honour God?
So this Advent season I’ve resolved to put
childish things behind me (or at least get the ball rolling on what will be a
long process). Some toys I have already taken off my shelf and given them to my
boys. No longer to collect dust but to be played with (an in the process
learned that only one of my boys really appreciates them). Some other ones I
want to randomly give away to other kids – likely the common figures that you
can (or could have in the past) found on the shelves in Wal-Mart. Some of the
more valuable un-opened pieces (particularly the imports) I will try to sell
and recoup the money for more God honouring purposes (I am not promising to
give the proceeds away from these sales as I have in the past, although I may
at some point do some of that I believe that God can be honoured by my own
consumerism when it is responsible and mature as well) and some I will still
keep for sentimental purposes.
I don’t expect that you will walk into my
office after Christmas and find a complete absence of Transformers on my
shelves but I do suspect that you will notice a difference and that the
collection will only decrease from here on out as I learn to put childish
things behind me.
This is just the first step in my Advent
journey. Tomorrow check back to hear my thoughts on hibernation and holidays.
In Christ,
Chris
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