Okay, if you read Janet’s Seven Signs of the Apocalypse, this is the column that will be appearing in the Education Center of St. Louis’s workbook for pastors and religious people… I suppose it could be interpreted as having something to do with actual religion, but that was not my intent…

You can also find this piece in my book: Confessions of a Pink-Haired Lunatic.

Used to be people prayed to God to save their crops so they could feed their kids. They’d pray to God for a cure for their ailments. They’d pray to God to bless their family members to make their lives a bit easier. Nowadays, most people see God as a giant vending machine. Please God, I need that raise. Please God, I need that contract. Please God, I need that huge paycheck. Please God, let me win the Lottery. If you took a poll of what people pray for, I think you’d find that eighty-five percent is devoted to asking God for more money. Why? So people can buy themselves more junk. If God really exists, I’m sure He/She is tired of being the Heavenly version of Amazon.com.

Junk is the new religion. The coveting of junk, the anticipation of buying the new junk, the showing off of the new junk. Junk, junk, junk, that is what our entire world is now all about. The religion is spreading faster than Mormonism. Now India and China are coming online and you know what? They want everything, too. New cell phones, cars, jewelry, whatever is on TV is what the global market wants. And they want it NOW.

Most of us now have more debt than assets. We all have huge balances on our credit cards. Savings is at an all-time low. Some of it is due to rising medical costs, rising housing costs and rising education costs. But mostly it is due to the Wants. Or the Have-to-Haves. Most of our debt can be seen on the shelves of our homes and in our garages. Does it really make sense to saddle ourselves with debt so we can have a vintage Yugo, The Clapper, The George Foreman Grill and a bunch of Pez dispensers?

I know of what I speak. My name is Janet and I’ve been Junk Addict my entire life. I still have twenty thousand in debt due to my addiction. My downfall has always been toys. Like, toy toys. Not Porches and Cartier watches, actual toys. I have a garage full of them, my shelves are full, my drawers are full. When I try to cull the stuff, all I end up doing is going, “Oooo, cool, look at this! I forgot I bought this! This is so cool!” Cool my ass, it’s all crap. And I’m stuck with it.

None of my belongings have ever really made me happy. Maybe for the ten minutes I’m considering buying it. Certainly the purchase is exciting. Taking it home is pretty exhilarating, but the day after, the thing I just bought is now used. I played with it. I showed it to friends. Then I stuck it on a shelf. Where now it gathers dust. And all for what? What do I have to show for my hard-earned money? A chunk of plastic in the form of Ozzy Osbourne that sits there on a shelf taunting me. Dust me. Pack me. Do something with me. It’s ridiculous.

Everything you bring into your life becomes a responsibility. You can’t just buy something and be done with it. Everything you buy requires time. Time to deal with it, time to read the manual, time to put batteries in it, time to maintain it, time to fix it, time to clean it, time to organize it with all the other crap. Time that could be spent hiking, playing music, doing art projects, hanging out with friends is spent dealing with junk. Not only do you get in financial debt from the acquisition of junk, you end up with time debt as well.

A prime example of the above is our new pinball machine. What a NIGHTMARE. I won’t bore you with the details. Well, I would bore you with the details, but that was seven hundred extra words. To put it simply, our new acquisition took countless phone calls, countless hours of stress and toil, all for the privilege of owning a four hundred pound, money-sucking electronic project. What started as a prime acquisition, the crowning piece of cool stuff in my living room, ended up being a four hundred pound albatross around our necks. Even though I still think it’s cool and I play it regularly… What the HELL was I thinking?

Which brings up the most important point of this new religion of Consumerism. Religion is supposed to make you happier. The new religion of Consumerism only brings us misery. So you manage to get the new cell phone and are the envy of the entire office. Well, enjoy your fifteen minutes of gloating because Bob in the next cubicle will get an even newer model before you know it. And then you’re just like everyone else. You’ve got the old cell phone, the old Mercedes, the old pinball machine. There is no way to keep up with the manufacturers. Or the Joneses. Every week, some new model comes out and your stuff becomes obsolete and out of fashion. Most of us have given the old stuff to the thrift store before we’re even done paying for it.

I think there’s an ingrained, hard-wired need to accumulate stuff in all of us. Take robins for example. Robins collect shiny things for their nests. They don’t need the shiny things, but they sure like them. I think our current culture is amplifying this need and turning it into a dangerous obsession. You don’t see robins getting into debt to other birds so they can have all the new cool stuff in their nests. They settle for things that have been discarded. They only collect things they can carry in their beaks. You don’t see robins trying to haul a pinball machine forty feet up a tree. No, I think the constant bombardment of advertisements has brainwashed all of us into feeling inadequate. The only way to assuage our emptiness is to fill it full of consumer goods. I mean, who has a freakin’ inherent need to collect Elvis memorabilia? What part of our DNA tells us that we need porcelain frogs? Or Franklin Mint eggs?

A couple generations ago, the Church was the center of people’s social life. Now it’s the mall. We’ve become a secular religion of shoppers. Future generations may uncover old Targets, Wal-Marts and Frys and think them to be old iconic symbols of our religion. Old places of worship. And they would be correct. I picture the masses of the world, praying to Steve Jobs in Cupertino to bring forth cooler iPods and iMacs.

The meaning of life should not be about Pez dispensers. It should be about our relationships with others and creative endeavors that celebrate our uniqueness. We should be worshipping the Earth and God, not our possessions. Our lives should not be consumed with consuming.

Easy for me to say. The robin in me, however, still wants more shiny things.
©2006, Janet Periat