Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Congratulations?


Here is a verbatim from a conversation two of my acquaintances had about a month ago. We'll call them Sue and Bob.

Bob, "So I went out the day after Thanksgiving and found some great deals!"
Sue, "Me too, what did you get?"
Bob, "Well there was this grill, marked for $2,500. I bought it for $950.00!"
Sue, "Wow! Good for you! Congratulations!" (All the others agree and applaud the buy!)

I couldn't help but laugh. Does anything seem weird about this conversation? Here my friends were congratulating and commending my other friend about his purchase. I wonder, what kind of world do we live in where we pride ourselves on our spending habits?

I don't have a problem with what he bought or how much he paid for it. But I find it funny that he was commended because of the "great buy" he found. Bob proceeded to justify the purchase based on the reason it was such a great "sale" and he couldn't pass it up! This is part of the problem, we don't need but we buy. We don't really need to spend but we justify it.

I don't know if Bob needed the grill and I probably am unfairly being cynical. But if we looked for opportunities to help others as much as we look for opportunities to save money I think the Kingdom would be closer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree. Spending anything even remotely close to $300 on an outdoor grill reflects a diminishing of Biblical values and is a reflection of a culture that's thriving on materialistic steroids. But getting a $1400 42" HD television for $499...now, that's priceless!!!!

Mike Moore said...

I don't know about materialistic steroids but I'll agree with the diminished Biblical value. About the TV...that sounds like a priceless buy if it was 54"!! I guess that's a reference I should know but I don't!?! Sorry!