Materialism is the love of money in the modern age.
They say that money can’t buy happiness. And yet, Retail Therapy attempts to do just that. The problem is not that money can’t buy happiness. It is that the happiness money buys is fleeting.
Then, when we face the resulting financial struggle, the depression sets in even deeper than before.
What we call Retail Therapy, the Bible calls Love of Money. Retail therapy leads to poverty. Ergo, Love of Money leads to poverty.
When it comes to emotional depression or stress, retail therapy is a cause, not a cure.
Rich Abba, Holy Abba
Materialism Love of Money
This materialism love of money is particularly stealthy because we naturally associate love of money with riches and our modern-day consumerism does not make us feel rich.
In fact, it does quite the opposite. The depression or stress we feel is usually rooted in envy and covetousness because others have something we don’t. This makes us feel poor so we scrape and save and reach for our credit cards to afford that which we desire. If we can’t afford what we truly desire, we indulge in Retail Therapy and spend everything we have on something we can afford.
This buys us a fleeting moment of happiness but makes us poorer than we were before. On top of that, we don’t feel any wealthier because we still don’t have what we truly wanted.
This feels counter-intuitive but it is Satan’s standard modus operandi. He promises us something – in this case, wealth. Then he offers us a short-cut to achieving that promise (E.g. “Retail Therapy”). This distracts us from God and makes us worldly-minded. When this happens, sin has already won.
We rush out and spend our last dime on a wild shopping spree. This gives us that brief moment of euphoria but this does not last long. Within minutes or days, that euphoria wanes and we find ourselves worse off – in this case poorer- than we were to start with. Then the cycle begins once more.
This is how love of money keeps us locked in a cycle of constant financial struggle.