Retailers refer to the day after Thanksgiving, one of the busiest shopping days on the calendar, as "Black Friday" because it's the day they hope will attract enough customers to put them back into the black for the year. This year, it was also known as "Buy Nothing Day" to anti-consumerism activists like filmmaker Morgan Spurlock of "Supersize Me" fame. Spurlock has produced a new movie that features a performance artist who assumes the persona of Rev. Billy, an evangelist who tries to convert people to his "..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Church of Stop Shopping." Do you think this is just a cheap stunt to promote a movie or do you think the filmmakers have a point that we've become too obsessed with material goods?..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
If this is a 'cheap stunt,' the Bible is full of them. Prophets would shave their hair, eat animal dung, lie on their sides naked in public for long periods of time, all kinds of extreme behavior to get people to listen to what God had to say to them. I wish I had the courage to do the same. Spurlock is right, regardless if he follows Jesus for real or not. I fight this battle on a daily basis with my family. We dont open gifts on Christmas for that reason. We are asking our daughters friends to donate to a child sponsorship/AIDS orphan charity instead of birthday gifts this year. We dont step foot in shopping malls from Thanksgiving through the New Year, except to remind ourselves that it was the right decision to stay away. We participate in programs like Operation Christmas Child through Samaritan's Purse and others to show our kids that is not about us, but it is soooo hard when we are surrounding by excess. The thing that makes the buying frenzy even worse is that many of the products come from countries where slave, prison, and child labor make the objects we buy. Not too long ago, a Chinese pastor who had been imprisoned in China for his faith was released and came to the U.S. The first thing he saw were palm trees lit with lights he was forced to make while a prisoner in China. He was so angry. Our excess was a part of his imprisonment. Add on top of that that our addictive shopping is placing unsafe products into the hands of our children (count the recalls this year). Finally, add the carbon footprint created by shipping these products all over the world and it is obvious that our shopping habits are slowly killing us. I havent seen the movie yet, but as you can tell, it will only fuel my fires.