A curious new set of data has been reported by LifeWay Research that looks at the intersection of consumerism and the Christian faith in the United States. The a summary of the report can be found here.

What makes the report curious is that the most active American Christians (those who attend worship services at least once per week) simultaneously report being more content with what they already have than the average American does, but also more interested in shopping and acquiring nice, new things. Below I have created two tables for these items:

Percent of __________ saying they are content with the amount they already have of…
	U.S. Americans	U.S. American Christians who attend services at least 1x/week.
Entertainment	80	96
Fun Experiences	71	93
Money	44	69
Things they Enjoy	77	88

According to this table, active American Christians report being substantially more content than the average American does. However, this claim seems to be undercut by the data in the following chart that seem to show the most active U.S. American Christians are more driven than anyone else (including their less active fellow Protestants) to accumulate new things, even to the point of feeling like their worth is defined by this:

Percent of __________ who agree with the following statement…
	Average U.S. American	U.S. American Christian who attends services at least 1x/week.	Average U.S. American Protestant
I like to have the latest technology.	48	55	43
I am driven to accumulate nice things.	43	61	37
Shopping makes me feel worthwhile.	43	61	39
I know I am getting ahead when I have nice things.	41	56	37
It troubles me when friends have nicer things than I do.	16	—	16

What is to account for this discrepancy? Scott McConnell, the executive director of LifeWay Research, tries to cast it in as positive a way as possible, writing “The most devout practitioners of faith typically are better able to avoid vices. Yet we see that those attending religious services the most often also are the most likely to want to be overachievers in consuming nice things.” In other words, those who overachieve in their piety want to overachieve in all of life, including consumerism. That seems like a weak explanation at best.

The explanation is not only unsatisfying, it reveals a massive problem: the assumption in both the way the questions are posed and the way McConnell frames the explanation is that the individual Christian’s experience of life is the central concern. If my personality drives me to be an achiever, then I should achieve in all things to fulfill my achievement orientation. If I feel like I have enough, then I can be content. The operative words here are “my” and “I.”

Of course, our personal experiences of God’s goodness matter. This is a key point in what we teach in Evangelism for Non-Evangelists. However, we also teach that our experience starts not with ourselves, but with God’s initiative. It is out of the overflow of God’s gracious nature that we have anything good to experience. This includes every good thing we enjoy, both now and into eternity. This is why Jesus taught:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.    --Luke 6:25-33 (NIV)

By emphasizing the Kingdom, Jesus does something else: he insists that all the things we are given are not to be kept, but to be shared. The Kingdom is not defined by personal pleasure and enjoyment, but by unhindered love of God and love of neighbor. So, just as God freely shares all good things with us, we share those things with others. We participate in God’s mission of sharing abundant life by both receiving and sharing. (There’s a good book on this in case you want to learn more about it!)

Understood this way, with God and the Kingdom that Jesus came to establish at the center, we can affirm that we have enough even when we suffer or have very little materially because it is God’s goodness–not our sense of satisfaction with what we have or what else we can acquire–that grounds our identity and contentment. We can say with Paul:

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.   --Philippians 4:11-13

Christians have had a long and complicated relationship with human ambition, especially related to money and possessions. Jesus taught about it frequently and so has the church ever since. The new insights from LifeWay are, in fact, not new. They are a reminder, though, of how easily our eyes can slip from looking to be sustained by the One who provides “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17) and who sends us out into mission to share those gifts, to seeing only our own ability to satisfy ourselves as important.