Materialism: Self-destructive

Jesus rebuked the Laodicean Christians because although they were materially walthy, they were desperately poor in the things of God.  Materialism blinds us to our own spiritual poverty.  Puritan Richard Baxter said --

“When men prosper in the world, their minds are lifted up with their estates, and they can hardly believe that they are so ill, while they feel themselves so well.”

In his Confessions, Augustine writes --

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

Along the same lines, philosopher Blaise Pascal made the following observation --

   What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

Materialism is a fruitless attempt to find meaning outside of God.  When we try to find ultimate fulfillment in a person other than Christ or a place other than heaven, we become idolater.  Materialism is not only evil - it is tragic and pathetic --

Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones,
even though they are not gods at all?
Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God
for worthless idols!
The heavens are shocked at such a thing
and shrink back in horror and dismay,”
says the Lord.
“For my people have done two evil things:
They have abandoned me—
the fountain of living water.
And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns
that can hold no water at all! - Jeremiah 2:11-13

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SD3 Materialistic