Hey Debbonaire,
you are right, competitive materialism and any kind of spiritual values should be mutually exclusive. I am glad you were blessed with the company of compassionate and loving people while going through a hard time.
Yet, paradoxically, I have on occasions also come across people who override or ignore the true values of their belief system. Egotistical and self-indulgent, they justify their greed through the deliberate misinterpretation of religious principles, and meet people of other faiths with hatefulness and condescension. All that is obviously anything but christian. However, you do find this incoherent interweaving of contradictory ideas - religious fundamentalism and extreme materialism. As you can see from the above quote, it even has quite a long history. Unfortunately, religion has been, and still is being, abused as an instrument for creating and accumulating economic and political power.
Luckily, there's people like you who have the insight necessary to recognize the abuse of religious principles and live your faith in a healthy and honest way. I hope eventually the unfortunate and nonsensical association of ruthless materialism and religious fundamentalism will be dissolved. It puts a huge blemish on the concept of religion that is a source of frustration and deception to many.
My best wishes to you, and I hope you are recovering well from the blow you received.
On Sep 10, 2011 Dwayne Henshilwood wrote:
Its hard to measure privilege but easy to compare, and that comparison is uncomfortable from my comfortable home !