we live in an age of Jesus Junk...

one of my hero's in middle school ministry is a guy named Marko. he's got an ongoing series on his blog (which he updates at an unbelievable pace) called "Jesus Junk", where he posts for all his fine viewers (such as myself) some item that would be laughable if it weren't for the fact that it were real.

anyway...was over at relevantmagazine.com today and saw a link in their newsfeed to this article by abcnews.com about WWJB (what would Jesus buy) that reminded me of marko's posts. by the way, on a side note, can we let the WWJD puns die already? honestly.

back on topic, though, the article got me thinking about the many ways in which we've lost sight of God's economy. i am well aware that money won't solve the many problems in the world today (poverty, health, slavery, torture, war, etc), but it seems to me that rather than providing or buying Christian kitschy crap (as if our consumeristic mentality needs anymore inspiration), we'd do well to come up with creative ways to throw our finances into ways that would tangibly help the majority of the world that isn't swimming in their resources Scrooge McDuck style.


now there are some really good places out there doing this in a variety of ways (a few of which are highlighted on my sidebar to the right). but i'm interested if anyone else know of any that they think are particularly novel or worthwhile in their pursuit of this? just throw your two cents into a comment...

the stuff on stuff...

*update*
here's an article from CNews about this site...didn't realize it was only a week old. that means that if you regularly read my blog, you've been on the cutting edge recently!

click here for the article

the orginal post:

materialism.

it's a tough thing. especially around Christmas when it's hard not to think about what you want to get for people and what you hope that they'll get for you.

materialism may not seem, at first glance, to be a justice issue. i'm convinced, however, that it's intricately tied to justice issues because things & stuff (the scientific components of materialism) don't just appear from nothing. they appear as the result of an intricate process that involves tons of people we don't know and through the use (and misuse) of the planet that we live on.

this video brilliantly (and, at times, humorously) illustrates that. i'm greatly interested in your thoughts...in some ways, parts of this seem overstated & to have an agenda, but at the very least, it's provocative enough that it ought to cause each of us to do a bit of a double take. i know there's some questions this raised that i haven't really thought about before.

and this was all sparked by a very short blog by seth godin that asked the question "how long has it been since you went an entire day without buying anything at all?" maybe you'll answer that question while you comment on the video as well.