40 Days 40 Gifts Day 17

Funny how God sends things to read when we choose to focus on something. I lecture on Thursday evenings and last Thursday I picked up an article that the previous lecturer had left in the venue. It’s entitled “Posessions and Extended Self” by Russell Belk and was written in 1988. In it he writes “Our fragile sense of self needs support, and this we get by having and possessing things because, to a large degree, we are what we have and possess.” He goes on to make a 21 page argument about how we are “the sum of our possessions.” Granted it was published in the Journal of Consumer Research but they published it! I was initially astounded. But then I started thinking about the truth of his words.

Think about yesterday’s blog in which I admit to the fact that I buy clothes, not based on how useful they are or how much I need them, but on what they say about me. Our clothes are an expression of our person-ality. Even if we don’t wear wildly over the top clothes, what we choose to wear is still an expression of who we are. The same goes for our houses. I (half) bought a house last year and spent many hours considering what this small space would say about me. I didn’t want to invite people around until I had the right pictures hanging and the right bits and bobs on my bookshelf. Don’t get me wrong, I love the space I have created for myself but that doesn’t change the fact that my possessions are an expression of who I am. That is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but what struck me about this article is that so often we come to define ourselves only by our possessions and not by our acts. And I think that in part drives our need to consume consume consume. And then we forget about the other things that fill and bless our lives. Did you know that when 9/11 happened in America, President Bush (oh he of so much sage advice) advised the people of America to deal with their grief by… wait for it… shopping! Not spending time with one another, not crying or remembering, but by shopping. So perhaps Belk was spot on 22 years ago.

LESSON 17: We need to find our sense of self in God, not in what we own.

I know there is certainly a kernel of truth in it for me. Something I don’t really like to admit. Got to get to that wardrobe clean out…