Like the frog that boiled to death by degrees, we tend to gradually acclimate to our materialism, becoming desensitized to it, and finally regarding it as the norm rather than an aberration. The hardest part of dealing with out materialism is that it has become so much a part of us. Like people who have lived in darkness for years, we have been removed from the light so long we do not know how dark it really is. Many of us have never known what it is not to be materialistic. It is normal, the only way we know. This is why we need so desperately to read the Scriptures, to grapple with these issues, bring them to God in prayer, discuss them with our brothers and sisters, and look for and learn from those rare models of nonmaterialistic living in our Christian communities. I’m convinced that if we were to gain God’s perspective, even for a moment, and were to look at the way we go through life accumulating and hoarding and displaying things, we would have the same feelings of horror and pity that any sane person has when he views people in a mental asylum endlessly beating their heads against the wall.
- Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions, and Eternity, p. 60
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