how materialism damages the family

Powerful/prophetic words from Russell Moore in Touchstone...

...one of the roots of the family crisis all around us—in the pews we sit in or preach to every week—is the wallet in our own back pocket.

It is no accident, after all, that our Ancient Foe first appears in Holy Scripture as a snake...As philosopher Leon Kass puts it, “For the serpent is a mobile digestive tract that swallows its prey whole; in this sense the serpent stands for pure appetite.” Indeed he does—and the whole of Scripture and of Christian tradition warns the Church against the way of the appetites, the way of consuming oneself to death.

We are commanded away from the path of Esau, who sells his inheritance for a pile of red stew (Heb. 12:16–17). We’re directed away from the god of the belly (Phil. 3:19). From the Tree in the garden to the wilderness beyond the Jordan to the present hour, the people of God are tempted to turn their digestive or reproductive tracts away from the mystery of Christ and toward the self as god.

This is true in any era, but there is a special danger, it seems, for those of us living in an era of unparalleled affluence....

Why does the seemingly godly church member in one of our congregations or parishes drive his pregnant teenage daughter to the nearest city under cover of darkness to obtain an abortion? Because, no matter how much he “votes his values,” when crisis hits, he wants his daughter to have a “normal” life. He is “pro-life,” with, as one feminist leader put it, three exceptions: rape, incest, and my situation....

Why do our pastors and church leaders speak bluntly about homosexuality but not about divorce?...

Why do we speak endlessly about marital communication and “love languages” but never address the question of whether institutionalized day care is good for children, or for their parents? It’s because pastors know that couples would reply that they could never afford to live on the provision of the husband alone....if living means living in the neighborhoods in which they now live with the technologies they now have. Why do we never ask whether it might be better to live in a one-bedroom apartment or a trailer park than to outsource the rearing of one’s children? It’s because the American way of life seems so normal to us that such things do not even seem to be options at all....