Reflections on God and Money: Defend Your Budget (1)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Romans 12:1-3

By ‘defend’ your budget, I do not mean that you must justify it. How you decide to spend your money is up to you. The challenge you face is sticking to your choices when so many people have the job of getting you to spend in ways that suit them.

We live in a consumer society, a way of life that is kept going by getting people to spend. One way this is done is by making us believe that we ‘need’ certain things. During the last century, advertising developed from simple publicity into a form of manipulation. Dr Sigmund Freud’s advances in psychology gave advertisers the tools to circumvent people’s rationale and create emotional hooks, provoking emotive and not rational responses to the goods and services on offer.

In 1943, Dr Abraham Maslow first formulated this hierarchy of human needs: at the bottom is the basic need to survive: to have food, clean water, shelter and anything else we need to survive in our environment. When those needs are met, we want to move up to the next level and to feel safe. When we feel safe, we move higher and want to belong in our community; when we belong, we want to be valued and, at the top of the hierarchy, we want to be fulfilled as people.

Advertising challenges and undermines these human needs, persuading us to buy the things that we think will make us safe, to help us fit in and to be valued by others and to fulfil our potential.

Clothes and cosmetics are not sold because they are nice to have but so that we will be more liked, loved, appreciated and respected; credit cards are not advertised as convenient ways to manage our cash flow but as passports to freedom and a lifestyle otherwise beyond our reach.

I would therefore invite you to take some time to think over the things you have bought in the past week or two and to ask yourself whether you needed them, or whether they were important to you – or whether you were just responding to advertising?

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Handling money and dealing with debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here. You are invited to put a link on your website to these Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Friday, 16 August 2013

Defend Your Budget (1)