What would you be willing to part with?

My wife – we’ll call her Fred – and I have been considering buying a house. We’ve saved up enough for a down payment and could easily afford the mortgage payments on an inexpensive suburban home. Even so, it’s probably not the most financially responsible option. I’m still a lowly college student, so what little money I earn goes straight back into tuition, books, exorbitant and mysterious fees, you get the idea.

Fred is the breadwinner, but she too is eyeing a return to part-time matriculation. Additionally, we each have grad school in our future, and while I might get away with attending a relatively inexpensive university, Fred is unlikely to be so lucky.

After her four years at Cornell or Tufts or wherever she ends up getting her doctorate in veterinary medicine, we’ll have probably amassed enough debt to pay for two inexpensive suburban homes. So, really, the smart thing to do is probably to hold off on buying and continue saving money, because we’re going to need it later on.

But here’s the thing: I really want a house. In my mind, it’s a little brick number with a white picket fence and a couple acres. I could plant a garden and grow, I don’t know, yams or something. I could play fetch with my dog. I could watch blue jays gorge themselves on bird seed. Maybe I could even own a chicken or two and have fresh eggs on weekend mornings. It all sounds lovely.

Except, of course, if we actually buy a house, it won’t be like that. The house won’t be brick. The fence will fall apart. I’m a terrible gardener. My dog’s too stupid to grasp the complex machinations of fetch. Blue jays are kind of mean, and chickens smell bad.

Knowing all this doesn’t make me want a house any less, though. Why is that? Judging one’s subconscious is an inexact science, but I think it has something to do with a little piece of consumerist propaganda called the American Dream.

The mythology of the American Dream is, like all mythologies, ever changing. It’s also a rather nebulous concept, meaning different things to different people. But the major strain in modern society involves the accumulation of material wealth.

As the late George Carlin noted in his best routine, we define ourselves by the stuff we collect. We take comfort in it. Once we have enough stuff, we find that we need someplace to

put it, and so we buy houses. Then we take comfort in the house with all our stuff in it. And then, of course, we buy more stuff and a bigger house, along with a heated storage unit for all the stuff we never use but just don’t have the heart to discard.

This sort of consumerism, more than Christianity or science or anything else, is our national religion. Our popular culture is, generally speaking, one enormous advertisement. We read advertisements disguised as magazines, watch advertisements disguised as movies, wear advertisements disguised as clothes, and eat advertisements disguised as food. And while these advertisements might be entertaining or thought-provoking or stylish or delicious, they’re still, at least in part, an appeal to our desire to own more stuff.

Modern Christians have dealt with America’s rampant consumerism mostly by embracing it. Prosperity Christianity has flourished, especially among televangelists. These are the smiling hucksters who declare from their mansions that it is acceptable to pray for wads of cash because God knows people need money to do good works. Never mind that Jesus was an itinerant vagabond who managed to perform plenty of good works without a penny to his name.

Even the many Christians who recognize the folly of that theological stance continue to participate directly in consumerist ideology. Hollywood has, for example, discovered that evangelical Christians represent an extremely lucrative niche market. “The Passion of the Christ” grossed $600,000,000 worldwide and sold scads of related merchandise, such as the always popular Passion of the Christ Nail Pendant. At least that movie has artistic merit.

The two “Chronicles of Narnia” films, on the other hand, are terrible, but nonetheless managed to gross more than a billion dollars between them, thanks in large part to the Christian audience to whom they were marketed. Beyond movies, there are Christian niches in television, radio, books, music and just about every other market you can think of, all of them profitable.

This isn’t meant to chastise the Christians who patronize this market. The point is simply that Christians shape their religious identity through the stuff they buy. Though they attempt to live outside the popular culture they castigate as evil, ultimately they are living directly within it in the only way that matters to the businessmen who shape that culture, by being consumers.

But what are we going to do? We’re Americans; ergo, we buy stuff. It’s the American Dream. It’s capitalism. And it’s not actually evil, per se. But there is a tension that exists between consumerism and Christianity that we would do well not to ignore.

In Mark 10:17, a rich man comes to Jesus and asks what he has to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus rattles off the commandments and the rich man affirms that he has upheld them. Jesus looks at him, loves him and says, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” But, of course, the rich man can’t do it; he’s sorry, but he just can’t part with all his stuff.

We all know that story, but it’s a little too easy to shrug off. Not too many people think of themselves as rich, after all. In truth, however, we all are. Americans are the richest people to have ever existed. Even relatively poor Americans are wealthy by the standards of the rest of the world. And, with few exceptions, we all own lots and lots of stuff.

The issue is not that we own it, but rather whether we would honestly be willing to part with it. If it came right down to it, if you had to make a choice like the man in the story, would you be willing to part with your house, your car, your television, your genuine Passion of the Christ Nail Pendant, or even your fancy leather-bound Bible? All this stuff that you take comfort in, that makes you feel like you belong somewhere, that more or less defines you?

Personally, I’d like to think I would. But here’s the thing: I still want a house. I just need the space for all my stuff.

Justin Fowler is a student at University College of Bangor. He may be reached at justin.fowler@verizon.net. Voices is a weekly commentary by Maine people who explore issues affecting spirituality and religious life.