Dr Paul Allen

Scripture prescribes only one remedy to this frustration: contentment. Biblical contentment is a spiritual virtue that we find modeled by the Apostle Paul. He states, for example, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content” ( Phil. 4:11 ). No matter the state of his health, wealth, or success, Paul found it possible to be content with his life. In Paul’s era, two prominent schools of Greek philosophy agreed that our goal should be to find contentment, but they had very different ways of getting there. The first of these, Stoicism, saidimperturbability was the way to contentment. Stoics believed that human beings had no real control over their external circumstances, which were subject to the whims of fate. The only place they could have any control was in their personal attitudes. We cannot control what happens to us, they said, but we can control how we feel about it. Thus, Stoics trained themselves to achieve imperturbability, an inner sense of peace that would lea

The flight attendant made announcements about some special programs when the plane landed. There were banners in the luggage hall. Billboards lined the road. Signs peeked out of the corners of the hotel lobby. Leaflets waited to be noticed on the desk in the room. Brochures were placed in my hand out on the street. Stickers stuck to the rubbish bins. Logos were everywhere. And what about the internet? Of course, all of this is white noise to those of us who live in media-saturated environments, but coming from a culture that is rather minimalist in marketing, I was overwhelmed. How do we discern which invitation to accept? Which to ignore? Whom do we allow to tell us what we need? Do we even make these choices for ourselves anymore? The Deadly Drama of Consumerism Invitations to participate in the drama of consumerism are extended to all of us. Consumerism, the idolatrous pursuit of pleasure through stuff, can be worshiped by both the lavish  and  the simple. Like all of

The Christian concept of apocatastasis includes a restoration of the world to its original state, as in the Garden of Eden (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Ecclesiastes 2:1–11 “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.’ But behold, this also was vanity” (v. 1). Hedonism is a non- Christian worldview  and can be traced back all the way to the garden of Eden . Genesis 3:6 says that Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit partly because it was a “delight” to her eye. There was a certain amount of pleasure that the fruitgave her when she beheld it, and, no doubt, a degree of pleasure that she thought she would receive should she disobey God and take from the tree. In retrospect, however, Eve found only pain when she and Adam sinned (Gen.  :7, 16–19). As a worldview, hedonism is concerned with the maximizing of pleasure and the minimizing of pain. At various points in history it has expressed itself crassly. We can think, for example, of the orgies an