Walter Brueggermann: Live generously in a world of scarcity trusting in God’s abundance

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“Consumerism confronts North American Christians as a central problem of our lives. It presents the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God’s abundance on the one hand, and the power of our belief in scarcity on the other hand. Scarcity works on fear that God’s grace will run out. It assumes that money is security and that there won’t be enough resources for all. Based on market economics, scarcity begins not with our limited needs but with our unlimited wants. As long as we believe that more is always better, we will never have enough…Jesus revealed the reign of God as a different kind of economy, one that is infused with abundance and self-giving generosity. Living out our gratitude, we are called to trust God’s generosity.”

Walter Brueggemann in “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity” in The Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999: 342-347.