It isn’t about packages, boxes, or bags

Bowling For Soup sings in their new single, High School Never Ends

The whole damn world is just as obsessed with who's the best dressed and who's having sex. 

It's a peppy line for an equally peppy, bubblegum pop/punk song. Bowling For Soup, much like a slurpee, has the propensity to seem like a really good idea. Yet, after five minutes or so they both begin to give you a headache. Nevertheless, Bowling For Soup brings up a valid point. Society as a whole is obsessed with celebrity and status. While checking out at the grocery store one is inundated with a sea of tabloids and gossip magazines. Does everyone really care that much about how Tom and Katie’s wedding went!? Apparently, and sadly, everyone does.

Perhaps your memories of High School are far off and distant. Let me please start the line that envies you. If, however, you are like me, the High School social scene is still inescapably present. The overbearing sense of status is suffocating.  If you wear those clothes then you date that girl and hang out with these people. You are assigned class and status. The sad and fallacious truth is that people think less of you if your shirt doesn’t have a guy playing polo on it. What is truly disturbing for me is the ever growing comprehension that the “Polo Persona” follows us to college and onward to adulthood.  

The magazines and the media have placed such a high level of importance on status in this country. Look no further than the TV commercials that are beginning to frequent the airwaves more often with the impending holiday season approaching.  They plead with us to buy the Lexus, buy her diamonds, and buy an HD TV with 1080i, even if we totally don’t know what that means. Without these items, what are we? Apparently we are lesser human beings. With so many people subscribing to this ideal, it is easy to fall into the same frame of mind. Make no mistake; the fault does not lie with pursuing a better life. The fault is in not pursuing a fulfilling life. The life God intended us to live.  

Everyone has heard the story of Christ and the rich man (Luke 18:18-30). Everyone understands the principle which Christ is teaching us through his interaction with the man. One cannot serve two masters. Yet, it is an extremely hard concept to follow, despite its black and white premise. Why? People struggle against complete surrender unto Christ. Transgression, by design, is an appealing alternative to Christ. Sin has a certain convoluted comfort attribute to it, which makes it almost soothing. For many people, seeking status is that comfort. By rising to the top of their social network they mask the faults within them, essentially trying to buy away their flaws.  

All the “stuff” in life, all of the things society tells us we must have are, in fact, excess noise. We need to be in accordance with God’s design. If it happens that design includes an HD TV, fantastic. However, God’s design may not include an HD TV, and we must have the fortitude to mute the commercials and entertain that possibility. This time of year has the capacity to associate happiness with material goods. 

Now, as I begin to close do not, for even a second, come to the conclusion that this is a, “reason for the season” piece. I yield that piece to Dr Seuss’, How The Grinch Stole Christmas. The Grinch has illustrations and Dr. Seuss rhymes much better than I do. Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year. This is the time, at the beginning of the year, to check ourselves and make sure that we really are moving in the direction in which God wants us moving. It is important that we do not get so swept up in the materialism that we forget to take a step back and evaluate our lives.

 

Mike's Blog: 

www.ebeth.typepad.com/van_goal

 

Subscribe to CE
(It's free)

Go to Catholic Exchange homepage

MENU