Alternatives to Spending for Pleasure

"How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Jesus of Nazareth

Wealthy Christians have been remarkably clever at finding non-obvious interpretations of this text throughout the ages. Doing so seems unnecessary; it is in all three Synoptics, it echoes ideas found throughout Jesus' teachings and the rest of the New Testament, and there have been witnesses in every age who have testified that voluntarily following Jesus' teachings on money has led them to joy.

The Jewish Scriptures have plenty to say about prudent living, and many of us were taught at an early age the importance of saving for a rainy day. We've been told that we shouldn't be a burden on others, that we need to save carefully for retirement, and that accepting charity is an evil to be avoided.
In our culture's common sense, Jesus' words sound foolish. "Don't lay up treasures on earth..." - but why not? God created the world and called it good. Shouldn't we enjoy the creation as much as possible while we're here - and doesn't that require spending? Wesley's insistence that we not spend more than is necessary sounds like a killjoy.
But the Christian life is not about common sense. Jesus' teachings frequently run counter to common sense, but if he is who we proclaim he is, they can't run counter to truth. What's the truth about wealth and spending? Two basic facts:

1. Many studies show that novelty is correlated with happiness. Spending money is one very easy way to experience novelty.
2. The General Board of Pensions recommends planning to make at least 80% (preferably 85%) of your final working income throughout the retirement years. At current minimum elder salary, that would require an overall portfolio balance of about $850,000 to have a 50/50 chance of lasting for 30 years.*
   $850,000 is six hundred eighteen times the annual median income.

Wesley's insistence that we not spend more than is necessary does not mean that we can't have any fun. We'll simply have to find other ways to experience novelty. It turns out that there are all kinds of ways to do this that aren't terribly expensive. People have always found them - there were, of course, happy people hundreds of years ago with a "standard of living" far "below" what we experience today, and there are cultures around the world filled with happy smiling children who do not have most of the toys considered obligatory in modern America. Spending is a drug, one that is very addictive and is encouraged in our culture. As we'll see next week, it's a deadly drug, but it mostly kills those who aren't using it.

Jesus' statement that we not lay up treasures on earth doesn't mean that we can't be prudent about the future - but there are ways to be prudent without laying up 618 times the median income! We've decided, in our culture, that we all need to be independent. Everyone needs to be prepared for everything. We all need to make sure that we are not a "burden" to anyone else. This philosophy has two serious problems:

1. On the face of it, it's obviously anti-Christian. Be independent? The Kingdom of God is not about independence, it's about relationship, about dependence on God and interdependence on each other.
2. It's impossible. No one is independent - we are all involved in a globally interdependent economy. Saving up enough money to "not be a burden" cannot be replicated on a world-wide basis, and saving up this much money is being a burden - on people around the world whose subsistence style farming has been replaced by cash crops and industry that put them at the mercy of the rich. It is not our hard work that enables us to earn incomes at our globally-high levels. We earn them because the global economy funnels money and resources to the rich nations. Our higher incomes enable us to create even higher wealth, which is essentially the power to extract income from others when we choose.

How else could we be prudent about the future? The way poor people always have, by investing in relationships. I don't need to be prepared for everything personally, I just need my community to be prepared. This is vastly less expensive, and the way that less wealthy cultures experience life.

*According to the Vanguard Retirement Nest Egg Calculator. Different sites will naturally give different results; predicting the economic future is a chancy proposition.
**Big nest eggs for anyone but the hyper-rich are a relatively recent phenomenon. We think of retirement as the norm, but being able to stop work while still healthy enough to enjoy world travel and having a sizable private home has always been the province of the wealthy. In America, we've forgotten what "wealthy" means to most of the world.

What do you think?
People around the world appear to live happy lives without spending as much money as we do. Are we the ones who are confused about what is really necessary for a good life, or are they? If we're both right - then why do we need to spend so much more than they do?