Is Consumption an End or a Means to an End?

In our fast-paced consumer-driven society have you ever stopped to wonder if what you consume actually matters? More than that, have you asked if consumption is an end or a means to an end? It’s easy for us to be hyper-focused on the food we consume and how it impacts our bodies. But are we as vigilant and focused about what we consume mentally and how it impacts not only our bodies, but our souls?

Let’s unpack this.

The Foundation

When I was a kid, there was a school play where the main character was a robot and the “theme” of the play was Input/Output.  As I remember, the title song’s chorus went something like, “Input, Output, what goes in is what comes out, Input, Output, daily you must choose.”  Since it was a Christian School, the context was exactly how you might’ve read it.  The things that we surround ourselves with daily, i.e. the music we listen to, movies we watch, entertainment choices we make, and company we keep all influence us.  They are all the inputs into the “hard drive” of our bodies, if you will, our hearts.  These inputs result in unholy outputs such as our language, our behavior, and our attitude towards God.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 12:34 NKJV

“For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

This is the principle where Input = Output.  The sin and darkness that we allow into our hearts, whether through hearing, watching, or spending time with the wrong things, will eventually fill up and overflow to our outward behavior.

Now let’s take this principle and apply it to our modern society’s promotion of consumption.

The Problem of Consumption

If we stopped and thought about it, our entire society in the United States is built on the principle of consumption, or more pointedly consumerism. I’ve previously highlighted this intentional model developed and implemented by the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays (1920s). At its base level, that’s the environment into which we have been born and raised. From food to toys, cars to TVs we are bombarded with the idea of consumption. The vast majority of us do far more consuming than producing. We don’t produce our own food or goods; we rely on others to do so and then pay them for that. We’ve taken the vacation mentality of pure consumption mixed with vegging out and extended it to our day to day lives. We work to pay for our consumption. Work doesn’t end in worship, as we’ve covered extensively in our podcast. Instead, work is a means to an end in consumption. Interestingly there is a phrase that describes this consumption, and it’s the Greek-based homo phagon, meaning humans who consume.

In our ever-increasing digital age, consumption is at an all-time high. A couple decades ago it was one thing to read blogs or do google searches for information, consuming not as an end in itself but as a means for information and knowledge to perhaps form an opinion or make a decision. Perhaps podcasts to some extent could be included in that discussion. But by far digital media, from all the apps that we are being fed and social media content, is all designed around and indeed dependent on consumption. Continuous scrolling, shorts, video feeds, character limits, all of it is designed not for long form consumption for the purpose of production, but for a continuous buffet of short form consumption as an end in itself.

If we returned to our analogy of food earlier, what would the net result be of continuous consumption? It would obviously be obesity. Downstream of this, our short-term, self-gratifying decisions to over-consume would have long-term effects. Obesity, in addition to disease, lethargy, mental health issues, physical constraints all of the outward manifestations of excess food consumption are visibly evident and often societally marginalized. But not the mental obesity that is the result of vast media consumption. That’s unseen and the great danger is not recognizing the symptoms, indeed the negative effects that it’s having on us as individuals and society as a whole. It has not only produced a rather catchy slang for these effects, brain rot, but at its very core consumption as an end in itself keeps us from fulfilling our primary purpose as producers, that is producers to the glory of God.

The Solution to Consumption is Production, to the Glory of God

Genesis 1 reminds us of the original purpose that God had for man as created in His own image (imago Dei). It was to subdue and take dominion, be fruitful and multiply. In practice, we see this in God giving Adam work, which was to be done to the glory of God. In other words, God gave man the paradigm of work-worship, production with the end goal of glorifying the Creator.

Returning one final time to our analogy of food consumption, God has designed the human digestive system such that it takes the good food that we eat and turns it into fuel that gives us the mental and physical ability, strength, and energy to be productive in the various callings that He has given us. Those things which are not needed or are perhaps consumed in excess are excreted as waste. The parallel to what we consume with our brains could not be more evident. Are we to mentally consume following that pattern? Principally we are to consume God’s Word, but this form of mental consumption is also how we learn and grow, i.e. production. What we mentally input into our brain should be for this production to the glory of God. Unfortunately, we allow ourselves much more consumption of those things which are someone else’s excrement. Even still, those things in which we regularly consume for the sole purpose of consumption either mentally constipate us or cause nothing but the production of our own waste. Have I gone too far with the analogy? Maybe, but you get the point.

What goes in is what comes out. Daily we must choose.

For a meditation, see Psalm 101