Hope

Not In the Moment


Part of my job as a marketing professional is to understand consumer behavior. Part of my job as a professor of marketing is to teach my students to understand consumer behavior as well. Basically this means that they must be able to identify the influences and the lifestyle dimensions that impact an individual’s purchase decision. The goal is that through this understanding, organizations can help provide potential customers with better information, thereby improving the likelihood that they’ll be satisfied with their selection.

Not surprisingly, culture is one of the influences that has a profound impact on consumer behavior. Culture – the sum total of norms, behaviors, and values that guide a society’s conduct – is often an elusive quantity to define. Yet, its impact is relentless. Even with all the studies that have been conducted, we still don’t completely understand how it shapes who a person becomes.

To make sense of this difficult concept that is culture, researchers have formulated strategies for comparing cultures to one another. One such way that cultures are compared is based on where they fall along certain value dimensions. For example, one might compare how individualistic vs. collective a culture is. Or one might examine the role of youth and age in cultural interactions. Another aspect that is considered is whether a culture is more likely to value immediate gratification vs. delayed gratification. It would probably not surprise readers to learn that America ranks high on the immediate gratification scale (For more information see Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, Consumer Behavior, 2009). Delaying fulfillment of our desires is not one of our strong suits.

However, while this may be the American way, it certainly isn’t the biblical one. Proverbs 25:16-28 makes this clear. This series of verses extols the abandonment of excess. And it isn’t just in the physical realm that overindulgence should be avoided. As verse 27 shares, we shouldn’t be seeking excess praise, any more than we should be seeking an abundant feast. In fact, these verses not only preach the dreadful consequences of prideful indulgence, they share the antidote as well. For, when we aren’t concerned with consumption, we share. When we are focused on the present, we seek to acquire; when we are focused on eternity’s future, we seek to give. When we cease to live in the moment, we realize that even our enemies can be the benefactors of our good.

The reason for this is simple yet complicated. It’s only through recognizing that life is not made up of possessions, but of moments that we realize what we need to do is not live in the moment for today, but make the moment count for eternity.

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Growth

Humble Strength


I like helping people. It’s a weird thing to say (or to write), I know, but it’s true. I get more joy out of helping someone else accomplish their goals then reaching some milestone on my own. It’s probably one of the reasons I entered the teaching profession. And why I was never that good at competitive sports.

The thing with being a helper is that its sometimes hard to know when you are helping too much. I face this with my students all the time. It’s easy to tell them the answer when they ask a question, but much more beneficial to them if I make them think it through and come up with a response. Sometimes helping someone well means helping them figure it out on their own.

However, despite the fact that I like helping, I find that sometimes my desire to help is overwhelmed by my desire not to. There is a great tendency to make excuses for not wanting to help. It’s easy to justify our non-involvement in other’s lives in a variety of ways; we don’t have the time, resources, or ability. We aren’t sure how to best provide help. We don’t know how beneficial our help will really be. Or a thousand other excuses that enable our inaction.

The truth, however, is far from any of these seemingly justified responses. The truth, I’m afraid, is that often we don’t get involved simply because we don’t want to. In our pride, we want to to make others do things on their own – just like we fancy we did. In our arrogance, we think we know better, and so should everyone else. The reason we don’t help isn’t we can’t. We don’t help because in truth, we don’t care.

However, one of the great things about God is that He has already considered these lame justifications and countered them. Feel like you don’t know how to help, then great, because God already given you the first (and the only step) – to love as He did (John 15:12) Feel like you are too good to help, even better, because God says he will exalt that which is humble, and humble that which exalted, which sound like the perfect predicate to helping someone you view as “less” than you (Matthew 23:12). Feel like you don’t have enough strength to help, wonderful, because God says His strength is made perfect in your weakness (I Corinthians 12:9), and it’s hard to imagine anything being more helpful than God’s perfect strength.

Which brings me to the point of this discourse. When we think about helping and then decide not to its often because our helping exposes our soft spots, our vulnerabilities. Helping requires that we take a risk and we are sure that we are courageous to do that for another. And yet, we know that being humble is the mark of true strength. For when we are humble enough to serve, we demonstrate that we are strong enough to trust in God’s ways. When we are humble enough to serve, we remind ourselves, and those we help, that He is strong enough to save.

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