De-accumulating also means not buying things unless and until you actually need them. Compulsive purchases rarely translate into a wise use of resources. When you buy things, use them until they need to be replaced. Most of us use things until we get tired of them, even though they are still very useful. That’s how a woman I know ended up with ten bottles of shampoo under her sink. Use what you buy and once it has outlasted its usefulness, get rid of it. Sure, that fried-chicken bucket with the picture of a NASCAR driver on the side might be worth something someday, but do you really want to keep it around for decades to find out? (Mark Tabb, Living with Less, 88-89).

Our materialistic bent in life as Christians should not be surprising. Quite often even our faith, especially as Western Christians, is materialistic rather than primarily spiritual, although there is widespread interest in the larger culture on "spirituality." That this focus in being accented in more and more books is shown by the fact that early in his book, The Cross Examination of Jesus (Waterbrook, 2006), Randy Singer recreates for the reader Jesus’ healing of the paralytic in Luke 5:20-26. He emphasizes that Jesus’ first priority was the man’s spiritual condition, not his physical condition. A few pages later he raises the question, "Are Jesus’ priorities ours?" Singer writes:

Many in today’s churches would reverse the priorities of Christ. "Get up and walk" becomes the main thing; "your sins are forgiven" is an afterthought (Singer, 36).

In case his readers disagree with him, Singer takes us to two typical church meetings. The first one, taking place in Madison Square Garden, is led by a well-known television evangelist. At the climax of the service people come forward to be healed, physically healed. Singer notes:

Strangely, nobody comes on stage to announce "only" a change in his or her spiritual condition. This crowd wants miracles, not just repentance. Sure, they know Jesus can heal us spiritually, but what about our bodies? He wants to heal us physically, too....To say that Jesus doesn’t answer prayers for healing today would be to call Him a liar.

But I am saying that Jesus’ doesn’t owe us physical healing. He’s not obligated to heal all of our ailments anytime we utter the magic prayer words. And I’m also saying that the spiritual, not the physical, should be our primary concern (Singer, 37-38).

In the second church meeting, a mid-week prayer service, the pastor of the church preaches for thirty minutes, and then takes prayer requests. The vast majority of the requests are for those who are sick, who have some sort of cancer, or are undergoing treatment, church members on the road who need traveling mercies, a member who needs a job. In short, the focus is largely the same in this meeting, although there are no healings. In other words, the focus is on the physical and material needs of believers, not on the spiritual ones. Singer writes:

There is, of course, nothing wrong with heartfelt prayers for our physical needs. Does Jesus care about those needs? You bet. He healed hundreds, maybe thousands. Even the hairs on our head are all numbered (see Matthew 10:30). Every physical challenge we face has been filtered by God. He uses our weaknesses to glorify Him and to help us grow in grace. But He doesn’t want us to focus primarily on the physical needs of this world....

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