Consumer Detox
Mark Powley
Zondervan, 2011, 272 pp., $14.99
If you have every bought anything in your life, and before you make another purchase, you need to get your hands on Consumer Detox. Be forewarned, though: Once you read this book, you will not buy anything the same way again.
New author Mark Powley delivers a fantastic and very challenging look at Western culture’s obsession with consumerism. Rather than pointing the finger at large corporations and marketing, he instead effectively directs the reader to examine the self and one’s relationship with one’s stuff. Consuer Detox will help you rethink your theology of consumption and God’s charge for us to give.
To help with this, the end of the book provides a great resource to think through each chapter that can be done alone, with your family or in a small group. It also provides simple examples of how we can change the way we consume.
No matter your economic status or how posh your lifestyle is, this book is a must-read. Powley will help you understand the hidden agendas of marketing and the deep level that consuming impacts us on a daily basis, even in the smallest of purchases. He then provides hope by explaining a better way to live in relationship to stuff.
