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Available for over a year

The conjecture published yesterday by National Debt Line that just under 8 million of us might be struggling financially in January suggests that those affected might have been spending too much over Christmas. Or is 'spending' the right word? I believe it is, but throughout last year I noticed that another verb was being used as an inappropriate surrogate for a wide range of human activities. And that verb is 'consume' with its associated noun 'consumer.' You may not have picked this up, but I remember clearly and indeed noted in my diary how contributors to this revered programme referred to university students as consumers; people who a enjoyed a night at the theatre or cinema were dubbed 'consumers'. Indeed just last week, in an item about gambling, patrons of betting shops were called 'consumers.' Now I know that dictionary aficionados will be quick to point out that 'to consume’ can mean to buy services as well as to ingest food, but it seems to me that to subsume a whole range of activities under one descriptor is to diminish rather than embellish our humanity. People who go to university are there to study, not to consume education. People who go to a theatre are an audience not consumers of plays and actors. People who go into a bookies are punters not consumers. We should not allow ourselves to have our great variety of human activities morphed to accord with a consumerist mentality. And, though it may seem odd, my conviction about this has theological foundations. Every major religious tradition – and certainly Judaism and Christianity – bears witness to a God who will not be constrained or limited by one image. God, in the Bible, appears as a friend to Abraham, a laughter-maker to his wife Sarah and a wrestler to their grandson Jacob. Jesus appears as a disturber as well as a comforter, an associate of the intelligentsia as well as a companion of the dispossessed. God is technicolour rather than monochrome, a lover of variety rather than a devotee of uniformity. So the assertion that we are made in God's image is an indication that we were meant to be multifaceted rather than monotonous. And the words, the labels, which describe what we do should be indicative of the diversity in all of us. We do not just consume. We purchase, we watch, we learn, we celebrate. Yes... and sometimes we spend too much.