Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” -- Hebrews 13:5

I was responding to another post about the Female Dating Strategy sub elsewhere, but I had an inclination to create a separate post. Basically, most people seek contentment and, in fact, most people long for it. A lot of people that don't know Christ tend to try to fill that void with material gains. Moreover, some try to hold themselves to the image others set for their material gain. It's keeping up with the Jones's, so that whatever these folks have isn't as good as what someone else has. Welcome to the basis for consumerism. Now couple that with entitlement:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? -- James 4:1-12

And you get the basis for a lot of the problems in our society right now. As an example, my ex could be the poster girl for this mentality.

When she got a license her parents gave her a diesel hand me down Volvo. When another girl she had some sort of jealousy thing going on with got her license, her family gave her a new Mustang. Ex's blue eyes turned green, and her dad became a jerk for 'making' her drive the Volvo, etc. So dad got a lot of stick. Eventually she hit on the idea of putting gas in it and driving it around to kill it off, so she could try to get another car.

As ans aside, the cloud of smoke coming out of that exhaust was pretty impressive. Back in the day in Florida we'd have the mosquito fogging truck come around from the county periodically, and the smokescreen that Volvo made was on par with the fogging truck at full tilt. I saw it coming down the road and it looked like an old steam train where you could see the cloud of smoke before the train appeared.

Anyway, that worked like a charm because when it died her dad caved and she wound up with a brand new Honda CRX. Her dad got a break for a couple of weeks. Then she T-boned another car at a red light and totaled the Honda. Dad was back to being a jerk for not buying her another new car. At least that time he didn't cave, even with massive ongoing drama from her. And for the record, her family wasn't very well off, either, so the payments for that Honda were a major financial blow for them.

To recap, she saw another girl get a nicer car, and felt that she also deserved a nicer car. When she wrecked the nicer car, she also felt like her parents should give her another nice car. At the point where she was told she'd have to work to get another car, she was pretty openly hating on her parents. She was a pretty nasty cocktail of envy, materialism, and entitlement. If I'd been closer to Christ at that point in my life, I'd have either encouraged her to come closer to Christ, or had nothing to do with her. As it stands, I really regret not doing either now.

As another aside, her younger sibling didn't get a car at all when she was old enough to get a license.