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Loneliness and Suicide, Products of Materialism

Can you guess who said this? "I sit in my house in Buffalo and sometimes I get so lonely it’s unbelievable. Life has been so good to me. I’ve got a great wife, good kids, money, my own health--and I’m lonely and bored.... I often wondered why so many rich people commit suicide. Money sure isn’t a cure-all." O.J. Simpson in People Magazine, June 12, 1978.

Ralph Barton a famous cartoonist left this as his suicide note: "I have had few difficulties, many friends, great successes; I have gone from wife to wife, and from house to house, visited great countries of the world, but I am fed up with inventing devices to fill up 24 hours of the day."

When we look to material things to make us happy, we are saying that God’s love for us is not enough.

"I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess." - Martin Luther [2]

Sources:

[1]Overcoming Materialism by Dr. John MacArthur. Page 37

[2]10,000 sermon illustrations. 2000 (electronic ed.). Dallas: Biblical Studies Press.

From a sermon by David Scudder, The Wrecking of the World’s Wealth Part I 10/25/2009

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