Am I the only one who has had enough of the culture of excess? Have you had enough of the monster size meals and our monster size stomachs? Have you had enough of our monster size vehicles and the garages they will not fit into because they are full of all the rest of our stuff!?

The other day I heard a Farmer Boys ad boasting that its breakfasts were so large that you might want to bring a handtruck so you didn’t hurt your back lifting the leftovers into your vehicle. It seems our culture has made a virtue out of gluttony and for the life of me I can’t find anything in the Bible to support this idea.

I’m from Alaska where being big is part of our identity, so I don’t think large is necessarily wrong. What does seem morally questionable to me is the explicit effort to get more and more stuff at ever increasing prices. It seems we have an unquenchable thirst for more, and it is not limited to material things.

We work excessive hours even in places where we lift up the ideals of wholeness and moderation in all things. How many of your family and friends work too much? We work hard, in part, to afford a comfortable lifestyle, safe neighborhoods and safe vehicles. There is always some “good” reason to put in those extra hours, until we realize we have overextended ourselves once again.

We push our children into habits of excessive activity at school. My academy age children are sometimes gone from home for 13 hours straight because of school and after-school activities that I encourage them to do. A second-grader recently told her physician that she wishes she could stay home more often but she doesn’t like to let down her parents.

What ever happened to the virtue of temperance among the Seventh-day Adventist people? Scripture calls us to temperance and moderation, not excess. In one of our Church’s official statements on modern lifestyles, there is a very powerful sentiment:

“Seventh-day Adventism advocates a simple, wholesome lifestyle, where people do not step on the treadmill of unbridled over-consumption, accumulation of goods, and production of waste. A reformation of lifestyle is called for, based on respect for nature, restraint in the use of the world’s resources, re-evaluation of one’s needs, and reaffirmation of the dignity of created life."

Perhaps it’s time to step off the “treadmill” you are on?