William Cavanagh’s book creates a wonderful insight into understanding the Christian faith and the importance of Christian thinking with regard to consumer habits including what the “free market” should entail. Is the “free market” really free ? This book is not provocative but has a sobering effect in regards to what it actually means to be a Christian in a “free-market” world. Like it or not even faith itself has become a commodity that has been consumed thanks to the pressures of advertising and marketing.
We all take so much for granted and get sucked into advertising, marketing and globalisation because it is the way we have lived for so long. To cite Cavanagh “…I want to focus our attention on concrete Christian aspects to discern and create economic practices, spaces and transactions that are truly free” (Cavanagh 2008:viii). In other words he urges Christians to rethink and change their habits and attitude towards consumerism and globalisation. He encourages us to strive for the common good.…show more content… There is nothing more evident in our world today than the want to pursue our own individual desires. It seems that we all have this insatiable appetite to constantly fulfil these desires which actually have no end. We are forever bombarded with news about new self-help books explaining how to get the ‘things we want’ but is it not false advertising stating that you can get what you want materialistically – no matter what, as long as you listen to your own individual desires which apparently will make you happy ? As Augustinians examination of human desire states, the pursuit of happiness under capitalism is about as unstable as a sinking
