Is your wallet fat and your soul empty?

A lot of that chain mail can really be worth reading and passing on. Like this one, which went around in 1999 or thereabouts:

The paradox of our time in history is that
we spend more, but have less;
we buy more, but enjoy it less.
We have bigger houses and smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
more medicine, but less wellness.
We read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
These are the times of tall men, and short character;
steep profits, and shallow relationships.
These are the days of two incomes, but more divorce;
of fancier houses, but broken homes.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life;
we've added years to life, not life to years;
we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.

This was also used as the beginning of an eye-opening piece titled "Wanting more in an age of plenty" on Christianity Today. Some things may have changed remarkably since the time it was written (2000) but it's still got a lot of food for thought. An excerpt:

Whatever our differences, most of us wish for a culture that:

• Welcomes children into families with mothers and fathers who love them, and into an environment that nurtures families.
• Rewards initiative and restrains exploitative greed, thus building a strong economy that shrinks the underclass.
• Balances individual liberties with communal well-being.
• Encourages close relationships within extended families and with supportive neighbors and caring friends, people who celebrate when you're born, care about you as you live, and miss you when you're gone.
• Values our diversity while finding unity in shared ideals.
• Develops children's capacities for empathy, self-discipline, and honesty.
• Provides media that offer social scripts of kindness, civility, attachment, and fidelity.
• Regards relationships as covenants and sexuality not as mere recreation but as life-uniting and love-renewing.
• Takes care of the soul by developing a deeper spiritual awareness of a reality greater than self and of life's resulting meaning, purpose, and hope.

Thanks partly to the emerging renewal movement, several indicators of social pathology have recently shown encouraging turns. Although still at historically high levels, teen sex, pregnancy, and violence, for example, have all subsided somewhat from their peaks around 1993.Further progress toward the new American dream requires more than expanding our social ambulance services at the base of the social cliffs. It also requires that we identify the forces that are pushing people over the cliffs. And it requires our building new guard rails at the top—by making our business and economics more family-friendly, by reforming our media, by renewing character education in our schools, and by better balancing me-thinking with we-thinking.

Full article at Christianity Today