BY CHRIS BLAKE

n 1918, after “the war to end all wars,” an insidious enemy killed more people than were killed during World War I. About 20 million died at the merciless hands of an influenza epidemic.

Months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, another killer lurks. This enemy is every bit as insidious and lethal as the 1918 outbreak and has been infecting our bloodstream for years, creating countless casualties without our even recognizing it. This enemy is called affluenza.

af-flu-en-za n l. an epidemic of stress, overwork, waste, indebtedness, and misplaced priorities caused by dogged pursuit of affluence. 2. an unsustainable addiction to economic growth. 3. the bloated, sluggish, heartless, and unfulfilled feeling that results from this addiction.

According to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) television program Affluenza, money plays a major role in 90 percent of U.S. divorces. By the age of 20 the average American has seen one million commercials. Forty percent of all mail and two thirds of each newspaper are ads. Americans carry more than a billion credit cards.

And yet people complain, “I have no life.” We spend our dwindling lives exhausted, maintaining . . . things. “The good life” is transformed to “the goods life.”

When Vickie, a student at Union College, returned after three months in Guatemala last summer, she experienced culture shock.

“It’s the shopping malls here,” she told me. “The extravagance is obscene. What all this money could do in Guatemala! People walk through malls with eyes glazed, looking to buy, and they are the ones being sold.”

Children, of course, are not immune to this selling. The kids’ game Mall Madness promotes wanton, soulless spending. When I enter a shopping mall, I feel that I am on the enemy’s ground. You might think I’m overreacting, but I think more people pay allegiance to Satan through materialism than through satanism, atheism, and terrorism combined.

After Adventist volunteers return to North America from short-term mission trips to impoverished regions, the volunteers’ constant, incredulous refrain in describing the poorer nationals is “and yet they’re so happy!” Don’t we get it yet? The nationals aren’t happy in spite of their lack of overwhelming luxuries; they’re happy, in part, because they lack overwhelming luxuries. They rely on each other more than on their possessions.

In her book Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World, Linda Breen Pierce outlines 10 steps in a “recipe for simplicity.” Each step involves focusing, slowing down, cutting back, or saying no. The old New England proverb could serve as a motto: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”

After the September 11 attacks, “God bless America” became a wildly popular slogan. But what does it really mean to be blessed by God? The Bible paints a realistic picture of the dangers of prosperity. Deuteronomy 8 cautions to take heed “lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built goodly houses . . . and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God” (verses 12-14, RSV).

Proverbs 30:8, 9 requests this blessing: “Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God” (RSV).

Of course, it’s not just the poor who steal. Like the Bible’s publicans, today’s businesses and corporations steal away and also kill abroad. U.S. tobacco kills more people each day in developing countries than the total number killed in the September 11 attacks.

Moreover, using the gross national product as a “national health indicator” is a gross misnomer. Every oil spill, divorce, and cancer detection enhances the GNP. Fortunately, when we consider the billions of dollars used to research and treat diseases—from leukemia to cerebral palsy—affluenza is one disease we can remedy by spending less, not more.

In olden days people died from consumption—another name for tuberculosis. Today we also die—spiritually, emotionally, socially, physically—from “consumption.” Materialism is quietly killing us by the millions.

God bless the world. Bless us with neither poverty nor riches. Save us from this comfortable scourge.

The cure for affluenza is found in one word. Enough.

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Chris Blake teaches at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska.