friend in the intelligence community once told me a story (and trust me, these folks don't talk much). Amid the shivers of the Cold War, a Soviet pilot defected to America, MIG and all. After the usual debriefings, the government began to prepare him for life in his new country.

One day his hosts took him to the axiomatic institution of American life: the grocery store. The Russian walked around a few minutes, then turned to his guides and declared that this was fake, a show--a Potemkim village designed to impress him with the American way of life. So they put him back in the car and drove to another one (certainly they wouldn't have faked two). Sure enough, Ivan knew he was being duped, again: No one really lived like this. Eventually (I assume) Ivan caught on: yes, people really do live like this.

Last week, while in a grocery store, I noticed some bottled water at the beginning of an aisle. I followed the flow, walking past one brand, then another, and another, and on and on, a river of bottles--big bottles, little bottles, blue bottles, green bottles, brown bottles, long and slender bottles, short and squat bottles; glass bottles, plastic bottles, six-packs, 20-packs, bottles with French and Italian names, bottles with water from about every creek and deep spring in America. Down the entire aisle they ran--one brand after another, one kind after another, for every taste, fetish, and thirst. I'm talking about water--water!--for crying out loud.

Tell me this ain't sick. I'm not even thinking about it in the context of the fact that about . . . what?--2 billion people around the world drink out of the same water that others defecate in. I'm talking about it in its own context, that of a consumer society so pampered it has created a market for its own designer water. Though not ready to declare this a symbol of Spenglerian doom for the nation, maybe I should. Are we so rich, so spoiled, so opiate in affluence that our shelves have more varieties of water than hospitals in some countries have medicines?

I read about a Manhattan club that seats you at a diamond-studded table if you order a $5,000 bottle of champagne. But that's the exception; the rule is that middle-class American schnooks, like us, live amid wealth so pervasive that we not only no longer see it, but we have come to expect it, as if we deserve it, as if it were a natural right.

Only because I was thinking about this column did I even notice the orgy of bottled water before me; otherwise, I would have walked past as if it were as normal as never having to question where your next meal is coming from.

And, of course, luxuriating amid all this wealth and materialism is the body of Christ. Since the founding of Christianity, there has never been a church that has partaken of the wealth and creature comforts that the church in many countries of the world enjoys today. The question is, At what cost? Such affluence surely influences our spirituality--and not for the good, either. How could it? Since when has wealth and material abundance fostered the Christian virtues of self-denial and self-sacrifice? Can coming home to refrigerators stuffed with more food than we can eat, and owning one or two cars, and taking yearly vacations, and shopping online, and having the latest in home computers and DVD players make it easier to love not the world nor the things in the world? Please!

I'm not talking about the "rich" now. They at least know that they're rich, and they can, if they choose, heed the biblical cautions given them. I'm talking, instead, about us middle-class schnooks who--amid our cell phones, designer water, stereos, air-conditioning, DVDs, and digital cameras--are duped enough to think that because we're just middle class we're not in danger of being spiritually pickled by our own prosperity.

Is it just coincidence that in the affluent countries the church is so moribund?

Hardly.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus (but not before the mall closes).

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Clifford Goldstein is editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide.