"And here's where I chill when I'm done rock climbing in my bathroom..."

I got scared out of my mind watching television yesterday.

I was flipping through the channels, trying to find something interesting to watch so I could justify not doing something more constructive, like writing, or praying, or sleeping. I stumbled on a show on MTV titled something like, “Top 15 Mostest Fab-est Teenager Cribs.” I was immediately engrossed.

As I joined the excursion already in progress, some ill-spoken teenager (sorry, oxymoron) was giving the MTV videographer a tour of his house the size of a shopping mall. He showed off the indoor go-cart track, his IMAX movie theatre and both stories of his bedroom. He took us to the fully-stocked video arcade game room and the water park in the back yard. I kept waiting to see what this kid had done that allowed him to buy all this amazing stuff. I had never seen so much opulence for someone who had a hard time talking and walking at the same time.

But before I could figure it out, the cameras took us to the next home where a pleasant young woman led a tour of an even larger mansion with even more jaw-dropping accoutrements. Her bedroom was in a refurbished medieval tower, complete with helipad and circular escalator.

As watched these tours by adolescent exhibitionists, I kept trying to learn what they had done to obtain the coin that allowed them to live in such excess. I’m not particularly current with pop culture, but none of these young people looked like anyone I recognized from the Partridge Family or the Osmond Brothers. How did these kids earn so much money? Did they launch an Internet lawn-mowing business or babysit for Brangelina?

Finally, I figured out that these young landowners didn’t earn that money – their parents did. Periodically during the video tours, the affluent parents of these teens would pop up on the screen saying something like, “When we built this over-the-top house, we wanted to make sure we would overindulge the kids, too. Because, you know, it’s all about the kids.”

These kids didn’t work to earn any of these amazing homes. They just happened to be born into families with such astounding earning ability. Through no effort of their own, the teens got to reap the rewards.

Now don’t get me wrong – I love amassing stuff as much as anyone. I like lots of things in abundance – money, tin roof sundaes, sleep. But the very act of teenagers showing off their preposterous possessions – which they didn’t do a thing to earn – really caught me off guard. Is the point of this pageant of possession to make other teenagers jealous? I guess it’s not fair that some poor kids are stuck with slacker parents who refuse to work harder so Billy can have a yacht in his moat.

Not surprisingly, the Bible takes a different approach. David decided that counting his stuff – in this case, the number of citizens of Judah and Israel over which he reigned – would be a good idea. But he had in Joab a commander who knew that counting what he had wasn’t the way to achieve enlightenment, and was an affront to God. “…why does the lord my king delight in this thing?” he asks in 2 Samuel 24:3. A few verses later, David realizes the futility of keeping score of his stuff and repents.

We’ve gotten really upside down when celebrate not only excess, but excess that was a windfall that we did nothing to earn. (It’s almost like Proverbs 19:10 from was made for this show’s tagline – “Luxury is not fitting for a fool.”) Wouldn’t it be more elevating to have a show that chronicles the 15 Mostest Fab-est Selfless Acts Done By Teenagers? That’s a show I’d watch. Right after the Partridge Family.

Have you ever felt that your pursuit of "stuff" had gotten out of control?