The year is 2154, and humans are attempting to mine the valuable mineral unabtanium from the planet Pandora. Humans have virtually destroyed their own planet and desperately need extra-planetary resources to survive. Jake Sully, a wounded marine, is assigned to infiltrate the seemingly hostile indigenous aliens (the Na’vi) to win their trust and talk them into relocating their colony, which happens to be situated right atop a massive amount of unabtanium.

If he can successfully infiltrate the Na’vi people and negotiate their relocation, then the humans will not have to force them to move through military intervention (those of you who are observant already notice the political insinuations about the U.S. allegedly only going to war in Iraq for oil).

To infiltrate the Na’vi, Jake transposes his consciousness into an Avatar body under the supervision of Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver).

My wife, Laurie, and I lived in Munich, Germany for several years. When we got there we discovered that Germans, by and large, do not have built-in closets. In place of closets they use schranks, large pieces of furniture that function like a closet, something like an armoire, only a lot bigger.

They are huge pieces of furniture and for novices, as we were, they are quite complex to assemble. After spending hours putting ours together we realized we had made several mistakes. Thankfully, however, the schrank was functional. Breaking it down and putting it back together again was just out of the question. It would be just too much work. But over time the imperfections of our assembly job became annoying. It didn’t look right and the doors were awkward.

A year later, for a wide variety of reasons, we had to move. Moving is always a lot of work and presents many challenges. But we were excited for one reason: we had a strategic opportunity to re-build the schrank the way it should have been in the first place.

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If you follow ConversantLife somewhat regularly, you’ll notice a trend lately toward anti-consumerism (including some of my own posts). It seems the right thing to be—a lover of God and humanity more than a lover of things, a Christ follower who chooses abstracts like love and peace over crass commercial objects. I’ve been feeling the vibe myself. The Christmas season tends to inflame these sentiments even more. Christians, you know, can be very anti-establishment when it suits us.

All the talk of philanthropy and anti-consumerism has gotten me thinking. I’m sure lots of other people have thought about these things longer than I have. I’ll bet I could find a hundred books debating the virtues and vices of capitalism. I am not a student of economics, so pardon any embarrassing gaps in my understanding, but here’s a simple layman’s exploration.

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