I recently heard John Eldredge, author of the popular book Wild at Heart, address a major conference audience. It was a riveting talk punctuated from the Gospel of John with movie clips from the likes of "Gladiator" and "Last of the Mohicans."

The major theme of the talk was that we as Christians are naive as to the reality and severity of the daily battle between good and evil that is taking place all around us.

As I listened I couldn't help but think that one of the major arenas (dare I even say, THE major arena?) where that battle is taking place for many of us is in our financial lives.

We live in a very materialistic environment. Webster's definition of materialism is, "The belief that everything can be explained by physical matter." That is a theological statement. It denies the existence of the spiritual or transcendental. That makes materialism more than just another 'ism' that happens to lure people into consumer debt and fill their marriages with conflict, and so on. It is nothing ...