Waste

Fine dining typically means splurging a little for high-quality meat or fresh seafood. But what if money were truly no object?

Restaurant owners and chefs around the world create original dining experiences for those who want unique experiences. You know, like spending nearly $10,000 on a pizza or $1,000 on an ice cream sundae.

Here are a few of the world’s most expensive meals:

• Masa — New York. Dinner Omakase menu per person: $750 sushi-eating experience.

• SubliMotion —Dubai. Dinner per person: around $2,000. That’s more than the average family will spend for an entire month on food.

• De Daltons – The Netherlands. The Golden Boy Burger: $5,532.79. Chef Robbert Jan de Veen’s “The Golden Boy” is made with 100% Wagyu A5 meat, as well as Beluga caviar, king crab, Spanish Paleta Ibérico, white truffle, and English cheddar.

• Renato Viola — Salerno, Italy. Louis XIII Pizza: $9,184.32. Pizza toppings include: mozzarella di bufala, lobster, and caviar all flown in from all different parts of the world.

• The Fortress Resort and Spa — Sri Lanka. The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence Dessert: $14,500. The dessert features Italian cassata flavored with Irish cream with a pomegranate and mango compote. The base is adorned with an 80-carat aquamarine stone.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Salvation and The Lord's Supper—They're both offered free of charge (although Jesus paid the price that we could never have paid), and the Lord's Supper is better than anything on this list. (2) Social Justice—While millions of people are malnourished, a few people can afford outrageously expensive, luxurious meals. (3) Simplicity; Provision—God promised to provide daily bread, not daily slice of "Louis XIII" pizza. (4) Hospitality—Hospitality is more about love and openness than about trying to offer a "world's best meal." Encourage people to keep it simple.

Since 1953, when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit, over 4,000 people have successfully climbed Mount Everest. Unfortunately, the climbers have also littered the mountainside with garbage, such as used oxygen bottles, ropes, and tents. Today, Everest is so overcrowded and full of trash that it has been called the “world’s highest garbage dump.”

No one knows exactly how much waste is on the mountain, but it is in the tons. Litter is spilling out of glaciers, and camps are overflowing with piles of human waste. Climate change is causing snow and ice to melt, exposing even more garbage that has been covered for decades. All that waste is trashing the natural environment, and it poses a serious health risk to everyone who lives in the Everest watershed.

Both governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have attempted—and are attempting—to clean up the mess on Mount Everest. In 2019, the Nepali government launched a campaign to clear 10,000 kilograms (22,000 pounds) of trash from the mountain. They also started a deposit initiative. Anyone visiting Mount Everest has to pay a $4,000 deposit, and the money is refunded if the person returns with eight kilograms (18 pounds) of garbage—the average amount that a single person produces during the climb.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Legacy - We should all pause for a moment and think, “In my climb up the ladder of success, what am I leaving behind? Will others have to pick through my "garbage"?2) Sinfulness; Cleansing – We all have a filthy old nature which is desperately in need of the deep cleaning and spiritual renewal that only God’s Spirit can perform. “He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

Pets these days are living more luxurious lives than ever as humans increasingly pour money into making their properties fetching for nonhuman family members. For instance, Robbie Timmers went all-out adding a contemporary-style house on his property in Thailand. White with chic black trim, the two-story, air-conditioned abode has security cameras, smart lighting, and a sliding door to the porch. Mr. Timmers would have added a swimming pool, too, but his wife objected. Her reasoning? It seemed unnecessary for the home’s intended occupants: the couple’s five dogs.

Mr. Timmers love his dogs’ house, but he adds, “I have to be honest, my dogs never set foot in the house,” says Mr. Timmers, who spent about $10,000 on it. The mini-house mostly sits empty. “It has everything,” he adds. “Just no dogs.”

Then there’s Doug the Pug, a lovable pooch whose penchant for wearing elaborate costumes has earned him over one billion viewers across social-media platforms. At the Nashville, Tennessee home Doug shares with his owners, the pug has his own 15-foot closet for his outfits, including tiny cowboy hats, cashmere sweaters, a rainbow of sunglasses, custom harnesses from London, and a Boda Skins leather jacket.

Among other perks, Doug also only drinks purified water at home and routinely sees a canine herbalist and acupuncturist.

Possible Preaching Angles:

This is extreme, but are we excessively spending on the things that don’t ultimately matter?

Do you realize that 30 percent of all men of working age in this culture are not working? There are many reasons for this. Some workers lack the skills needed for all but the lowest-paid jobs. Some jobs have been eliminated because of technology advances or cheaper overseas labor. Some have discovered government benefits that enable them to avoid working.

A study for the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, reports that “75 percent of inactive prime-age men are in a household that received some form of government transfer payment.” The researcher believes that government disability benefits in particular are one reason for the lack of interest in work.

Another trend toward irresponsibility is the growth of the video-gaming culture in our society. Many young men and women are spending countless hours every day or many hours of the night just gaming away. They may lose sleep, college opportunities, and work advancement with addictions to meaningless competitions that consume time and energy but produce nothing.

Possible Preaching Angle:

What would you call a pastime where a person spends all their time, all their money, all their resources, pursuing things that are not real and that never will benefit them or society? We would call it slavery. And those who are enslaved by such meaningless pursuits ultimately lose all respect for themselves. Work gives us dignity, because work itself is dignified.

At one point in time, you couldn’t walk 30 feet on a New York City block without encountering a pay phone. In the early 2000s, there were around 30,000 public street pay phones registered with the city. But in May of 2022, a curious crowd gathered in Times Square as a power saw cut through the base of a pay phone on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 50th Street. That was the final New York City public pay telephone.

In the age of the smartphone, it may be hard to recall the importance of pay phones in the daily life of New Yorkers. New York is a dense, pedestrian city. It wasn’t until the 1940s that even half of Americans had a phone. If you need to make a call on the go, the pay phone was really necessary.

“I hate to use the word nostalgia,” said Mark Thomas, who has been documenting pay phones in New York City. “But I think people miss a period of time when a call meant something. When you planned it and you thought about it, and you took a deep breath and you put your quarter in.”

New York City’s chief technology officer explained the need for the change: “Just like we transitioned from the horse and buggy to the automobile, and from the automobile to the airplane to the digital evolution has progressed from pay phones to high-speed Wi-Fi kiosks to meet the demands of our rapidly changing daily communications needs.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Communication—No matter how much the forms of communication change, human beings (friends, spouses, parents, church members) will always have a need to communicate. And God will always have a way to communicate with us. (2) Change—Shows that not all change is bad. Some changes are inevitable, even when they come with losses.

Many adults under 35 have stopped playing it safe with money. Instead of banking as much of their pay as they used to, they’re saving less, spending more, and pursuing passion projects or risky careers. A recent study found that 45 percent of people aged 18 to 35 “don’t see a point in saving until things return to normal.”

One 27-year-old said she was prudent about almost everything until the end of last year, when she had an epiphany: “I don’t want to spend my life being so careful and cautious.” Another young adult cited the shaky state of the world. “I’m not going to deprive myself some of the comforts of life now for a future that feels like it could be ripped away from me at any moment … I’m going to spend my money now.”

Many younger adults say the isolation of pandemic life triggered the decision to enjoy the moment, no matter the financial consequences. For others, the motivation has come from worries over climate change, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, domestic political instability, soaring inflation, through-the-roof housing costs, and a topsy-turvy stock market.

Every single person has an intimate relationship with time. The Oxford English Dictionary informs us that the word “time” is the most commonly used noun. “Year” is third and “day” and “week” come in in the top-20.

Researchers have found that the average person sleeps, or attempts to sleep, about nine hours a day. If the person lives to 80, he or she will sleep for 30 years. People who die at 80 will also have lived 700,000 hours, with 90,000 of those hours on the job.

What are we doing when we aren’t sleeping or working? In the US, the second-largest use of our time is … television. According to Nielsen, as recently as 2018, we spent four hours a day watching it. That’s broadcast television in real time. We’re not talking time-shifting DVR or YouTube, just plain TV. And nearly a quarter of that time is commercials. Multiply the numbers out over a lifetime, and you’re likely to spend well over two years of your life just watching commercials. TV isn’t even a majority of the media we consume. According to the same Nielsen study we spend 11 hours a day consuming media, which includes reading, listening, and watching.

The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote:

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.

Kris Lackey thought he had hurricane-proofed his manuscripts. An English professor at the University of New Orleans, he had saved his fiction and papers (including the novel he had half-finished) via hard drive, flash drive, and hard copy. But as the murky waters continued to rise and he was forced to evacuate his home, he left his papers and computer equipment behind. Even so, he left them in high places—tables and bookshelves well out of harm's way. He was, by no means, expecting the 11 feet of water that completely besieged his house during Hurricane Katrina.

Returning more than a month later, Lackey found pages floating in mud, completely indecipherable, as well as what was left of his flash and hard drives. Nothing was retrievable. Nothing.

Treadmills are fun if you want to get a little exercise. Unfortunately, for many people, religion feels like running on a treadmill: they're working hard but getting nowhere. That's a good image for one way to approach the Christian life, especially if you consider the history behind the treadmill. Elyse Fitzpatrick writes:

In Victorian England, treadmills weren't found in air-conditioned health clubs—they were found in prisons. Treadmills, or treadwheels, as they were called, were used in penal servitude as a form of punishment. Some treadwheels were productive, grinding wheat or transporting water, but others were purely punitive in nature. Prisoners were punished by spending the bulk of their day walking up an inclined plane, knowing that all their hard labor was for nothing. The only hope the prisoner had was that, at some day in the future, he would have "paid his debt" to society and would be set free. He couldn't even look on his labor at the end of the day and know that, if nothing else, he'd been productive.

As you struggle with [sin in your life], remember that [Christ] has set you free indeed and that you're no longer sentenced to be chained to the treadmill of sin and failure. He has paid the ransom demanded for your release from sin, and you're now walking in the freedom of the glory of the sons and daughters of God.

The notion that "the first will be last" doesn't seem to bother some folks. When Apple's revolutionary iPhone hit the market in late June, 2007, it sold for $599. Ten weeks later the price went down to $399—a 33 percent reduction. While many who bought the iPhone at the original price were outraged, others would have paid any price to be among the first to own the new technology.

"If they told me at the outset the iPhone would be $200 cheaper the next day," one customer explained, "I would have thought about it for a second—and still bought it. It was $600, and that was the price I was willing to pay for it."

Early adopters—consumers who purchase new technology as soon as it becomes available—relish the prestige of taking home a new toy before anyone else. Despite the fact that electronics often become more reliable in the second and third generations and retail prices for technology always decrease with time, early adopters are undeterred by the risks. The pleasure of owning a rare product far outweighs the financial sacrifice. In the words of one satisfied iPhone owner, "Even if it works one day, it's worth it."

For many, it's the not the technology itself but the distinction of ownership that's attractive. Such is life in "a land of plenty" that still wants more—and wants it first. We want our neighbors looking over the fence at our gizmos and gadgets. We want someone else to experience the sting of envy. We're no longer satisfied with keeping up with the Joneses. We want to be the Joneses.

According to New York Times columnist Tom Standage, "Americans are squandering billions of dollars on bottled water." Outsold only by soda, thirsty Americans consume an average of 24 gallons of bottled water annually. The motivation for the choice is not due to taste. Blind taste tests show that "most people cannot tell the difference." Neither is bottled water purer than tap water. Commenting on the situation, The Week magazine attributes our irrational consumer preference for expensive water to marketing.

Thanks to years of advertising, we now associate bottled water with "purity and cleanliness," and glistening fashion models refreshing themselves after their workouts. But given that 1 billion people around the world are desperate for clean water, this is more than silly. Think of it this way: Ignoring perfectly good public water supplies, we waste billions importing largely indistinguishable water from the mountains of France and Maine. Just a fraction of that money could deliver clean water to millions of people, saving countless lives. Consider that bitter-tasting paradox next time you pay $2 for something that comes free out of your tap.

That's when Lee sat down at a local Internet café in the southern city of Taegu. He logged in on Wednesday, August 3, and spent the next three days playing the game, stopping only for trips to the bathroom and quick naps on a makeshift cot.

When Lee's mother had not heard from him by Friday, she asked some of his friends to find him and bring him home. After reaching the café, they confronted Lee, who told them that he would leave as soon as his game was finished. A few minutes later he collapsed and was taken to the hospital. He died shortly after arriving.

A Taegu provincial official told reporters, "We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion."

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

—Humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

In 2002, the state of Missouri awarded a grant to their police department's Youth Outreach Unit. The purpose of the $273,000 grant was to battle Goth culture.

Although Goth and Gothic are terms with historical significance, beginning in the late 1970s the word Goth began to refer to devotees of a certain type of music. The music has punk-rock origins, and fans developed a gothic look. That look includes dressing in black, wearing white face makeup, painting fingernails and lips black, and a fascination with death and the supernatural.

Funded by the state grant, the Youth Outreach Unit attempted to tackle the problem of "saving" young people from that subculture. The initial cost of setting up the program was $141,000. In the course of their efforts, the unit made a discovery that necessitated returning the remainder of the grant to the state. A total of $132,000 was given back after the Youth Outreach Unit was unable to find any Missouri youth who were influenced by Goth culture.

When we possess something of great value, we generally safeguard it. Through a series of errors, a South African woman failed to properly care for a collection of gold coins she inherited from her mother.

The valuable coins were mixed with the rest of the woman's loose change. While on a shopping trip near Cape Town, she parked her car and used a Kruger sovereign to feed the parking meter. The gold coin, minted in 1890, is said to be worth a small fortune. Despite its value, the coin bought no extra parking time.

How often do we exchange the priceless for the common or trade the eternal for the temporary?

The lottery promotes the interesting moral notion that if people are inclined to waste their money, the government should make it fun for them. And take a profit.

You must learn, you must let God teach you, that the only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it. God will waste nothing.

A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which on earth is most like God. This is man's greatest tragedy, God's heaviest grief.

One night Canon Hay Aitken preached to a large audience in Bristol, England, on the text, "You must be born again." There in the congregation was a brilliant young man named Horatio Bottomly. He listened intently. He heard the preacher at the end of the sermon call all who were there to trust in the grace of Christ and to commit their lives to Jesus Christ, and he knew the call was addressed to him, too. He was deeply moved, but he said, "Not now, I'll run my own life." And he did.

He made a fortune and a name for himself as the champion of the people's rights. He was a lawyer; he exposed swindlers and prosecuted criminals with great vigor. When Bottomly was 63 years of age, this one who had exposed the crimes of others was himself convicted of a crime and sentenced to seven years in prison.

While he was there, another man visited him and asked to pray with him. Bottomly said that would be fine, and in the course of the conversation, the other man told his story. He said, "Yes, many years ago, I was in Bristol, and I heard a preacher, Canon Hay Aitken, preach on the text: You must be born again. I was so deeply moved that I committed my life to Christ, and ever since then, Christ has been my all in all."

Bottomly was silent for some time, and then he said, "I, too, heard that searching message. I, too, was deeply moved. I knew my need of Christ, but I rejected him." And then he said remorsefully, "A life without God is a wasted life."

Ronald Warwick, captain of the luxury cruise ship Queen Elizabeth II, questioned a passenger who paid full fare for his dog to join them on an around-the-world cruise. (Accommodations range from $25,000 to $150,000.) "Wouldn't it have cost less to leave him at home?"

"Oh no," the man said. "When we are away a long time, the dog's psychiatrist fees are so high, it's less expensive to bring him along."