PC or Mac? J.Crew or consignment? Safeway or farmer's market? It's no secret that the consumer society we live in pressures us to continually reinvent ourselves by buying into the latest technology and cultural trends. Brands clamour for our allegiance, promising—ironically—both individuality and connection to a tribe. So are we buying a manufactured identity without realizing it? The consumer mindset can also affect us in more subtle ways, infiltrating our values, our treatment of others, and even our worship practices.

So how do we begin to untangle the complex web of relationships between material things and identity? How does the nature and amount of stuff that we own affect our psychological and spiritual wellbeing? What is reasonable and what is excessive when we talk about consumption? And where, in all of this, is God?