Does anyone have $61,000?

According to a study in 2006 $61,000 USD is what you need to have in personal assets to be counted in the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the world. I'd guess that most of the people I know qualify (this is the value of all the goods you own, your house, car, savings, RRSP's etc). I think I'm one of the worlds 10% wealthiest individuals. That can make me feel pretty good given what most people consider to be success. Then I read 1 John 3:17

"But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?" - Good question John.

Alan Hirsch says in "The Forgotten Ways" that (paraphrase) the false religion that most needs to be spoken against in the West is that of consumerism.  I agree. Consumerism is killing our churches, families, souls and minds every day. Many people have exchanged God's economy for the world's, myself included. 

It's so difficult to know how to break out of the cycle. I am praying that we all are increasingly made aware of the needs around us and freed from the desire of things so that God might continue to work in us, making us fit for the the calling of his Children and ambassador's to this broken world and consumerist culture.