Is America suffering from Affluenza? Actually that is the title of a book published a number of years ago to define the problems of materialism in general and consumerism in particular.

The authors say that the virus of Affluenza “is not confined to the upper classes but has found it ways throughout our society. Its symptoms affect the poor as well as the rich . . . Affluenza infects all of us, though in different ways.” The authors go on to say that “the Affluenza epidemic is rooted in the obsessive, almost religious quest for economic expansion that has become the core principle of what is called the American dream.”

Anyone looking at some of the social statistics for the U.S., might conclude that our priorities are out of whack. We spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches than on higher education. We spend much more on auto maintenance than on religious and welfare activities. And three times as many Americans buy Christmas presents for their pets than buy a present for their neighbors.

Debt and waste also show skewed priorities. More Americans have declared personal bankruptcy than graduated from college. Our annual production of solid waste would fill a convoy of garbage trucks stretching halfway to the moon. We have twice as many shopping centers as high schools.

And Americans seem to be working themselves to death in order to pay for everything they own or want to buy. We now work more hours each year than do the citizens of any other industrial country, including Japan. And according to Department of Labor statistics, full-time American workers are putting in 160 hours more (essentially one month more) than they did in 1969. And 95 percent of our workers say they wish they could spend more time with their families.

The cure for the virus Affluenza is a proper biblical perspective toward life. The only problem is that this virus has infected many Christians. So we need to return to biblical priorities ourselves.

Jesus tells the parable of a rich man who decides to tear down his barns and build bigger ones (Luke 12:18). He is not satisfied with his current situation, but is striving to make it better. Today most of us have adjusted to a life of affluence as normal and need to actively resist the virus of Affluenza.

Each year, we take time from our busy lives to celebrate a day of Thanksgiving. Though many holidays have become secular celebrations, this holiday still retains much of its historic religious overtones.

A day of Thanksgiving was set aside by the Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony. Life was hard in the New World. Half of the Pilgrims died in the first terrible winter. After the first harvest was completed, Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving and prayer. By 1623, a day of fasting and prayer during a period of drought was changed to one of Thanksgiving because the rain came during their prayers. The custom prevailed in New England and eventually became a national holiday.

Religious freedom is one of the lessons of Thanksgiving. In 1606 William Brewster led a group of Separatists to Leiden (in the Netherlands) to escape religious persecution in England. After living in Leiden for more than ten years, some members of the group voted to emigrate to America. Having been blown off course from their intended landing in Virginia by a terrible storm, the Pilgrims landed at Cape Cod on November 1620. While still on the ship, the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact.

The Mayflower Compact provides the second lesson of Thanksgiving: the importance of political freedom. On November 11, 1620, Governor William Bradford and the leaders on the Mayflower signed the Mayflower Compact before setting foot on land. They wanted to acknowledge God’s sovereignty in their lives and their need to obey Him.

During this Thanksgiving season, let’s return to the wisdom of the Pilgrims. They valued their religious freedom and were willing to endure hardship in order to come to this country and freely worship. They also valued their political freedom and drafted the Mayflower Compact in recognition of God’s sovereign hand in their lives. Let us thank God for these freedoms and be willing to defend them against all who would seek to take them away.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I suspect that you are doing lots of things to get ready for this special day. Let me suggest you add one more item to your to do list. Visit the Probe website (www.probe.org) and download a copy of my Thanksgiving Quiz.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to gather as a family, but I also believe it can be a great time to teach our children and grandchildren about America’s godly heritage. I created this short quiz to be a conversation-starter around the Thanksgiving table.

Perhaps you share my frustration about how Thanksgiving is often a missed opportunity. We used to go around the table before the meal and ask our children to tell what they were thankful for. After a few years of hearing about how they were thankful for their cat, their doll, their video games, I knew we needed to do something else.

The Thanksgiving Quiz was born out of that frustration. It has nineteen questions and answers on the Pilgrims and the Mayflower Compact as well as some questions and answers about the Christian heritage of America.

Who were the Pilgrims and why did they leave Europe for America? Why did they celebrate Thanksgiving? What is the Mayflower Compact, and why is it significant? What lessons did the Pilgrims learn about work and even free enterprise? How did the Christian faith influence America? These are just a few of the sorts of questions that you can ask around the table and give short answers.

Perhaps it is time to recapture the importance of Thanksgiving. On the bicentennial celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Daniel Webster on December 22, 1820, declared the following: “Let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary.”

It is my hope this quiz will help your family see the importance of Thanksgiving.

We live in a day when courts are reconsidering whether marriage should only be between a man and a woman. And we see legislatures considering whether to legalize same-sex marriage or civil unions.

So maybe it is time to stop and consider the benefits of traditional marriage. I do this in my book, A Biblical Point of View on Homosexuality. After all, traditional marriage is the foundation of civilization. Most of us have never stopped to think about the many benefits marriage confers on society.

One book that has done this effectively is the book, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better off Financially by Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher. Here are just a few of the many findings from the research. First, married people are much happier and likely to be less unhappy than any other group of people. They also found that married people live up to eight years longer than divorced or never-married people and suffer less from long-term illnesses than those who are unmarried. Their research also found that married people are less likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors such as drug and alcohol abuse.

They also were able to counter the myth that single, swinging people are having the best sex. They found that married people have twice the amount of sex as single people and report greater levels of satisfaction in the area of sexual intimacy.

If you look at other studies done by social scientists, you find they confirm these conclusions. One study on marriage and cohabitation found that married men and women report greater satisfaction with family life. Another journal article on marriage and dating found that married couples report greater sexual satisfaction. A journal article on women’s health discovered that married women report higher levels of physical and psychological health. And a longitudinal study of young adults found that married people experience less depression.

In summary, traditional marriage confers many benefits to society.

America is in the midst of redefining marriage. Some of these redefinitions are talking place in the legislatures and courtrooms. But today I would like to talk about another place where marriage is being redefined. This is happening through cohabitation.

Some individuals merely started out postponing marriage. But over time they ended up postponing marriage indefinitely. An increasing proportion of the population has adopted this “marriage is optional” perspective and never married. They may have had a number of live-in relationships, but they never joined the ranks of those who married. For them singleness was not a transition but a lifestyle.

Over the last few decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has documented the increasing percentage of people who fit into the category of “adults living alone.” These are often lumped into a larger category of “non-family households.” Within this larger category are singles that are living alone as well as a growing number of unmarried, cohabiting couples that are “living together.” The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that in 2000 there were nearly ten million Americans living with an unmarried opposite-sex partner and another 1.2 million Americans living with a same-sex partner.

These numbers are unprecedented. It is estimated that during most of the 1960s and 1970s, only about a half a million Americans were living together. And by 1980, that number was just 1.5 million. Now that number is more than twelve million.

Cohabiting couples are also changing the nature of marriage. Researchers estimate that half of Americans will cohabit at one time or another prior to marriage. And this arrangement often includes children. The traditional stereotype of two young, childless people living together is not completely accurate; currently, some 40 percent of cohabiting relationships involve children.

Marriage may not yet be in the endangered species list, but many more couples are choosing to live together rather than get married.

A recent article in USA Today warned: “Technology can push our crazy buttons [and] rewire our brains.” Staying connected with digital media can be both a blessing and a curse. For many people, checking in with their devices is getting out of hand.

Howard Rheingold, author of Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, recommends a “mindful use of digital media.” That means we should be aware of what is attracting our attention. He says you should be making decisions instead of “letting the tweet or the buzzing of your BlackBerry call your attention.”

Gary Small, a brain researcher at UCLA, has found the digital technology is changing our brains. Since the human brain changes in response to the environment, our use of the technology alters our brain pathways. He has documented this through MRIs and has reported his findings in scientific journals.

Larry Rosen, author of iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession With Technology and Overcoming its Hold on Us, says that technology is causing some people to exhibit various psychological disorders. This would include addiction, depression, narcissistic personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He is concerned that we have become too enmeshed with these technologies.

Psychiatrist Steve Daviss of the Baltimore Washington Medical Center says we get feedback from digital technology: “the retweets and bings and pings that come out of the phone every time somebody sends us a text message—create a reward system in the brain that gives us a little squirt of dopamine each time.” For some people, this can lead to something the looks like addiction as their brains respond to digital technology.

These are just a few experts who are concerned about the effects of digital technology on our lives. And I am even more concerned about their impact on a younger generation whose brains are being rewired in ways we can’t even imagine.

Church pastors and Christian leaders significantly underestimate the influences on the next generation. That is the conclusion of David Kinnaman of the Barna Group. They have conducted more than 5,000 interviews with youth and young adults. He believes we underestimate three aspects of discipleship.

First, he says, we underestimate the profound impact of social changes on the millennial generation. This generation is “more conversant with technology, less likely to come from married families, and more financially indebted than any previous generation.” They are more diverse than any other generation. That includes ethnic diversity as well as religious diversity.

David Kinnaman quotes from the book, After the Boomers, which talks about how this generation is “launching” later in life. They are taking longer to get through maturing events in life (like marriage, education, and parenthood). David Kinnaman calls them “digital urban tribes” of 20-somethings and 30-somethings.

Second, he believes we underestimate how much these young people are shaped by the power of the digital tools in their lives. As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the typical teen is using more than 10 hours of media per day.

Third, we also misunderstand “the potency of youth culture’s gravitational pull.” In other words, we assume that we are influencing youth culture, when in reality it is probably having a more significant impact on us. David Kinnaman says that this “fixation on all things young in changing the way we do Christianity. It’s also shaping the workplace, advertising and marketing, fashion, and media, to name a few spheres of society.”

Obviously, if we are to make a significant impact on this next generation, we need to understand the impact media and youth culture are having on them. And then we need to develop messages and programs that will influence them for Christ.

Most of us have noticed the moral decline in America and have heard how many commentators have described it. Greg Koukl at Stand to Reason has coined a term that I think does a great job of explaining what is happening.

He says that our culture is becoming velocitized. He first heard the term in a driver’s training class in high school. “When a driver accelerates from, say, 30 to 60 miles per hour and settles in, he gets acclimated to his new speed and loses his sense of velocity. Going 60 feels like going 30.”

This is a great illustration of what is happening in our culture. Today’s scandal is tomorrow “ho hum.” What was unthinkable a generation ago has become routine today. As our culture becomes more decadent, we become acclimated to the speed of cultural degradation.

Greg Koukl uses this illustration to talk about something I have addressed in previous commentaries. Now that many accept abortion as routine, you have articles appearing that suggest that a so-called “after-birth abortion” would also be morally justifiable. Two philosophers are seriously suggesting this in an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

But you could apply the concept of a velocitized culture to many other moral issues. Who would have thought that physician assisted suicide would be acceptable in many states just a few decades ago? And just a few decades ago, who would have predicted that a number of states would have legalized same-sex marriage?

We should expect that non-believers would most likely take their cues from the culture and thus be acclimated to the speed of moral decline. But we should also be disturbed that so many Christians have also become acclimated.

Paul in his letter to the Colossians warned that we should: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.” Unfortunately many have been taken captive in our velocitized culture.

Over the last few months there has been talk of repealing one of the most onerous parts of the Affordable Care Act: the medical device tax. Of all of the various elements of Obamacare, why has so much attention been focused on this part of the law?

Scott Atlas writing in the Wall Street Journal last month reminded us that the “overwhelming majority of the world’s health-case innovation occurs in the U.S. This includes ground-breaking drug treatment, surgical procedures, medical devices, patents, diagnostics and much more.” He also reminds us the most of the funding for this innovation comes from private industry.

In light of these and other facts, it is not surprising that the U.S. is still ranked as the best country for health-care innovation. But that is beginning to change because of the Affordable Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this law will levy more than $500 billion in new taxes over the first ten years in order to pay for the insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion demanded by the law.

There is a simple rule in public policy. If you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less of it, tax it. Taxes on medical devices and other areas of medical innovation will have a negative impact on future innovation.

Scott Atlas documents the flight of some health-care technology companies to other countries. The CEO of one company told him “that the device tax his company paid last year exceeded his company’s entire R&D budget.” You can’t blame that company for moving its research and development overseas.

Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration is also a problem. A Stanford survey of more than 200 medical-device companies found that “delays of approvals for new medical devices are now far longer in the U.S. than in many other developed countries.”

America will cease being the leader in medical innovation unless Congress repeals these taxes and regulations. Life-saving drugs and devices might never be invented because of Obamacare.