I am looking through job posts, and this is a common theme for many sales jobs: "Can you establish strong relationships with customers, create a sense of urgency, and close deals?" (Verbatim off of a New Home Sales Company's hiring page.)
"Creating urgency" means emotional manipulation, and it goes against every principle fundamentally rooted in Christ's ethic of "love your neighbor as yourself." It objectifies the other, consuming them as a means to our own ends in pursuit of our self-satisfaction. God recognized the spark of "divine" in the other in his creation. He respects the autonomy and beauty of the "other" establishing connection not through manipulation but through interdependence.
But when we have a whole economy of individuals trying to create a sense of urgency in others in order to manipulate and get out of them what they want, we are all victimized, community social capital and trust deteriorates. What we're left with is social neurosis: anxiety, mistrust, hoarding, and protection. Who is looking out for our interests? Who is concerned for us? Who loves us? Where is there security or stability but to submit ourselves and be protected at the feet of mammon.
Is this what Christians are to participate in? Is this a sense of a redeemed and reconciled economy?
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