Live Well with Less

Sainsbury's new marketing slogan is 'Live well for less', hoping to help us shop wisely and make economies and yet still be able to enjoy some of the finer things in life.

Its a good sentiment - we should be able to make savings and live on a tighter budget, and yet still have some good things at least from time to time. Yet ultimately they would still want us to go on consuming at an ever increasing rate.

Isaiah 58 talks about true fasting, with the heart of the issue being how we treat other people. If we temporarily deny ourselves and yet don't do anything about injustices that rage across the world, we are not really fasting at all and thus should not be surprised if God does not hear us.

Maybe a better slogan for us to adopt is 'Live well with less'. For a start we cannot expect everyone to come up to the current Western standard of living - the world simply does not have the resources. So for there to be global justice we must learn to live with less. Indeed in some areas we need to go without, in other words a kind of fast, especially when our patterns of consumption may hold others in poverty.

In fact the slogan may then even be better reversed. By us choosing a lifestyle 'with less' may in fact enable others to 'live well' perhaps for the first time.