In light of Mark 10, how can Christians in good conscience purchase luxury items? In Mark 10:25, Jesus states...


  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." (Mark 10:25 NIV)


After hearing his Disciples ask in light of this who could possibly be saved


  Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God." (Mark 10:27 NIV)


My question is, how can any Christian in good conscience purchase any luxurious good or service that doesn't benefit anyone else besides themselves? 

Flat screens, cars, riding lawn mowers, all these things are luxuries for daily living, but let's face it, wouldn't God rather have us take that money and buy a pallet of food for the local food pantry?
Let's go back and re-read the incident that prompted Jesus' teaching:


  And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.&mdash;Mark 10:17-22 (ESV)


Notice that:


Jesus says "No one is good except God alone."  While He was apparently taking advantage of the honoring address of the man, the point was important to the overall story.  Nobody is perfect in goodness except God.  The whole purpose of Jesus dying on the Cross is to fix that problem.
Jesus mentions all but one of the commandments related to our horizontal relationships.  Jesus knew beforehand the problem the rich man faced: "You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor."  
The man lacked one thing: freedom from the bondage of possessions.  Jesus answered his question, but the man would not make himself free.  We know from verse 22, that the reason the man did not follow Jesus was because he could not give up his stuff.  The slavery to the material world was too great an obstacle for him.


Jesus teaching based on the incident was less about anti-materialism and more about the worldly bondage that blocks people from following Him.  It is the wealth of the rich that tends to stand in their way, but not everyone is bound by the same rope.  In fact, we have an indication that Jesus' disciples did not have the same bondage to wealth as the rich man:


  Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”&mdash;Mark 10:28-31 (ESV)


Jesus warned them about pride, which seems prescient:


  And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”&mdash;Mark 10:35-37 (ESV)


Not only were James and John trying to get a leg up on the other disciples, Jesus also had to deal with the other ten's misplaced jealousy.  Each of us have our own unique set of spiritual struggles and it doesn't pay to feel superior to those whose struggles we don't share.



One of the traps we fall into is overgeneralizing.  Yes, Jesus' diagnosis for this man was to sell everything in order to take up his cross and follow Him.  (See Mark 8:34-38.)  But Jesus had another diagnosis for the one whose hand causes them to sin: cut it off!  Get rid of the foot or eye that erects a barrier between you and the Kingdom of God.  (See Mark 9:42-50.)  But not all people in the Kingdom have one hand, one foot, and one eye.  Not all of the people in the Kingdom have sold and given everything.  That's not how God made us.

All of us must deny ourselves something.  This text suggests that the something we must give up is the something that we wish most desperately to retain.  For you, it might be a love of luxury.  For me, it is almost certainly comfort and intellectual pride.  I have placed those things from time to time as gods to be worshiped.  They appear more trustworthy than Jesus more often than I care to admit.  So I can't follow Jesus if I am too busy following comfort and knowledge that puffs up.  Jesus says a man can not follow two masters (see Matthew 6:19-24) and therefore I'm only following Him when I give up those idols.

Summary

Few of us take seriously Jesus' command that the author of Hebrews summarized: "Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely". (Hebrews 12:1 ESV)  But we need to be honest with ourselves about what causes us to sin.  If it is wealth, by all means, give it away.