i’ve been working–pretty diligently, might i add– on my senior thesis, this past weekend. trying to finish up some of the research before i go back and get more. the never ending cycle.

wanted to share some insights/thoughts on what i am reading through, currently. for the time being, i am working through Skye Jethani’s “The Divine Commodity.” I recommend it as it portrays where our culture is and how it does, and doesn’t, speak to the claims that Christ has called of those who say they “follow” Him.

enjoy!

I think it is safe to say that we live in a consumer culture. So much so that it has infiltrated the inner rankings of the church. No longer is the church seen as “in but not of” the world but rather it is very much “not in, but of” the world. From the building structures, to the worship “experiences,” to the way they draw people in, to the way they market themselves to the culture…consumerism is the heartbeat of the “modern church.” I hold that it is producing a generation of spectators instead of worshipers. A generation of spiritual addicts that hop from church to church in order to get their “fix” of Jesus.

“This philosophy of spiritual formation through the consumption of external experiences creates worship junkies–Christians who leap from one mountaintop to another, one spiritual high to another, in search of a glory that does not fade. In response, churches and Christian conferences are driven to create ever-grander experiences and more elaborate productions to satisfy expectations. Ironically, these worship spectacles, according to Sally Morgenthaler, are failing to produce real worshipers. She writes:

‘We are not producing worshipers in this country. Rather we are producing a generation of spectators, religious onlookers lacking, in many cases, any memory of a true encounter with God, deprived of both the tangible sense of God’s presence and the supernatural relationship their inmost spirits crave” (79).

I think ministries and churches that package and produce such spiritual experiences end up stunting the spiritual growth of their so-called, “spectators.”They, in a very real sense, create them to be dependent upon experiences, the externalization of what is deemed, “Christianity.”

“Consumer Christians lose the ability to do what they were designed by God to do–have a vibrant, self-generating relationship with Christ. Instead, they become dependent upon their zookeeper-pastors for life and nourishment” (79). Is this how Christianity ought to be?

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I find it, interesting, though that the entirety of the gospel and what Jesus said, during his time on earth, opposes the tenets of consumerism.  For instance, the gospels bids us to come and die yet we are held in the tension between this “call of death” and the worshiping, in a way, of ourselves in the broader context of the consumer culture. The question stands then, why would we want to lay our lives down, in the name of Jesus, when the culture is whispering that pleasures, joy, and luxuries can be afforded in this life…in the “here and now.” We lust and desire instant gratification so much that in the process of giving into it we loose our souls to the machine of consumerism.

Obviously, there is a tension. Whether we want to couch it in terms of, “we have to engage the culture, we must be relevant” and if we do not, we believe that they will  not come. We have forgotten that it is not about us but about Jesus. The Holy Spirit calling people into the presence of God.

 

To what degree do we “engage” the culture and give them “what they want,” while staying true to what the Bible says and what Christ has asked of us, as his followers? These are the things I am wrestling with in my thesis.

 

“The dilemma posed by consumerism is not the endless manufacturing of desires, but the temptation to settle for desires far below what we were created for. The forces of marketing have captured our imaginations and convinced us to desire mud pies and sneer at the possibility that greater pleasures even exist. We have been reprogrammed to desire immediate satisfaction rather than infinite satisfaction” (114).