Some Venting and A Prayer Request...

So allow me to vent if you will...And even if you won't I guess I am going to anyway because I am the only one sitting at this laptop typing right now...So here we go. Today Jaron and I went to Austin to run some errands for the church. While we were there we went into the Family Christian Store and looked around for some things. As we were looking we begin to talk about how grossly materialized our Christian faith has become. We have our own little subculture of Christianity. As we looked around the store we saw "Christian" (and I use that term tongue in cheek here) candy, kaliediscopes, caps, wristbands, t-shirts, action figures (including Jesus and the empty tomb and Moses and the burning bush), cartoons, movies, music, ties, wallets, breathmints, bumber stickers, key chains, frames, stuffed animals, coffe mugs, headbands, and more toys than one could ever imagine...In fact, we even saw these two...I think the "Run The Race - Victory In Jesus Monster Truck" and the "Praise Ponies" took the award for the most useless Jesus Junk, a.k.a crap, that we saw...




For some reason I do not think that this is what Jesus had in mind when he called us to be in the world and not of it. I don't think that this is what God had in mind when he called us to follow him. I don't think this is what the early church had in mind when they begin to call themselves "Christians", meaning "little Christ." And I certainly don't think that this is what Christ had in mind when he hung on the cross and shed his blood to redeem a lost and dying world. Surely he wasn't thinking, "I lay down my life so that they might have their own Jesus ties and Jesus toys." In fact, I think that this sickens the heart of God. I think that as I sat in that bookstore today and looked around that I felt the sickness that God feels when he looks down on people who claim to follow him and have somehow bought into all this crap. First of all, just imagine how much money believers spend on this junk that could be used to show love, mercy, grace, and compassion to people in need. Instead of helping people with AIDS, feeding hungry children, giving to church ministries, and sending missionaries into unreached lands, we spend our money on overpriced monster trucks, action figures, and corny t-shirts...And God weeps. Second of all, when did God get into the t-shirt and toy making business. I thought we were called to live out our faith while living among our culture, not to create our own little culture that no one understands...Didn't Jesus do it by living among the people, in their culture? And finally, most of the junk that the so-called "Christian" marketers are selling is non-creative, copied crap. If I see one more t-shirt or cap that has simply stolen a concept of the world and tried to spin the logo or the phrase to make a "Jesus t-shirt" I am going to vomit! If you are going to create your own little sub-culture at least be creative with the abilities and gifts and creativeness of God that he has placed in you. Don't just copy other people's ideas and put a Jesus spin on them! Not only does it make us (Christians) look a little shady in the integrity department, it also portrays that we serve a God who is not creative and imaginative, which could not be further from the truth...I have had my limit and I almost had a "turn over the money changers tables in the temple" moment today...And I think I would be in good company...In fact, I think I read somewhere that that was exactly how my Jesus reacted when he was faced with a similar problem...

On a completely different note, I am leaving this weekend to preach a youth missions camp in Springtown, TX. Pray for me as I will be speaking A LOT this week. Pray that God would speak through me and would work in students lives in spite of my insufficiencies and weaknesses. Pray for my wife as we will be away from each other for the week. Pray that God might be glorified through this. I'll be blogging about the week if I have internet access...not sure how that will go, so I'll keep ya' posted...