CONSUMER CHRISTIANITY
If you remember last week, I touched on the topic of sin. Within that last sermon, I talked about how there are Christians in our community today that have this mentality that “I’ll take whatever I like about Christianity and throw away the rest…
In other words, we’re living in this culture today that teaches us that Christianity is easy, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to take it.
And it’s this very image of Christianity that teaches those outside the church that we’re nothing more than people who aren’t self-sacrificial. For example: How many churches out there are not only preaching the truth, but also living out the truth that God died for all sinners!? You see, the danger of believing and trusting only in what makes you feel good is what makes Christianity look like hypocrisy to those outside of the church.
We talk so much about evangelism, love, and more importantly how Christ loves the world – and it’s so easy for us to preach and shout out the words that “GOD LOVES YOU,” but it’s just as easy to turn our back and say to those who test our patience “I DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOU!”
Today, we’re going to be talking about a subject that strikes at the very heart of Christianity, a topic that I believe is something we all wrestle with as Christians in America – it’s the topic of CONSUMERISM.
But before we do that, let’s pray.
Although we will be jumping in and out of bible passages today, I want you all to go to the book of Luke where we will be dwelling in for a little bit.
Luke 9:23 where it reads:
[Jesus said] “IF ANYONE DESIRES TO COME AFTER ME, LET HIM DENY HIMSELF, AND TAKE UP HIS CROSS DAILY, AND FOLLOW ME.”
Thomas C. Reeves, author of the book The Empty Church once said that “Christianity in modern America… tends to be easy, upbeat, convenient, and compatible. It does not require self-sacrifice, discipline, humility, an otherworldly outlook, a zeal for souls, a fear as well as love for God. There is little guilt and no punishment, and the payoff in heaven is virtually certain. What we now have might best be labeled ‘Consumer Christianity.’ The cost is low and customer satisfaction seems guaranteed.”
And you see, Thomas Reeves’ observation of Christianity hugely contrasts with our passage in Luke today because in Luke, Jesus mentions that the life of the Christian is one of self-denial, one of humility, one that requires you to take up the cross (define “take up cross”), one of obedience…
On the flip side, Reeves’ observation of Christianity is one of self-service, American Christianity takes on the perception that, if I am not pleased with how the church takes care of me, then I’ll leave….
And don’t we see that so much today? So many Christians are getting up and leaving the church because they feel like they’re not being taken care of – and although it maybe true that the church has abused their comfort in some way, the church was never meant or established to be a “people-pleasing congregation” but rather a “God-honoring and worshipping congregation”…
And I believe this is true because church and congregation gatherings isn’t primarily meant for fellowship but MOST IMPORTANTLY for worship… we’re not just here to get together and chat about what we did this past week – which is not a bad thing to do, as a matter of fact I’ll tell you about all the fun stuff I did this week after service, but that’s not the main reason we are here…
The reason why you and I are here today is because we share a common love right? And it’s because we share this common love for Christ and the church that we also share a common thirst to worship Him…
The object of Christianity isn’t to offer you a simple life. If you became a Christian because someone came up to you one day at the mall or something and said, “man, being a Christian is the best thing that’ll ever happen to you because it’s comfortable or because everyone will like you,” or maybe they said something like, “being a Christian is easy, or you only have to show up to church and not do anything else.”
I really hate to tell you this, but you got “dooped”.
The Christian life, although there are times of comfort and times of ease, there are also times of persecution, there are times of stress, and times where you really need to discipline yourself to follow hard after God…
Do you believe that today brothers and sisters?
Haven’t there been times where you woke up in the morning and you found it so hard to read the word? Or aren’t there times when you sit down to pray but you find it extremely difficult to stay awake? The walk and disciplined life of a Christian is no walk in the park, but a truly practiced and disciplined life.
Bill Hull, an author on several different books on discipleship making said, “We live in a world where two ways or philosophies are at war. It is the worldview of Jesus where God is at the center and his disciples live for others… the other philosophy… is the consumer culture. It is a world of consumption, assertiveness, speed, and fame. In the consumer world it is all about me.”
“IN THE JESUS WAY JESUS BECOMES MORE – IN THE CONSUMER WAY, MAN BECOMES MORE”
And it’s so easy to become disillusioned with Christianity when we carry on the mentality of consumerism because of this huge contrast…
Verse 24 of Luke 9… Jesus continues by saying, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”
Brothers and sisters, the Christian life isn’t a life where we have the luxury of carrying on with the mentality, “how can I serve God and get something tangible in return?” One of the many things that I mention to the core leadership group is that ministry is anything but consumerism. As a matter of fact, ministry is all about delayed gratification… in other words, you’re planting seeds in people’s lives that you may never see for years…
And yet, they’re still here serving.
Bill Hull, whom I mentioned of earlier, talks about four different examples of conflict between the life that Jesus led and the consumer-driven life…
--- all thoughts mentioned below are from Bill Hull worded almost verbatim from www.bible.org ---
He says, (1) “The consumer life is dependent on competence before prayer.” In other words, we live in a society that says, do first, then pray. On the other end, Jesus modeled prayer as a priority. His actions demonstrated that his relationship with his Father was the basis for ministry. He prayed all night before important decisions.
The consumer way is to act now, to make an impact, to get things done. The consumer lifestyle carries on this view that we can get by just fine without practicing disciplines such as prayer, solitude, meditation – all of which build our dependence on God except ourselves…
And there are so many stories of Christians who have built their entire lives on their own capabilities that stumble hard because they fail to learn what it means to submit their lives and talents over to Christ…
I’ll never forget what my mentor once told me about the power of prayer and the dangers of relying on yourself when he told me that there is a list of a few thousand pastors in California alone who have stumbled hard into affairs and issues of lust and out of all these pastors, it was found that each and every single one of them openly admitted to having little or no prayer, devotional, biblical reading life whatsoever…
Brothers and sisters… the life of the consumer Christian relies on what you can do vs. what God can do.
Secondly, Consumer Christians rely on individualism instead of Congregation.
We touched on this a bit earlier, but this is the whole idea that the church is not about us… these meetings at church are not all about me or you, but about GOD….
As Christians we are not called to lives of selfishness, but to lives of sacrifice… THAT IS TRUE WORSHIP! Again it was Bill Hull who said, “We, like Jesus, then chose to live the life of submission to others, to put their needs equal to ours, even, I dare say, more important than our own.”
So where consumerism says I want this, or you need that – Christians should be carrying the mindset, what can I give back?
Thirdly, Consumerism relies on impatience rather than endurance.
I’m totally blown away by how quick and easy it is to get almost whatever you want now a days… it seems like whatever pops up on the television, I can buy and get within the comforts of my own home in days!
A couple years ago, I had the pleasure of watching the movie Supersize Me… and the whole movie revolves around this guy who gains 30 pounds in 30 days by buying into the fast food diet. Similarly to this movie, there is no such thing as fast spirituality without patience. There no such thing as instant satisfaction without effort. Finally, there is no such thing as a Christian walk without tests of perseverance.
But our culture teaches us all of these neat-O short cuts right? By a show of hands, how many of you in this room use “spark notes?”
Basically, whoever created sparknotes must’ve been a genius because he knew exactly what to sell and he also knew that what he had to sell, people would crave for. So whenever we get assigned to read stories or books, as an excuse to NOT manage our time, we pick up spark notes! It’s genius because it gives us a grade that we probably don’t deserve without requiring us to put in the effort that we should be putting in!
Hey church, do you see how we are slowly being taught that the “simple life” is what’s best for us?
Fourthly and lastly, Consumer Christians worship celebrity over humility…
Psychologist Robert Hogan once researched that humility rather than self-esteem was the key trait of successful leaders…
In other words, “pop” Christian culture teaches us that it’s worth it to celebrate ourselves in essence tuning our worship to become about us, about our tastes, our likes, and our dislikes…
Once again all of these things are seen in Christian culture today! We see so many people following hard after trends, and it’s this trend that there are these name brand preachers, teachers and bands who teach us how to live our lives and dress as our attention slowly falls away from Christ.
If it doesn’t indulge the senses, it’s not true worship.
There’s a story that once goes like this,
There was a person who once came out of a church service complaining, “I didn’t really care for the message.” And this person’s friend walking right next to him said, “Good, because we weren’t worshipping you…”
Brothers and Sisters… what am I trying to get into your heads today? Let me sum this up for you…
CONSUMERS FOCUS ON SELF, CHRISTIANS FOCUS ON CHRIST
You are living in a culture that teaches and provides for you everything that you can possibly need to phase God out of your life. You are living in a culture that teaches you to worship what man can do versus what God can do…
It’s this culture today that teaches us to rely more on ourselves and our capabilities over what God can do in his infinite power.
We learn so much on how to rely on ourselves that we forget the value of taking things slow, praying before we jump into taxing situations, reading the Word before blurting out what’s on our minds.
CONSUMERS FOCUS ON ME, CHRISTIANS FOCUS ON COMMUNITY.
Stop coming to church with the mindset – I need to have this, I need to have that, because the next thing you know you’re going to start to say things like – if I could only have had more time, I would spend it with you God, or if I had a better Pastor, maybe I would be a better evangelist!
CONSUMERS CAN’T WAIT, CHRISTIANS CAN’T STOP
Consumer Christians lack the patience it takes to pursue God before everything else. Christians endure by looking at trials and issues with the mindset that GOD’s gonna get me through this…
CONSUMERS WORSHIP SELF ACCOMPLISHMENT OVER HUMILITY…
Brothers and sisters – what mindset did you bring with you when you walked through these doors this morning?
Are your intentions for being here motivated by selfishness?
IF ANYONE DESIRES TO COME AFTER ME, LET HIM DENY HIMSELF, AND TAKE UP HIS CROSS DAILY, AND FOLLOW ME. FOR WHOEVER WANTS TO SAVE HIS LIFE WILL LOSE IT, BUT WHOEVER LOSES HIS LIFE FOR ME WILL SAVE IT…
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