Commoditizing Jesus - A Lover's Quarrel

Briefly perusing the introduction of Victor Davis Hanson's 1999 book, _The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization_, it occurred to me that the phenomenon others have observed in culture at large - efficiency/productivity as the governing ideal, leading to commoditization on a broad scale, leading to a soul-numbing sameness that mocks the very wealth that produced it - has metastasized into the church with disastrous results.

Sadly, we are reaping that harvest here in Amarillo at my home church. Oh, yes! There is a shiny, seductive veneer of success, but it is measured in the stuff of mammon: tushes in the pews, clams in the tiller, squares on the architect's drawing table, spires on the horizon and column-inches in the Globe-News. It is all very impressive.

Impressive, as in: just like those huge churches in the sprawling, youthful, fabulous suburbs of Las Vegas, or Atlanta, or Dallas.

Impressive, as in: just like all the other kings and kingdoms of this world.

But the banality, the sameness, the damnable soullessness of it all...

...a soullessness that crucifies the prophet, casts aside the shepherd and kisses the king's scepter.

...a soullessness that brooks neither thoughtful dissent from its vision nor substantive challenges to the judgment of its patrons (and their hirelings).

...a soullessness that keeps family and spontaneity and tradition at a careful arm's length but embraces production cues, pixels and scripts as if they were long-lost lovers.

...a soullessness that trades spiritual passion, classical wisdom and the earthy grace of God Himself for something newer, more glamorous, less risky and more controllable - in other words, a cheap harlot who does what she's told and keeps her mouth shut. Or else.

...a soullessness that basks in the heady affirmation and fawning loyalty of the ninety-and-nine but steadfastly refuses to hear and heed the mournful cries of the scattered one.

...a soullessness that views pastoral responsibility and church governance in terms of the iron fist, the wagging finger and the dismissive wave rather than the outstretched hand.

...a soullessness that insists on no special accommodations for the old and weak but throws itself shamelessly at the young, healthy and beautiful (and who - coincidentally - have a lot of upside salary potential).

...a soullessness that trades away the deep, abiding, long-suffering, forebearing and messy love we once knew as agape for the manufactured stuff of on-demand pity, off-the-shelf counsel and the latest training in interpersonal techniques, demographic profiles and marketing trends.

Didn't Jesus say that we could not serve both God and mammon?

qb

Freedom and Virtue

Detouring briefly...

qb has been steadily devouring Yoder, Hauerwas and Thiessen Nation, as well as copious amounts of Willard (of course). One of the strains of thought that winds its way through all of that material implicitly - and occasionally, in the case of Willard, explicitly - criticizes the annoying American habit of venerating freedom above all other collective ideals. Their writings, however, argue for a higher level of virtue among the American people.

But qb is wondering: if virtue is the aim (and if agape love is the highest expression of virtue), is not freedom a sine qua non, necessary even though not sufficient? Can a person pursue love without the freedom to choose to do so? Why is devotion to freedom antithetical somehow to the Christian idea of virtue?

qb

Brad Delp, R.I.P.

As a naive 11-year-old, I flew from my home in Albuquerque to McAllen, TX, to stay with my dear grandmother, my uncle and my aunt, and play a couple of tennis tournaments. Grandma took me to the mall one day, and I splurged, putting down about 7 slaps for the recently released, eponymous album called "Boston." I had heard that the lead guitarist was an MIT-educated brainiac who had designed and built his own 24-track recording equipment, and that was impressive enough, but all I knew as a preadolescent was that those guys knew how to rock, and that vocalist...

...wow, did he have a great set of pipes and a beautiful rock timbre.

I guess other rockers had more musical influence on the scene, but I never felt their loss quite this much. Maybe I'm just older. Maybe I've had similar pangs of despair now, and this is a bitter reminder. Or maybe it's just because this guy was such a stand-up, classy, kind fellow, and it seems like such a waste. Maybe it's all of that. But this really hurts.

Jehovah God, would you look down on Brad Delp with mercy? And on his family, friends and bandmates?

qb

Eat This Book

From Eugene Peterson's new masterpiece, _Eat This Book_, p. 11:
*****
Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, taken into the soul - eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight. Words of men and women long dead, or separated by miles and/or years, come off the page and enter our lives freshly and precisely, conveying truth and beauty and goodness, words that God's Spirit has used and uses to breathe life into our souls. Our access to reality deepens into past centuries, spreads across continents. But this reading also carries with it subtle dangers. Passionate words of men and women spoken in ecstasy can end up flattened on the page and dissected with an impersonal eye. Wild words wrung out of excruciating suffering can be skinned and stuffed, mounted and labeled as museum specimens.
*****

Even this magnificent morsel does not do justice to what I'm finding here. Run - don't walk - to Amazon.com and order it. Let Peterson take you by the hand and walk you gingerly into God's world, the world that inhabits the holy Scriptures, the scrolls that John, Ezekiel and Jeremiah ate so long ago.

qb