Consumerist Spirituality vs. Ordinary Christianity
“In consumerist spirituality, the new stuff on offer is mostly new experiences, ‘transformative’ experiences that you’re supposed to get if you don’t want to miss out on something special in your spiritual life. [...] You'll also be told that without it you’re just an ordinary, plain Christian, lacking the extraordinary power and blessing that God wants you to have in your life.”
So writes Phillip Cary in Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don’t Have to Do. I have not quite finished the book, but it has to be one of the best popular-level, Christian-living books I have read in a long time. Recognizing the vacuity of consumerist spirituality is not terribly difficult for most of us. But what is the alternative? Well, I’m glad you asked, because Cary goes on:
“Think about what’s wrong with this kind of sales pitch [see previous quotation]. What makes you an ordinary Christian, after all? Isn’t the answer faith in Christ? And what power and blessing do ordinary Christians receive, just by this faith? In other words, what is the gift we receive by faith alone? Surely the answer has to be nothing less than Jesus Christ himself. The idea that we are supposed to have some superior blessing beyond that is profoundly perverse” (120).
So writes Phillip Cary in Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don’t Have to Do. I have not quite finished the book, but it has to be one of the best popular-level, Christian-living books I have read in a long time. Recognizing the vacuity of consumerist spirituality is not terribly difficult for most of us. But what is the alternative? Well, I’m glad you asked, because Cary goes on:
“Think about what’s wrong with this kind of sales pitch [see previous quotation]. What makes you an ordinary Christian, after all? Isn’t the answer faith in Christ? And what power and blessing do ordinary Christians receive, just by this faith? In other words, what is the gift we receive by faith alone? Surely the answer has to be nothing less than Jesus Christ himself. The idea that we are supposed to have some superior blessing beyond that is profoundly perverse” (120).
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