Marketplace Religion

A homily for the Dartmouth Ecumenical Christian Chapel, given Thursday, April 3, 2008.


I appreciated Kurt's introduction to our theme last week, and I think that the rampant consumerism we live and breathe every day is perhaps the greatest challenge to our faith we face today. Indeed, I think that the "consumer as king" mindset affects us far more deeply than we are usually aware, touching every area of life, not just he buying and selling of goods and services. I believe that we are often deceived by our own selfishness when confronted by the array of options we find even in our own supermarkets into relativizing our choices and believing them to have no significant consequences. We think it makes no difference what we choose to eat and drink, until our waistlines and health insurance costs prove otherwise. We are prone to take this kind of thinking into all areas of life, even matters of spirituality and religion. This is not an issue of philosophical relativism having an impact on us so much as our natural desire to carry "consumer-king" thinking with us wherever we go. I would call this "Consumer Religion."


For this reason, the account we find in Acts 17 is a great help to us. Here we see the apostle Paul proclaiming Christ in a context not unlike our own. A great array of religious and spiritual options were enjoyed by the people of Athens, much as in our own community. I would call this "Marketplace Religion," and it is a good thing. If truth be truth, and religious expression genuine, our choices in these matters cannot be compelled or inappropriately restricted.

Note that Paul critiques what I call "consumer religion", not the marketplace in which it is found. He does not take a hammer to the idols that disturb him, but instead speaks truth to the hearts of the men and women there.


Because of our current cultural obsession with choice and consumption, I suggest we listen to Paul's critique of consumer religion for three reasons:


1) A consumer mindset in religion will lead us to produce a God or a Jesus that suits our tastes and cultural values. For example, Albert Schweitzer critiqued the attempts to recover the "historical Jesus" in his day as merely a way of producing a picture of the searchers themselves; their Jesus looks remarkably bohemian and German.


2) Further, a consumer mindset will allow us to ignore what God requires of us. This is a perpetual problem on every part of the spectrum, from liberal to conservative. There are temptations to culturally accommodate biblical teaching in such a way that our present cultural moment reinvents Jesus, as well as temptations to emphasize only certain aspects of His teaching while ignoring others. Instead of speaking truth to power, Jesus is now merely a truth subjected to our power. He cannot change us or call us to greater love and faithfulness because he cannot offend us. He is domesticated. Religion becomes a tool to change or oppress others, one to which we are immune because we made it to suit ourselves.


3) Consumer religion obscures the beauty of the God who is, as Kurt put it last week, the true object of our desire. As Paul put it: "Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." We cannot see the beauty of a God who surpasses our greatest imaginings if we are intent on suiting ourselves.


Nor can we appreciate the love of a God who would die even for "consumer worshippers," worshippers who prefer to reinvent God than see Him as He is, if we will not bear the offense of His critique of us. Such a God does not suit us; rather, we were made to suit Him. Thus, we are dethroned before the true king, and become servants of all, instead of living to obtain greater service for ourselves. Not only that, but to wonder at the generous love of Christ empowers us to likewise love, forgive, and be generous even to those we might regard as enemies.


Thus can we pray: Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.