Pop Christianity, Part I

A lot of my friends from my hometown are born-and-raised Christians. I recieve a significant amount of Christian-related group invitations on Facebook from them. I never join them, but I do check them out. There are always two things to be found on any of these Christian groups: 1. Some self-absorbed never-been-out-of-the-Bible-Belt youth minister spouting his mouth off, and 2. A poorly organized clan of Liberal agnostics/athiests who join the group just to get everyone mad. I'm always torn between amusement and the desire to jump in, tell everyone they're wrong and that they should do it my way (but everyone else has already done that). In fact, on my most recent invitation, the group had a link for a site to biker chick dating service, along with some 200 snapshots of Christian band concerts. Perhaps it is just because it is a Facebook group, and this is what teenagers think being a Christian is about.

Pop Christianity has become a fashion statement, a social parade. It's something for those who know no different, who were raised on Granpappy's knee to stories of Noah's ark and the burning bush (and to little kids, this has no more significance than the Lion King) and have yet to leave his porch. No original idea has ever entered their head beyond the new $150 pair of Nikes Johnny wore to Sunday School last week. Pop Christianity was born when middle-class families moved to the suburbs and tried to implement Christian principles into their children's lives (because without those principles, the world is too dangerous and scary for Johnny (and his mom)) while maintaining the average American materialism.

While I certainly agree that Christian principles are good and ought to be taught and implemented into our daily lives, these children grow up (full of principles) and go to a Christian (money-sucking) university, get a good paying job, then Johnny meets a wifer-for-lifer and repeats. Sooner or later, health problems start happening, [insert near death experience], and so he starts recounting those Christian principles to his kids. (Either that, or he becomes one of the millions of people today, who are "moral" but not religious). "Don't drink alcohol, Tommy. You'll ruin your liver, and God doesn't like it. You don't want to make God mad." After all, the world is a scary place.

It is. Especially when you slowly start diluting the Christ out of the Christianity. They get all these principles, and no Jesus (on a heart-to-heart basis)...and then all of a sudden, there's no more Christianity. Without the Christ part, and what He said, you might as well become a materialist pig and live a happy, fat life. People keep the Christ name, the Christ book, the Christ symbols because they are scared to forsake them. But noone lives by them, because that's not comfortable.

Pop Christianity is the "loophole" which gives people the pepto-bismal feeling they want, the "Fire Protection," the social connections, and the excuse to be materialistic.

Example:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-21-3188379411_x.htm
I've used this a lot recently. Some guy, likely a Christian, buys an index card on which Buzz Aldrin wrote a Bible verse while on the moon for almost $180,000. Surely, as a Christian, he knows the commandment: (in short) go out, sell all your stuff, and go tell people about this. It even goes as far as "leave the dead to bury the dead." The Bible describes a life of freedom from material possessions, a life of pain and sweat and smelling bad, a life without HDTV, a life of faith. It doesn't mention having more money than you need to survive. It doesn't mention spending your money on things like that. It might have mentioned somewhere something about going to feed the hungry or clothe the poor or help the widows.

Meanwhile, lots of people are getting rich off of it. Music, shirts, books, calendars, magazines, everything. Leave out the "leave worldly pleasures" part, and show how "Jesus is my Homie." Pop Christianity is sitting on a fencepost (called Economics) between outright offending the 77% of the non-Christian population of the world and being politically correct: diluting conceptual Grace.

Why can't we see the beauty of God? Of life? I nag a lot of materialism, but it's the mindset it gives us. It tells us we can be new and better with more things. We've tried to have both worlds. I guess we can't see that one of them is a lot better than the other, and it doesn't submit itself to traditional, nor modern, Christian standards. It doesn't submit itself to my ideas, or yours. All of this existance is here, with or without us. I wish we could just see the beauty.

I wonder if God weeps for us. I wonder if He sits down with a sigh and puts His head in His hands and cries, "No, no...it's all wrong." I wonder if he puts His hands over His ears to shut out all our yelling and bickering. We've taken His body, His living temple, and decorated it like a Christmas tree, set it out with flashing lights and pretty ornaments. But noone wants to be a Christmas tree.