#FAIL

Developing the “Jesus-Pencils, Knock-Off Logos and Crappy Music” idea a bit further… One rebuttal to that post was the idea that marketing to a subculture of “religion”  is fine if people are asking for it. If it’s too cheesy, it’s still our decision to buy or not to.

That’s one way of thinking about it. The other is to consider whether these things are doing damage to the body of Christ. I think they are. It’s not ALL totally evil, but as an industry it has become more evil than not. So while we can call in the odd exception it’s time to acknowledge that it’s gone on long enough and something needs to be done.

The other idea used as a rebuttal is that these are small tools that create opportunities to witness. Again, I’m sure there is the odd opportunity created by a t-shirt or the much-maligned “Chick Tract” but not many and the occasional instance of success cannot becomes a license to produce more such products en masse.

At best with this thinking, you play a good numbers game and make a convert via the t-shirt/pencil/tract. It’s all worth it then, right? Someone got saved – scale up production!

At worst over the last decades, this parallel culture thinking and “knock-offs-for-Jesus” mentality has induced a type of group psychosis that lulls people into a sense of boredom and dullness that masquerades as safety.

Say the pitchman comes to Jesus. He says,

“Hey Jesus, see that Subway logo? I was thinking of drawing a logo that looks exactly like that but says ‘Hisway’ as a way of spreading the good news of your birth, life, death, and resurrection. Oh, here’s another one. It’s a rip-off of the Budweiser logo and instead of ‘This Bud’s For You’ it says ‘The Blood’s For You.’”

Jesus returns a look of _____________. (Fill in the blank here for me)

“No, Jesus? Ok, how about this one… I’ll create an entire line of products based on the acronym WWJD. The ‘J’ means you, my man – JESUS! When people look at their WWJD bracelet they’ll think of you and know what to do!”

“No? Ok, ok, so you’re not a big fan of the logo-emblazoned consumer goods, but here’s the thing Jesus – people WANT these things… Oh, and I forgot to mention… I’ll also make a lot of money from selling them, you know, since I own a store that puts your name on stuff and then sells it at a higher price to your followers.”

Do you see where I’m going with this? For too many store-owners, booksellers, and music makers, the Gospel has become a never-ending adventure in profiteering. Yes, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9 those spend the bulk of their time serving the body of Christ should receive their financial due for doing so, but most of what happens in the Christian consumer goods culture is a far cry from the kind of caring, invested, incarnational ministry that Paul was talking about.

Imagine I told you I was thinking of starting a business. I want to open a store. This store will sell the same items a lot of stores sell – books, games, greeting cards, t-shirts, music, pens, pencils, nice pictures, etc.

But here’s my big idea: I’m going to sell all those items, but I’m going to put the word “Jesus” on them somewhere and then sell them at a higher price than every other store. Whaddaya think? Am I onto something?

Oddly enough, an entire thriving industry – possibly more than one – has been created on this business idea.

The pencils are not better quality; the t-shirt designs flirt with trademark fraud; certain books by pastors with glowing white smiles veer dangerously close to heresy. Aside from the odd exception, the music sold in these stores is sub-par at best, a blatant knock-off of its “secular” counterpart at worst.

Recently I heard someone use the term “cutting edge Christian music”. When I heard this I thought it was like telling someone they’re wearing the nicest one-piece, bell-bottom leisure suit you’ve ever seen: It may look absolutely awful, but you’ve seen worse.

Somewhere along the way we exchanged the idea of faithful witness and active presence for Jesus-pencils, knock-off logos and crappy music. How does that verse go again – “They will know we are Christians by our Jesus-logo consumer goods”?