From the Salmon

The more I’ve thought about the particular theology I wrote about in my last post, the more bizarre I find it to be. Before I tell you how, allow me another excerpt from Jeff Sharlet’s article:

New Lifers, Pastor Ted writes with evident pride, “like the benefits, risks, and maybe above all, the excitement of a free-market society.” They like the stimulation of a new brand. “Have you ever switched your toothpaste brand, just for the fun of it?” Pastor Ted asks. Admit it, he insists. All the way home, you felt a “secret little thrill,” as excited questions ran through your mind: “Will it make my teeth whiter? My breath fresher?” This is the sensation Ted wants pastors to bring to the Christian experience. He believes it is time “to harness the forces of free-market capitalism in our ministry.”

So it’s time to infuse ministry with the “forces of free-market capitalism,” is it? To make it as exciting as switching toothpastes? All the better to introduce others to the Minty Fresh Breath of Jesus?

Please.

Here’s my concern.... If my microeconomics textbooks taught me anything, it’s that the motor that drives the “forces of free-market capitalism” that Haggard and others want to bring to the pulpit is this: rational self-interest.  The free market absolutely depends on autonomous individuals looking out for number one, seeking to maximize utility in every interaction. As Gordon Gekko put it, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

I don’t make this point because I’m hoping to begin a discussion of the relative merits of capitalism or socialism or whether Jesus advocated private property and personal profit. What I am interested in is whether this is a responsible or even a Biblical model for the church.

I don’t think it is.

When I explore the teachings of Jesus and the letters of Paul and others, I come away with a very different picture of the Christian life, much less of Christian community. Rational self-interest may be the organizing principle for the rest of the world, but it is downright antithetical to the radical God-centered, self-donating life of Jesus.

In a similar post, Zossima at Forgetting Ourselves points to an article in BusinessWeek Online called ”God, Inc.” that explores the business model of the megachurch. The picture that it paints is one of churches that have spent tens of millions of dollars to build campuses that cater to all your needs: $90 million for Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Compaq Center, $72 million for Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek, $100 million for Mike Buster’s Prestonwood Baptist Church.

Sure, such capital investments allow these churches to reach larger and larger congregations. And I don’t want to suggest that God cannot and does not work through the megachurch. But is bigger really the goal? And what do these churches sacrifice to reach this goal?

Part of the answer can be found in the buildings themselves. The designers of the new sanctuary at Willow Creek, for example, purposefully chose not to incorporate traditional symbols like the cross. Why? BusinessWeek reports that “Market research suggested that such traditional symbols would scare away non-churchgoers.” And this non-threatening approach extends to the church’s teaching: “Like Osteen, Hybels packages self-help programs with a positive message intended to make people feel good about themselves.”

Now, I can understand wanting to make all kinds of people feel welcome, and I can appreciate the desire to be “seeker-sensitive,” whatever that may mean. But I find the idea of a feel-good gospel troubling, and it seems to me that the absent cross is emblematic of a free-market theology that caters to the customer rather than putting God front and center.

Is the cross threatening? You better believe it is. It’s humbling and demanding and anything but comfortable.

But it’s also kinda the whole point.