Beth SwigerAs I scrolled through Instagram this morning, I was shown an advertisement to “change my image to a baddie”. It had a video of a rockstar-style female walking through a dimly lit place with electric guitars pulsing in the background. The allure was to get me to admire this powerful, sexy woman and to pay them to change me into something like that.
It made me think of all of the business marketing classes that I have attended over the years that depend on the illusion of glamour and excitement to stir up people’s emotions to buy something… because that is what marketing is all about.
Marketing has been woven into every aspect of our modern world, even the Church, and I’m saddened for a generation that is being conditioned to think that this is normal.
Can we step outside of that matrix for a minute?
Who told you that?
Somewhere along the way, “Christians” and “The Church” have forgone our ancient instruction and have taken hold of the new and shiny. Just as God asked, “Who told you that you were naked?” I am now asking, “Who told you that we needed to be ‘cool’?” Who told you that we need to be slick?
Who told you that you need the puff, puff, puff of illusion?
Because eventually, the illusion goes “poof” and disappears.
That’s what the prodigal son learned before he was willing to come back to his dad as a humble servant. That’s what the prodigal Church needs to learn in this hour as well.
A lot of this striving to be cool and being accepted by the world stems from my generation in the 90s. With the boom of the internet and easy access to magazines and music, our generation started lusting after the world. They started panting after the things that “everyone else” had but they didn’t. It was covetous and greedy thoughts that filled the mind of a generation, and it led to rebellion.
Rebellion
Some people rebelled and walked away from the Lord completely. They have outwardly turned their back on the Truth and embraced sin and the culture of this world wholeheartedly. These rebellious ones are indiscernibly different from people who grew up without God. They have transformed– metamorphosed– except it was to devolve into darkness rather than grow into light.
Some people rebelled against old truths while staying inside the Church ecosystem and started revamping the Church from within. They also transformed– into someone who decries “religion” but has become it in the truest sense of the word. Their hearts are far from Him– dry, dull, empty– but they tell everyone else how they should be doing it. This is the sad state of the Compromised Church– trading truth for being unoffensive; trading holiness for acceptance; and slapping all of it with a false sticker that says “grace” or “love”.
The problem is, both of these issues stemmed from rebellion and judgment. Those seeds of rebellion and judgment have now grown up into mature-sized plants . 30 years is a first harvest of these seeds, and I, for one, am concerned about the fruit.
Judgment
These hard-hearted church kids started judging everything.
They judged their parents and the way they were raised. They judged the Church and its boundaries.
As their hearts hardened they also judged any attempt to create– their measuring stick was the world. They reject every effort at creating with Christ as lame. “Excellence! Excellence!,” they cried, but truly they were after conformity. In order to conform you have to erase truth, erase personality, and submit to the ways of this world. Puff, puff, puff.
Now we have a generation of parents who are “cool” but not holy, who have turned their backs on truth and they are raising the most spiritually-tossed generation yet. These parents are raising their children without the rails of truth, and it breeds confusion. The fruit is emptiness, despair, and death.
What did Jesus look like?
This admiration for celebrity culture has put being unreachable and untouchable on a pedestal.
The problem with that, of course, is that it’s nothing like Jesus.
Jesus came in humility.
Many people like to quote Isaiah 53:5 “by His stripes we are healed.”
But most overlook the truth right before it in Isaiah 53:2,3 (NLT) “There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.”
These verses are not just a description of Jesus as suffering savior, but they are a blueprint for us to follow!
Why are we spending so much time and energy focusing on our outward appearance and our “baddie image”, trying to emulate the world?
The Church must admire and imitate Jesus.
Jesus was real, reachable, and touchable.
It’s not his outward beauty that attracted people to him. He didn’t make sure that he had the right clothes or hair or tiptoe around making sure he didn’t offend anyone by telling them the truth of what God says.
Jesus is the most excellent. Everything he did was perfect.
He also understood the joy of contentment and trusting God. It’s time that we do too.
The death of celebrity
What’s the way out of this spiral?
1. Repentance.
It’s time to put to death the idolatry of the celebrity culture. We must knock down our modern graven images and push aside everything that doesn’t look like our King. Be willing to let go of anything that doesn’t align with the truth of scripture. Let God inspect your life, your passions, and your heroes.
2. Embrace Simplicity
The gospel is simple, not easy. You don’t need a genius I.Q. to hear, understand, and obey the commands of Jesus. Ask God what He looks like, and ask Him what it looks like to be like Him in the world, then do it.
3. Humility is the Key
The only way to accomplish any of this is by humility, in the power of the Holy Spirit. God resists pride but gives grace to the humble.
A New Era
It’s time for a change.
A new era is rising– an era of excellence with humility; an era of grace that is not used as an excuse for further sin; an era where the ideals of Jesus are the things that are cool in the church.
It’s time to stop being an insecure group of The Weak and Whiny and raise up in the Spirit of Might and go and take the land! We have been empowered and commissioned. (See Matthew 28:16-20)
Should you be excellent in your work and life? Absolutely! Can you wear clothes that communicate Christ’s message to the mission field around you? Definitely. But your heart has to be settled that those things are tools that you hold loosely in obedience to Christ– those are not the main things in your life. (See Matthew 6)
Jesus didn’t need to look “cool” to accomplish his mission and neither do you. As you go about your daily life, whether it’s local and raising a Godly family or it’s international and raising up nations, slow down to see the people around you– sit with them, and honor them. Make decisions that are loving and benefit the people around you, not just about getting the things that you want. Don’t prop yourself up as untouchable, but be open and relational.
This will put to death the celebrity culture in your heart, and the people you influence will have something lovely and valuable to imitate.
Truthfully and with love,
