Consumers Are Sovereign And Iron Man Is Lonely.
I have come to believe that all consumers are sovereign. That is to say that the preference and impulse of the average individual in America rules supreme. We the customer can match self-perceived need with a product and if the product fails to deliver we simply take our business elsewhere and with our culture rapidly changing as it does with every nanosecond, I can only imagine how difficult it must be for those marketing to our fickle nature.
I say this because this consumer mentality has infiltrated the church. Theology and sound doctrine are slashed in half making the Christian message affordable for everyone while the worship serves is customized for comfort. Meanwhile….
E-mail/internet,TV, video games,text messaging, and cell phones are ubiquities in our culture, (we are wired). One trend that I find disturbing is that in an effort to make the gospel accessible to the masses we have taken the advantage of technology (a good thing!) but have become more and more isolated from each other. As a result as I see it we are in touch with everyone potently, but we are known by almost no one in particular (Putnam thesis of the 1960s).
David Wells writes in his recent book “The Courage To Be Protestant”,
“There is a recent development called “affective computing” in which a virtual person is created by a computer. This person responds to the real person using the computer with expressions of understanding and sympathy, thus giving the illusion of human companionship”.
I recently took my son to see the movie “Iron Man”, ( a fun movie by the way), one of the interesting aspects of Robert Downey Jr. character was his increasing isolation from people yet close relationship with robots which displayed all the characteristics of a reliable friend, this by the way makes for a very lonely Iron Man. I don’t want to read into the movie to much but I did find it interesting that this seemed to be an underlying theme of the movie.
So in a culture where the consumer is the authority as well as increasingly disconnected to people and realationships, how should the church respond?
I think the church has to engage people where they are without just going there and staying there with them. Sometimes we’re against or above the culture the third way is to engage and serve the culture. However we do not serve the culture well, and we sure don’t serve the Lord if the culture, especially if we are talking abut a consumeristic calls the shots. Paul in Corinthians talks about “being all things to all men” and yet it’s clear he doesn’t means marketing the gospel in such a way that it loses it’s edges or identity. We get some insight in Acts 17 and similar passages. I’d be interested in how your reading on culture in Carson and Wells relates to this issue.
Basically Wells if I understand him right says “The Marketers” (those who have adapted a cooperate model for advancing the church) are guilty of peddling the gospel as a product which is seen for its benefits not its truth. And now the “The Marketers” who have been pitching to “The Emergents” an endeavor which was doomed from the start because of post-moderns skepticism of being solicited to and suspicious of slick packaging, in short it was the wrong the wrong costumer, are setting up their empires in places like Northern Africa, Asia, and south America. So is this a crisis for the western church? We find ourselves in a peculiar place at least here in the West. If I am reading Wells right my bet is (I haven’t finished the book) he is calling for a re-grouping of what he calls “Classic Evangelicalism”. Although he says this name may not be overly helpful today. I like the book it is well written, seems biblical and much of what he says resonates as true to me but I must confess I am holding out for the good old fashion fundamentalist punch to the gut. I hope I am wrong I really like the book.
D.A. Carson what is there to say other than pure gold!
D.A. Carson