The Consumptive Church: The Medium Is The Message.

The Context For My Starting Point, Different Starting Points, The Religious Industrial Complex, Opium & 3 Legged Chairs, The Model Speaks Volumes

Yesterday, Derek had a great post about how the early church’s model was anti-consumptive in nature. Which led me to take a little rabbit trail in my thinking about Marshall McLuhan’s seminal essay The Medium Is The Message.

While McLuhan was only discussing the changing mediums in technology . . . this idea that there is more to the message than just the message is a formative thought. To assert that there is more to the message than just words given to an audience is huge.

As we explore this some more from a theological posture, we begin to see that all of life is theology, and not just the words that we use to describe it. Tony Jones has spoken of this idea in multiple places by saying that everything that we do and how we do it are just as theological as our doctrines and treatises. That our communities, architecture, spending patterns, meals, and politics, to name a few, are every bit as theological as our views on Jesus, the Trinity, salvation, the church, etc.

How we organize as a community . . . how we spend our money . . . how and where we live . . . all of these things are theological acts. And speak a great deal of how we view ourselves in relationship to God and to our world.

It is in this vein that I’m beginning to see things afresh.

If the medium is the message (as McLuhan proposes) and everything is theological (as Tony proposes) then perhaps we have a lot of rethinking to do.

In that light, what does meeting in a warehouse as a megachurch say about how we view God and people? Could the “theology” be that we see people as numbers and the church as dispenser of goods like the other warehouses (Wal-Mart, BestBuy, Costco)? Success is bottom-lines and the moving of mass produced products as quickly and as profitably as possible?

In that light, what does state of the art sound and lighting say about how we view God and people? Could the “theology” be that we believe God needs a show and the audience needs to be entertained? That it’s less about the long-slow process of becoming like Christ and more about the big, marketed “WOW” factor?

In that light, what does sitting in rows upon rows of lined chairs say about how we view God and people? Could the “theology” be that we believe the pastor is the dispenser of knowledge and the audience is for the simpletons who are supposed to “learn” knowledge every week as opposed to practicing wisdom? That sermons are more about passing information in lecture format from point A to point B as opposed to being conversational, relaxed, and authentic.

In that light, what does shopping and eating at franchises say about how we view God and people? Could the “theology” be that we care more about fueling up for the next few hours as opposed to eating healthy and holistically? That it’s more important for us to look stylish and trendy (and to do so cheaply) even if it means that the people who make the clothes we wear couldn’t afford them themselves and work 18 hour days to do so?

These are just a few rather obvious examples. But I could do this all day. The point is not to create some sort of guilt factor. But rather to point out the underlying theology that makes up each of our decisions. Everything we do, in one form or another, is directly related to how we view God and how we view the world.

I’m afraid that for so much of conventional christianity, the consumptive patterns go unchallenged and even unnoticed because there is such a huge disconnect between what we do and what we believe about God.

I’m not sure our lives are full of so much blatant disregard for God and his world as they are just blind to the reality that everything is theological, that everything is spiritual.

What makes it worse, is that this blind indifference plays a unique roll in reinforcing the same consumptive patterns that the larger culture practices.

Derek shared an excellent insight on this when he writes,

There’s also an emphasis in the New Testament on contentment. This drives right at the heart of consumption. Of course, you have to eat, you need a place to sleep, etc. There’s a basic level of consumption that we require. But the desire for consumption far beyond that is rooted in our nature of discontent – that no matter where we are at in life, or what we have, we always desire the next thing, the better thing, the bigger thing.

At the root of our problem is not our consumptive practices. But the lack of contentment that feeds them. And our discontent leads us to live in a culture that creates waste with temporary fads and transient products.

To this thought, Wess Daniels explains (in the comments of The R-I-C) that the logical outcome of a lack of contentment is a culture of waste.

Industrialization and modernity more generally, as they are built on capitalism, and in the business of creating and hoarding excess. How do we handle the excessive waste produced by our various industries? While consumerism is the driving force of what makes our country stay afloat, what the country is floating on is a huge trash heap. In order for capitalism to work, things have to be made and for things to be made energy and material are used and used up (excess), on the opposite side is the necessity for our televisions to stop working, cars to break down, PC’s to meltdown, and even clothes to fall apart. We need the products (that when made created so much waste) to themselves become waste. Now with that framework – think about what you said of the church. We continue to create a sub-culture of waste (books, music, waste) because we work off the same principles of modernity. It is no surprise then that the church, and the Christians within it have homes filled with excess. As one of your readers pointed out, how many of us will spend hundreds of dollars on excess/waste for Christmas? Until we practice counter-consumerism can we become a community non-excess – or better yet a community that lives “give us this day, the bread we need” as we see Jesus instruct in his disciple-forming (Lord’s) Prayer.

In many ways this is why the christian culture is just as full of waste as the larger culture. The music is transient and has very little lasting power or is inherently good as a work of art. The architecture is transient and has very little lasting power or is inherently good as a work of art. The sermons are transient and have very little lasting power or are inherently good as a work of arts.

Outside of guys like Billy Graham and some of the contributions from the more academic theologians, I’m not sure what of value and lasting worth has come out of the conventional model of church over the last 50 years. The best art we can muster is Thomas Kincaide. The best sermons that we can come up with our self-help lessons about how to have better marriages, finances, and kids. The best music (radio & worship) that we can create is a cheap knock-off of dated, candy-coated pop love songs.

The last 50 years of christianity has created a big pile of waste. Very little that will be remembered 500 years from now. Very little that will last and stand the test of time.

If the medium is the message, our message is dated, transient, temporal, plastic, shallow, and a knock-off of the larger culture.

Listening: The Ortolan by The Deadly Syndrome