Jared at The Gospel-Driven Church summarizes well what I have been feeling about all these stupid mac rip off church commercials. In his rather direct style he writes:
This is total b.s. Complete and utter b.s.
This pitting of "real" against "lame" ones is spiritually bankrupt dreck from the pit of hell. The guy on the right calls himself "authentic," and the people who made these clearly have no clue what "authentic" means. For them, as for most pomo em-church poseurs, it means "cool." Do you see what they're doing here? They are saying the "authentic" Christian is the cool one. That's why the dude on the left has on a nerdy suit and has limp hair.
They could have made a statement about grace vs. works, and under the idiocy, I suppose it might be there, but what they are really doing is mocking fellow believers. We are the cool ones, we are the ones who have it figured out. Plus we have product in our hair.
This has got to stop. This cult of the cool in the church must stop. This fetishizing of hipness must stop. It is idolatry.
And the reality of it is, when you walk into one of these so-called "authentic" churches, you just get the same ol' works religion. Look at the sermon titles and message points. It's all about principles and steps and tips to what-not and hoo-ha. It's just the same behavioristic gospel . . . only cooler.
That's not authentic. That's works religion.
The interesting thing about the above linked videos is that they aren't even original. That's something else that irks me to no end -- the claiming of authenticity all the while ripping off everybody else. These are obviously parodies of the Mac/PC ads, which is admittedly a clever concept. Look, if you're gonna claim authenticity, at least be original.
2 comments:
Great post -- the "cult of cool" is often simply the sin of pride against elder brother and sisters in Christ. I saw this and the others (somewhere there's a whole series of these) several months ago. My first reaction was that they are hilarious. I saw myself lampooned as the uncool, christian-music listening, Jesus t-shirt wearing out of touch Christian. As one who has escaped from the "church bubble," I think the videos are a gentle reminder that following Christ is much more than the stickers on the back of our car or the kind of music we listen to.
for what it's worth...
"Christian cool" is incredibly uncool. It is creepy. Faux-hawks were, like, so 2002. In order to fight the battle, I sort of hope that em-church pastors wear polyester suits. Or maybe robes.
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