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Listen closely.
But. The entertainment industry, at least for the part of the world I live in, is one of the wealthiest establishments ever created. Cash flow is no problem as film after film try to out do each other, thus driving production prices up, thus driving viewing prices up. And we pay this money to watch that which, though entertaining, isn't quite...authentic. These bits of visual entertainment serve ulterior motives. Movies make you yearn to buy the clothes or the cars or the soundtracks or the sodas or the kid’s meals at your local McTakeYourMoney. You get the picture? There’s product placement even in books now! It’s seemingly impossible to flee from the omnipresence of blatant advertising. You would think the church would be a refuge from the deluge. Think again. On the message boards at The Ooze, posters have posted quite a bit on the subject of the merchandising of materials related to The Prayer of Jabez. The book’s been a hit both within the Christianity community and without, but the merchandising has reached absurd proportions. Do you really think Jabez prayed to have his territory expanded like this? Postmodern thinkers point to a few defining moments in the lives of boomers, X’ers, NetGens, and the like. Vietnam. Watergate. The Clinton Scandal. Most recently we can unfortunately add the World Trade Towers Tragedy. These events helped to shape their respective generations. What we have all learned from these events is how to distrust. We yearn for authenticity because it seems so rare. So much is up for sale these days, and when something is up for sale, it only costs as much as you can pay for it. We’ve become so adept at buying that we think everything is for sale, even Christianity. Wearing a T-shirt, reading a book, or buying a CD does not a Christian make. The only way to sell Christ is to sell out to him. And we can sell out to him because he paid the most unimaginable price for us all. We can sell out to him only by believing what he said. He constantly prefaced his words with “I tell you the truth…” It is up to you to decide whether or not he was being authentic when he said it. Go To Page: 1 2
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