Hard Boiled Believers (Luke 16:13-15).

By Kim Thoday

We human beings are so unpredictable. We are so impulsive, mesmerized by the latest fads and fashions. Even worse we become victims too often of the political and social lies that justify and perpetuate the ‘truths’ that we live by. We become blinded and paralysed by ‘givens’ and ‘common sense’ that constructs a reality around which our ego is the centre.

As Western Christians our identity is constantly challenged by an increasing globalised relativism. Yet even that is a lie. For beneath the sugar coated crust of postmodernity lurks a new god – well, an old god, but one in a new guise – the god of the market forces, driven by the new high priests of transnational corporated self-interest. And hence, increasingly, we find the issues of social justice and ethics banished from political discourse writ large. Evidence for this was clearly demonstrated in the recent lead up to the national elections both here in Australia and in the United States. It appears that both elections were decided by the party that could most convince their electorates that they would protect individual material prosperity and security at home.

Unfortunately populist religion in the West continues to be seduced by the powerful winds of the dominant culture. It’s a rather cruel image but it has been said that if you put a frog in boiling water it will hop straight out. However, so the object lesson goes, if you put a frog into a pan of cold water and slowly raise the temperature to boiling, the frog will remain within, oblivious to its ‘hard boiled’ fate. At the cultural and social temperature controls of our global corporate and media empires are some deft hands. It is interesting that the fastest growing Protestant denomination in Australia – Hillsongs – is seduced by, and panders to, the prosperity doctrine of the corporate god. Here at last is the ultimate culturally friendly Christianity – researched, packaged and marketed – for a privately franchised world. It is symptomatic of religion that insists that private material gain and privatised power is next to godliness. Here is religion that insists that it has a monopoly on the truth. Here is religion that insists that the kingdom of god can be legislated. Here is religion that elevates form over content, appearance over integrity, assertion over humility, success over sincerity. Here is religion that vilifies alternative points of view and insists upon the supremacy of a neo-fundamentalist or Conservative agenda. Hallelujah, here is a Christianity that is successful in the eyes of the world. But where is the founder of Christianity to be found in all this market glory? Where is the Spirit of Christ in this orgiastic pneumatic religious pneumonia?

What has happened to the voice of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who says: “No-one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon. The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, ‘You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.'” What has happened to this voice? Is it merely silenced or has it again been murdered? Isn’t it interesting to learn from this Bible text that what we are currently experiencing has, in a powerful sense, occurred before, within the very life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. What an irony that is. The contemporary culturally friendly religion of the market god is the same religious phenomenon that Jesus of Nazareth defined true faith against. It was this hard-boiled religion that Jesus defied. The market god and his high priests thought they’d won too as Jesus was finally executed.

Blessings in the name of Jesus Christ,

Kim Thoday, Hewett Community Church of Christ, South Australia

http://www.hewett.org.au