Commodity
Just read The Divine Commodity by Skye Jethani and I thought I’d share a few thoughts this week, as they apply to the church we’re planting here in Vegas.
The central thesis of the book is that we’ve made God into a commodity – churches sell God and what He can do for you. Jethani quotes a sociologist who claims that the faith of most American church goers is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. The idea is of a faith that thinks of God as a distant entity not very involved in our lives, who we go to when we need stuff that will help make us happy, and we should be good people as far as possible.
He’s right. And the problem is that God doesn’t exist to serve us. We exist to serve Him. God’s not here to make us happy. We’re here to glorify Him. God is great beyond our ability to comprehend, and our purpose is to worship Him and point others towards worshiping Him.
The tricky part is connecting with and creating interest in non-Christians, and letting them know that God is a treasure worth giving up everything for, not someone who will give us treasure.