Come Follow Me--Just $5.95 After The First Ten Days

If you understand the path we have been on recently and the immense homesickness that I, especially, have been feeling you might understand the temptation that I had contemplating flights to visit my parents in Ohio over Christmas.  Knowing that we might be able to fly back to the United States for just a brief period of time for my favorite holiday made everything seem better for a few hours.  While the cost of flights was one thing that got me to step back for a minute to examine my motives for wanting to return home, there was definitely an inner conviction that was holding me back: a desire for something different this year. 

I am not claiming to be "holier-than-thou" because each year I get pulled into the same buying frenzy that "is" Christmas.  Every year as my walk with Christ becomes more intimate, the week or two after the holidays becomes more depressing as I realize that I was "sucked in" once again, even if it was under the guise of "family togetherness" or "celebrating Christ's birth."  Underneath it all is still an accumulation of stuff, an exchange of things not necessary for life together. 

One of the things that I miss here in France is the U.S. "fall season."  Yet, fall here is just as beautiful as fall at home.  I become resentful that there are not fall decorations (but in an act of full disclosure of my personality, as I recently read in an Anne Lamott writing, "I could become resentful at the ocean if I tried"): pumpkins to buy, halloween decorations, Thanksgiving decorations, Christmas decorations and lights....and I begin to question if the fall season has just become for us about a certain feeling of having material items around.  Many of us are quick to dismiss that we are not materialistic.  But it surrounds us.  It becomes part of who we are.  It becomes part of our very being, and we do not even realize it.  Part of the depression I am dealing with now is the shedding of this and the very real struggle of how it has become infused to my being.  In other words, we can say that we are not materialistic and even "downsize" consumeristic tendencies in our Christmas celebrations but until we experience this counterculturally as a community together (or remove ourselves from a culture totally), it will still be a part of who we are.  Does that make sense?  I am still trying to process it somewhat.

So, when talking to my mom on the phone, it hit her that we don't celebrate American Thanksgiving here.  She laughed and made a joke about what it was going to be like without Black Friday.  I think that solidified my decision not to come home.  Not because I don't want to go, but because I believe I have to stay.  I was reminded of a paper I wrote earlier this year in which I wrote about economism, "the conviction that economic values are the most important and the restructuring of a society to express that valuation." (Cobb, Consumerism, Economism and Christian Faith)  I believe it to be more insidious than consumerism which is rampant in our culture.  I believe it to be an evil  underneath it all, what pervades our ability to think clearly about what it means to be a Christian and follow Christ.  It is the way Satan predominantly works in the United States (again, my humble opinion), and he works it well. 

Case in point: here's how it works.  One day after my previous post, in which I was lying on the floor sobbing, looking for hope, I glanced at my Facebook pages and saw something posted by a friend about an online women's ministry.  "God wants you to succeed," it says.  "He desires for you to live a life full of hope, abundance and happiness..." (you get the picture)  I clicked on the link (my sin of consumerism...), and I found a website that a group of women started to give inspirational phone calls to women every day.  "This 2 minute daily phone call will change your life for the better," it claimed!  And I continued to read, "Try it free for the first ten days...only $5.95 a month after that!"  My heart sank.  What I thought might be an interactive social network of women supporting women was just another shallow version of the Gospel.

Is this what we have reduced Jesus into?  Do people searching in their faith even understand that He is alive?  Do they know that we possess something vibrantly different?  Do we even understand that our triune God lives in community and is pushing us into His fullness only found in community? 

I am sure that the women who put the site together are very well intentioned women with sincere hearts.  I do not think they even realize that they have reduced their Lord and Savior to a commodity.  Sadly, it has just become part of U.S. Christian culture, and we see it everywhere.  Economics "promotes a 'methodological individualism' which accepts the truism that the world is made up of individuals and the facts of the world can only be explained in terms of facts about individuals." (Collier, Contemporary Culture and the Role of Economics) When I was in the thick of depression and I felt the sting of defeat, I only felt lonelier when I read this web offering.  It demonstrates that even well intentioned followers of Christ are very often blinded by evils that just have become part of who we are.

Is this all most of have to offer?  Or is there more?  We have such an exciting gift in our faith, and if we are not excited about it, I have to wonder if you truly know the gift you have?  We should want to live it out, even if it costs us our lives (more about this in my next post), so that others may find it! 

As we say in AA, "May you find Him now!"