[Ian Cameron McLaren]

Donald Miller began his afternoon session by discussing how the Church has become big on selling the Gospel, using Jesus as the product we all need to fill the hole in our hearts, the latest thing that we just can’t live without. The Gospel has been reduced to a bunch of marketing techniques not unlike the free market economy in which we live and tells us that we always need more in order to achieve true fulfillment. This is, of course, false. It’s just a sales pitch, and the challenge becomes trying to being the true Gospel into this free market economy context because we know that the call to follow Jesus does not look anything like this. Miller said that ‘at best, Jesus is a mediocre product’, meaning that even though we have chosen to follow Him, there are still problems to be faced, issues to be resolved, and we are not entirely fulfilled. The call to follow Jesus is not an attractive life, but because we have bought into the ‘Jesus as product’ ideology, we are often left feeling as though we still need more.

In short, we have turned Christianity into a free market economy product which promises fulfillment and success, using Christ as the ultimate product. Thus, we have an influx of books and teaching that revolve around the ‘how to’ questions; we have the ‘7 steps to this,’ the ‘3 keys to a happy that’, and take obscure OT passages and spin them into a magical formula for success. [In Miller’s words, these things are ‘crap’.] The ‘how’ questions are dominating these days, but the Bible is not a ‘how’ book; it examines the ‘why’ questions. Miller says we need to embrace life as it really is, continually asking the ‘why’ questions. To say that we completely understand all the theology and have all the answers is wrong because it robs the Gospel of its mystery and sets it up for unfair judgements and comparisons on others who do not fall in line with your grid.

Miller then turned to Matthew 6 [from The Message]. Here, Jesus is speaking to those who think they have it all figured out and lord it over the simple, and those who use prayer as a voodoo/wish fulfillment technique. Miller talked about how most of us have no idea who we really are. In that light, Jesus exhorts us to go to a quiet place and begin to figure it out, asking the ‘why’ questions. We have turned prayer into the seeking of wish fulfillment, trying to get God to jump through hoops and provide us with an easy way out. We need to turn off the role playing and come to Christ “as simply and honestly as we can manage. The focus will shift from you to God and you will begin to sense his grace.” [Matthew 6, The Message] We need to approach God as a Father, very honestly, and submit because he knows us better than we know ourselves. Whereas in the free market economy approach, we come thinking we know what we need and asking God to fill our lives with that which will ‘fulfill’ us, here we trust that God knows best and will Father us to maturity. If we submit to Christ, we can trust in the fact that authority that is love will not give you want you want, but rather what you need.

In short, we need to abandon the idea of free market economy Christianity and embrace Christianity as a beautiful relationship that can’t be fully explained, trusting that God knows best and will Father us into maturity.