I have mentioned before that I get kind of annoyed with Christian trinkets. (Like when the front 1/3 of the local Christian bookstore is filled up with this stuff and doesn't have a single book on global poverty.) I was recently clued into the website, A Little Leaven, which chronicles some of the worst of the worst.
Remember when the craftsmen at Ephesus got really mad because they knew Paul's gospel could ruin their idol trinket business? Turns out they could have just opened a Christian bookstore.
In all honesty though, the fault doesn't lie just on the bookstore owners. They're at least partly responding to consumer demand. Please, don't encourage Christian retailers to fill up their shelves with this kind of thing. Don't buy it!
I understand that having religious symbols and instruments can be helpful in redirecting our thoughts and hearts to Christ. But this kind of thing seems to go way beyond that. We don't need a "Christianized" version of everything the world has.
5 comments:
I've been fighting it for years... I've always hated that sort of thing. I can't say how many people I have seen with crosses on their necks living out hypocrisy. We don't deserve to adorn ourselves with the cross, but we do as though we can claim its sufferings as our own, as though we can just shrink the crosses we are supposed to bear down to made in China crap about our necks and hands. Our crosses are supposed to be heavy and gouging us with splinters, not dancing around as flash jewelry. We don't deserve the cross and the sufferings of the cross, the holy path of taking up your cross.
So does that mean you didn't like the Jesus stress ball I gave you in small group??
TO David:And yet for every person who wears that cross in hypocrisy there are many who cling to that same cross that they wear around their neck every day. I agree we do not need a Christized answer to everything the world puts out there, but there are many people (such as in the Hospital I work in) who are not as strong as you are and need those things to remind them of Christ's love for them. I also seem to remember Christ saying his burden/yoke was light not heavy and gouging. Finally never underestimate Christ using those very same items as tools for evangelism.
Tell the martyrs how easy and light the burden was.
Christ wasn't referring to our daily walk when he said that. The connection is the conviction that he gives. Christ is not out to crush our spirits, but the WORLD is, and when we step out in faith, CHRIST'S burden is going to be light but the WORLD'S burden (the cross) is going to be heavy. The world gave Christ a burden and that as the cross, and all of the sin associated with it. In the same way, we bear a cross of persecution for walking in our faith, but unlike Christ we are not burdened with sin, hence the "light and easy yoke".
No, I do not think wearing crosses is totally bad. There is good mixed in with the bad. I recently have begun to occasionally wear a sort of dog-tag looking thing with a cross puncher into it (ie once a month at most). To me, the symbol of the cross carries a lot of baggage, and it almost certainly does to the rest of the world. So if you wear a cross, you have better have the ability to dispel that baggage when people see you.
As for people needing those things as a reminder:
I cannot judge their faith, because I am only another servant. What I will say is that we must be constantly moving forward and pressing into the Lord, so that we will reach a point where physical reminders of God, his love for us and his purpose are no longer necessary. I know of a girl who lost her faith and slept with a blanket which had Psalms stitched into it to keep the devil at bay. It didn't work. Trinkets ultimately do little to help our faith, and if you are a person who leans on them, you are in a very precarious place spiritually and need to press into the Lord and ask him to help strengthen your faith.
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