What if Retailers Rated Christians?

Let’s put together a website and offer the opportunity for retailers to rate Christians over against other shoppers this holiday season. Oops! I mean this Christmas Season. After all what is more important is that we use the right words than live in the right way.

I read with interest the story from The Gazette out of Colorado Springs, CO in yesterday’s The Oklahoman. Mark Barna spotlighted Focus Action the political arm of Focus on the Family. Each year for the past several Focus Action has alerted Christian shoppers to Christmas friendly retailers for fear the wider culture is “losing Christmas.” The key? Be sure to reference “Marry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings.”

Shouting down retailers on a website seems like the wrong-headed way to make a point about the Way of Jesus. Can you see Jesus clipping through the Decapolis and shouting down retailers for their lack of religious sensitivity? What Jesus might really be doing is suggesting his followers find other ways to celebrate the Christmas Season instead of sleeping on sidewalks during “Black Friday” events. Even more, Jesus might suggest the very things we spend our hard earned money to purchase could be better spent investing in others. Oh the novelty of the upside down Kingdom.

I am no grinch. We will buy gifts. But it seems quite contrary to take off on retailers when our impulse to purchase goods we don’t need with money we don’t have flies in the face of a “store up treasures in heaven” kind of living and giving. And the text meant nothing about giving Christmas gifts.

So, wouldn’t it be nice if we could privilege retailers to rate Christians? I wonder what we would find. If Barna, Pew, or others are correct, we likely would find Christians rate no different than the average American when the item sought is “sold out.” When the flier price is incorrect due to publisher error. When we stand in line longer than we think we should. When we retort rudely when another who may not share our faith in Jesus offers a “Happy Holidays” instead of the Christian politically correct, “Merry Christmas.”

Far better to go ahead and shop in a way your gentleness and reasonableness is evident to everyone as we were reminded in last week’s text from Philippians 4. Maybe we could win an occasion for the Jesus way with living that way rather than shouting down others for not agreeing with our way. Something in the Scriptures reminds me our aim is love not preserving our cultural hegemony because we are Christian. Take a lesson from Jesus who was in the minority. Or maybe learn from the missionaries who dot the landscape of Acts and learn how to “live with others” in the Way of Jesus. They were certainly in the minority.

Gaining ascendancy has only served to make Christians fat and sassy. We live expecting others to privilege us while at the same time not offering much different in our way of living. This whole piece just seems perilously out of place when the aim is celebrating the weakness of the Savior born long ago.

Maybe Focus Action would be better to join the ranks of those who support “Buy Nothing For Christmas” or my friends over at Advent Conspiracy. But then where would the fun be in not shouting down others in the name of Jesus?

About the Author
Husband to Patty. Daddy to Kimberly and Tommie. Grandpa Doc to Cohen, Max, Fox, and Marlee. Pastor to Snow Hill Baptist Church. Graduate of Oklahoma Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Reading. Photography. Golf. Colorado. Jeeping. Friend. The views and opinions expressed here are my own and should not be construed as representing the corporate views of the church I pastor.

2 comments on “What if Retailers Rated Christians?

  1. Paul says:

    Christmastime is an interesting time. It is one of those times in the year where we, as Christians, become fairly well aware of where some of our differences with the culture lie, but at the same time we reveal ourselves still to be pretty profoundly embedded in the culture. We remind ourselves of “the reason for the season” and then turn and get really impatient with the Wal-Mart clerk because they just sold out of that item we really wanted to buy. Nice job of pointing that out, Todd.

    1. Paul,
      Glad you added your thoughts.

      Will be looking forward to seeing you next week.

      Peace.

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