Stewardship of Your Effluence

The last two Sundays, the messages have followed a theme of stewardship or management. The first was Stewardship of Your Influence and the second was Stewardship of Your Affluence. I laughingly thought that the third message in the series, were there to have been one, should be about the Stewardship of Your Effluence.

While this was originally a bit of a joke in my mind, it later struck me that it was indeed appropriate. It was Jesus himself who said:

Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean', but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean'.    Matthew 15:11 NIV

I happen to believe that the language we use and immerse ourselves in has a powerful effect in shaping who we really are. It powerfully shapes the way we think, and the way we see the world. And through those aspects, it shapes the way we live and behave. Consequently, Christian discipleship must involve the management of our language -- the Stewardship of our Effluence as much as it involves the stewardship of our influence and our affluence.

Regrettably, the North American evangelical Christian sub-culture has a poor record in the management of its language forms. To be sure, it is very concerned about avoiding the language of the gutter -- that is those coarse words pertaining to bodily sexual and excretory functions and activities. But it easily takes up many other genteel language forms that really are bad news for a Christian perspective. This post discusses just a few of those forms.

The Language of the Market Place

The closer I look, the more obvious it becomes to me that the language of the market place pervades the Christian sub-culture. We've all heard people talking about going church shopping when they've moved into a new city or neighbourhood, or worse, when they've simply decided they need a new church. This should hardly be surprising when consumer spending is the engine that drives our North American economy, and the shopping malls are this centuries great temples.

The great Worship Wars that rage through so many churches are precisely an example of consumerist language shaping consumerist attitudes among Christians. We are used to having the market place provide us with a wealth of variety of products, so that we can purchase that specific item that is so uniquely us. So, of course we bring those attitudes with us into the church. It's no so much that we consciously buy into the idea that worship is about us rather than God, it's just that we are so surrounded by the language of the market place that we just assume that its messages are true wherever we go. So why shouldn't the church cater to my tastes and preferences just as the market place does? After all, isn't worship all about my feeling warm and intimate toward God?

But it is not just the consumer that brings market place language into the church and into the Christian sub-culture. All around us in the church and the sub-culture we hear the language of those who would provide us with all sorts of spiritual goods and services -- language we are intimately familiar with from the market place. Just look at the way many churches advertise in their communities. Look at the way "Christian" music and books and other paraphernalia is promoted in the Christian bookstores.

Perhaps the worst example of this market place language came into our home from an organization that specialized in providing materials devoted to the development of "Christian" leadership. The language used to describe this book or that program was really over the top. No superlative was spared in describing the wonderful effects that reading this book, or implementing that program, would have on your life or the life of your leadership team or your church -- even all of the above. Really, it made the sort of claims made in secular television commercials and print advertising seem downright subtle and understated. After browsing through the mailer, I often felt dirtied by the extreme, perhaps even obscene, language used in this "Christian" propaganda.

It's only recently that I began to understand exactly what about that over the top promotional material made me feel so tainted. The superlative worth that was so lavished on these books, tapes and programs was far beyond what any man-made item could ever deliver. That sort of ascription of worth was something that really belonged to God alone. "Ascription of worth" is the root underlying concept behind the English word worship. In effect, this supposedly Christian organization was using the language of worship, not in respect of the living God of all creation, but in respect of objects made by human hands.

The ancient Israelites thought that by keeping the form of their worship of God in His temple, that they could engage freely in the other cultic practices of the world around them even though they had been repeatedly and pointedly warned by God not to do so. In the end it took them into exile.

The Language of the Prayer Circle

From time to time one can read some fairly witty satire on the language used by many in the North American evangelical Christian sub-culture when addressing God in prayer.

Oh Father, we thank you, Father, for everything you have blessed us with, Father. And we remember, Father, how you suffered and died, Father, on the cross, Father, for our sins, Father. So we just want to praise you, Father, for saving us, Father, and making us your children, Father. And we just ask, Father, that you would continue, Father, to warm our hearts, Father, with your love, Father, and just bless us Father, as we worship you, Father, in your house, Father.

You can substitute the appelations Lord, Jesus, God or others for Father in the above, and get the same effect. The satire is witty because it is familiar. We've all heard prayers like this many times from many well meaning and well intentioned Christians who would never think of speaking in that horrid gutter talk. Why, that would be taking God's name in vain, and we would never do that. But really "vain" in that context just means "empty" or "meaningless". Can you think of anything that is more empty than a comma?

Why do we pray like this? Well, one reason is that that's the way we've learned to pray by listening to those who pray in public. We copy the language we here others use in our sub-culture. It sounds pious, so we copy it, uncritically.

Another reason is that when we pray in public we are self-conscious, and insert non-words like "um" (or "Father"?) because we're trying to figure out what to say next. That's natural. Many people are self-conscious when speaking in public. Unfortunately, what we need are examples of people who are less self-conscious and more God-conscious in their public prayer. Instead of holding up extemporaneous prayer as the quintessential mark of a God centered life, perhaps we would have been better to give greater honour to the thoughtfully planned set prayers that our more liturgical brethen utilize.

The Language of Business

The business world has done a good job of incorporating ideas, concepts and language that was once the domain of the church, adapting them to its own purposes, and deploying them promiscuously. Most notable is the ubiquitous use of terms like vision and mission that were once uniquely churchly terms. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and so it is indeed a compliment to the church that the world of business has found things of the church to be of benefit in its own pursuits. Ironically, the church has now returned the compliment, by re-importing the business world's use of these concepts, but without the critical analysis by which the business world transformed them.

It ought to go without saying that a "for-profit" business corporation exists for the single purpose of making profit for its shareholders. It employs all sorts of means and resources toward that end, often behaving in ways that may appear on the surface to be altruistic. But if a business corporation is well run, everything it does is, by definition, in pursuit of profit.

In the pursuit of profit, a business corporation uses people as resources, commodities, things. Even those corporations that boast that "People are our most important asset" still regard people as just that: assets.

God, on the other hand, regards people as persons having unique and inestimable value in their own right, and not simply by virtue of their usefulness in achieving some other end. Further, He expects -- nay, He commands -- that His church have the same regard for people as He does Himself. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." And again: "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, that you love one another."

There is no great value in ignoring the organizational strengths that business management techniques can bring to an organization simply because they are from the world of business. However, when we incorporate the language and methods of the business world uncritically, we expose ourselves to language and methods that fundamentally view people as things to be used, rather than as persons to be loved. It is inevitable that we will be shaped by such language in a direction contrary to that of God's design for His church.

Our treatment of people ultimately reflects our treatment of God. Human beings are, after all, created to be the image of God. How we treat the image of a king or president is ultimately how we treat that king or president himself. If we make a practice of viewing people as resources to be used, then we will inevitably also view God as a resource to be used.

So what about me?

No doubt you will have detected a certain degree of irritation or antipathy toward the use of these forms of language within the Christian sub-culture. To be brutally honest, I often find that the place where I am most annoyed with others is precisely the place where I am most frustrated at my own inability to be the kind of person I would wish to be and believe that I ought to be.

So too it is here. I myself habitually use language in ways that profane the sacred and sacralize the profane. Desperately I need the support of a community that recognizes the struggle to be faithful in our common struggle together to be good stewards of the language forms that we use and which in turn shape us, for good or for ill. I recognize this need most in the realization of how incredibly easy it is for me to view people I encounter as means to an end or as barriers to my progress, and how hard it is to really enter into their joys and sorrows as persons valuable in their own right and for their own sakes -- as persons who are, truly, the image of God.

God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.