Christianity for Sale

As if we needed any further proof that Christianity itself is becoming commercialized. Today I ran across a story that highlights a new "holy water" project.

The instructions are simple: Read the Prayer . . / Drink the Water . . . / Believe in God! / Believe in Yourself!

It's just that easy to be a "good" Christian. Make sure you use only Christian products. Make sure you drink only "Christian" water. What have we come to really? I am at a point in my life that I am trying to simplify what Christianity really is and what it means to be a Christian. God didn't intend for the Christian life to be a complicated ordeal full of lists of what you can and cannot do. He didn't seek to free us from sin so that we could chain ourselves to the next best thing - self-righteous isolation. As I sit here typing in my Christian message T-shirt, I ponder what has gotten us to this point. In countries where allegiance to the Gospel of Christ means real persecution, do believers go out of their way to display their faith on their stuff as it were? Do we in America find the need to display our Christian message on everything as a way to "be bold" about our belief? What compels us to act this way? I am not saying that you should go and cleanse your closet of all of your Christian message apparel, but have we separated things a bit too much? Now we have Christian radio stations and Christian book stores and Christian TV stations and so on. Certainly these things are helpful and can be a great boost, but are we selling God short?

Taieb, who spent several years in the pest-control business, had been thinking about a faith-based venture for more than a decade. He looked at several products through which to deliver his message of spiritual enrichment.

Wear-your-faith T-shirts already had exploded in the market, along with jewelry and candles, even candy -- all products used for evangelism and/or profit. The New Jersey firm that makes Testamints offers berry, spearmint and peppermint mints wrapped in a verse of scripture. Bible Gum promises consumers they can can chew their way to spiritual enlightenment. Each box comes with a scripture verse.

I am not going to be presumptous here (maybe it is already to late for that), but I think we need to take a step or two or three back. Maybe we should focus more of our time, efforts and money on the Kingdom of God itself and not so much on the merchandising. It is apparent that we have much bigger fish to fry in our churches than what water we are drinking. Let's work on helping people know the Truth training them to be disciples of Christ. The rest of this will take care of itself.