Discovering the Real Jesus in Monroe

(Times Square, June 2007. The hanging lobster is above the door to a Red Lobster restaurant.)

Tomorrow is “Black Friday,” when many shop all day and overspend and accrue even more credit card debt, and retailers hope to get out of the red and into the black. It’s either the “holidays” or “Christmas,” depending on your philosophy of shopping. It’s worth noting that the original thing [i.e., Christmas] had NOTHING to do with shopping. Instead of us buying gifts for people that they don’t need and hopefully getting an equal monetary amount of gifts back at us, a GIFT was given to us.

In order to celebrate the holidays, one needs money. But in order to celebrate Christmas, I mean really celebrate it, it’s not going to cost you money, just your life. For those with little money this is good news!

I’m now reading Brian McLaren’s book Everything Must Change, and came across something that sheds light on what’s happening on Black Friday. Black Friday is a “theocapitalist manifestation.” What’s that? McLaren, following author Tom Beaudoin, says that theocapitalism is “godlike consumer media capitalism.” Theocapitalism functions like a religion; indeed, it is a very real and very strong religious kind of thing. Here’s why (and I quote directly from pp. 190-191).

1. It gives us identity, helping us find or create our true selves - as the kind of man who wears cologne X, or the kind of woman who wears dress Y, or the kind of teenager who buys music Z, or the kind of senior citizen who bonds her dentures and heals her hemorrhoids with Product Q or Product H.

2. It helps us belong to a community of kindred spirits who share our faith - whether that faith is in the power of a cosmetic to produce youth, or the power of a car to produce sex appeal, or the power of an investment firm to give us security.

3. It develops trust by making and keeping advertising promises, and thus reduces the anxiety of making choices, so when we purchase deodorant A, electric drill B, or computer C, we can do so with joy and anticipation.

4. It helps us experience ecstasy - when we step out of a plane on vacation, when we bite a chocolate bar, when we sip a fine wine, when we click into an XXX website.

5. It communicates transcendence through sacred images and symbols - the mystical Nike swoosh that directs us toward transcendence through footwear, the holy cardinal red of a coke sign that saves us through sugar, the iconic Target bulls-eye that draws our concentration to the Center of All Things in the housewares aisle, or the heavenly Golden Arches that guide us to bliss through beef and cheese.

6. It promises us conversion to a new life if we try their product and jouin their brand “family.”

7. Ultimately, theocapitalism promises rest for the restless heart - a rest that replaces Augustine’s Confessions with a thirty-minute infomercial featuring the testimonials of satisfied customers and believers in the product, complete with dramatic before-and-after photographs.

Theocapitalism, through marketing and advertising and brainwashed word-of-mouthing creates, ex nihilo, powerful wants and desires for things and products and experiences one does not actually need. And off we go a-shopping again for the next incarnation of the Chia Pet.

I have news for you: you do not have to bow before this holiday god. There is another world out there, another kingdom, and it is light and truth and love and it will only cost you your life. It will set you free. It will turn the great moral indebtedness of “Black Friday” into the debt-relief reality of “Good Friday.” The result will be that theocapitalist things will grow strangely dim. And you won’t have to find a place to store all the presents and work overtime to pay off the credit cards.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.