Pseudo-Charity
Lately, a lot of teenagers have been going around raising money for excursions to Haiti or Mexico or Alabama to do "mission work" there. Is this really a "charitable" activity? I'm not convinced. I think it is an adventure for most of these young people. Without a doubt, it's a great experience for them, and there is some benefit to the people they claim to be helping. But it would probably be far more helpful to the poor everywhere if we simply supported the work of the experienced relief agencies that have established organizations in these countries, and that know how to maximize the return on their mission dollars. It would be even more helpful if we could stop the insanity of these debtor nations transferring more wealth to us, the first world, in debt payments, than we do to them in charity.
The Business of Religion
Have you ever read an ad for some kind of Christian-oriented workshop or conference or product and wondered to yourself, is this a business or a charity?
It's become an epidemic. Twenty years ago, a few evangelists tried to "cash in" on their "ministries" by selling videos or books or trinkets. And some businesses would make it clear that they were owned and operated by Christians. A Canon salesman used to come out to my office to try to sell me a photocopier. He would always start out by reminding me that he was a Christian and supported the aims of our organization. Did this mean we were going to get a discount? Not on your life. It meant that we should be willing to pay the same or more, to support a fellow believer's material well-being.
I think the whole confusion between industry and ministry took a turn for the worse with the flowering-- or weeding, as I prefer to think of it-- of the Christian Contemporary Music industry.
I don't hesitate to use the word "industry" at all. The Christian Contemporary Music industry-- I'm thinking of companies like Word and Sparrow and their ilk-- deliberately set out to convince the Christian public that they were a "ministry", which is to say, that they existed for the purpose of spreading the gospel and bringing spiritual consolation to their legions of fans.
This, to me, is akin to Esso proclaiming that their real mission, as a corporation, is to preserve the environment.
Does anyone doubt that Esso's real and only mission is to make money, and if they could, they would leave the environment as a stinking, toxic mess, if it meant more profits for their shareholders. Well, the Christian Contemporary Music Industry, and their affiliated hucksters and marketers, have left the evangelical landscape in the U.S. a stinking, toxic mess of crassness, superficiality, glibness, commercialism, and artistic poverty.
Friends, let no one confuse these two things: ministry and industry. A ministry is when a person motivated by unselfish spiritual beliefs provides services, benefits, and comfort to people in need, regardless of personal gain. An industry is when a person provides a product or service for money. It doesn't matter if that person sincerely believes that this product or service improves the lives, spiritual or otherwise, of his customers. If he wants to make a living selling it, then he is running a business, not a ministry.
When a person pretends that his business is a ministry, it scandalizes real ministries. When consumers buy a recording by a Christian artist imitating a popular "secular" artist but substituting the word "Jesus", it taints the gospel message, and it taints the church.
There is a flip side. There is nothing necessarily wrong with industry. Industry provides us with many wonderful things. Just as Esso provides us with gasoline so we can drive those endless highways in our big gas-guzzling SUVs. There is nothing shameful about being a Christian businessman. But if you really are a Christian businessman, you will provide honest value for a fair price, and you will back up your products, and you will pay your employees a decent wage, and you won't go around pretending that your competitors are only in it for the money while you're not, because you aint.
It is nauseating when a corporation pretends to care more about the environment than profits. And it is even more nauseating when for-profit enterprises pretend to be furthering Christ's kingdom when they are actually lining their own pockets. The message, inevitably, is going to conform to the real purpose of the organization.
Copyright © 2001 Bill Van Dyk All rights reserved.
