Making Jesus Cool

Here's a question: Is Jesus so unhip that Christians need to convince people that he is actually a cool guy, by ripping off creating merchandise ideas as a persuasion method?

(Original photo found here)

After much deliberation, I decided to skip this year's local Christian music festival. Our budget literally could not afford the tune of $40 for one day of music (I was only looking forward to one of the bands anyway), but I was still a little bummed to miss it. The festival itself is usually pretty good, and I've made a lot of memories there. 

One part of the festival I don't miss, which is a sad reflection of our culture at large, is the MASS MARKETING of the thing. The largest building on the grounds is dedicated to vendors. Bands sell stuff (which I understand, because they have to eat), organizations sell stuff and try to raise support, music stores sell stuff, and there is always at least two booth spaces' worth of Christian t-shirts that, if you buy one and wear it, will make Jesus look at least 35 percent cooler to your non-Christian friends. And these t-shirts accomplish it all by ripping off giving a spiritual twist to whatever the outside culture says is popular right now. How can anyone say no to having "Myspace in Heaven" or "Abreadcrumb & Fish"?

The interesting thing that we forget in this mindset is that what is popular in the general culture is actually not on the cutting-edge of creativity. And when Christians try to capitalize on a trend that looks cool right now, they don't realize the rest of culture has moved on to something else already. Call it a clean miss.

Jesus is not a fad; he is not cool, and following Him throughout history has proven uncool to untold numbers of martyrs, at least this side of Heaven. Jesus walked on this Earth, changed lives, healed, raised the dead, challenged, and divided. He was killed, and He rose from the dead. And now the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead is living inside His followers. With that in mind, why in the world would a mere t-shirt do anything at all? Why not wear a plain shirt and let God do what He does through you?

SCOTUS vs. Freedom

It is difficult to know exactly how to celebrate Independence Day when the days leading up to it have been particularly hard on Americans' personal freedom. I realize that the SCOTUS decision specifically has been heavily scrutinized this week, so many things I write here are in danger of lacking originality. However, after reading through the decision (available for you to read here) and dissenting opinions therein, I couldn't help but be gravely concerned about what happened. 

A good point raised in the opinions of Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito was in reference to the commerce clause argument. They observed that if the legislation was upheld using the commerce clause of the Constitution, the new law would classify not only action, but inaction, as "commerce," and make anything that exists subject to regulation and taxation, greatly expanding the scope of the federal government. If you breathed a sigh of relief that the commerce clause did protect you from being compelled to purchase health insurance, you may have lost your lunch when Justice Roberts unveiled the grander scheme he had cooked up to gently make you buy it anyway.

Because of the penalty being re-written by Justice Roberts as a tax, this monstrosity of a law magically became classifiable as "Constitutional." (Never mind that the law's advocates denied to the point of tears that it was a tax back when they were steamrolling it through the legislative branch.) And now, not only our actions are taxable, now our inactions can be subjected to penalty... tax, I mean, by the federal government. All this was accomplished by semantically slipping around the commerce clause.

This is, to the simple man and the scholar, lunacy.

One would think that the Supreme Court Justices would only read the law, judge it to be valid or not under the authority of the Constitution, give their judgment and move along. In this case, four justices stamped their automatic approval upon it, and the Chief Justice thought about it for a while and did the same. He also took time to reinterpret the main thrust of the argument, write up a dashing little opinion, and probably rehearse it in the mirror so that he could read it all the way through without chuckling.

Not to make light of what happened, because it is more dangerous than we can imagine, especially since much of the population actually believes that the government is a sincere and benevolent entity. But many of these people have been bought and paid for by one social program or another. As a result, stunts like what happened last week, when the Supreme Court rewrote legislation and stripped us all of another freedom in plain sight, can happen without much consequence. The majority of the Justices smile, the President smiles (and tells everyone to move along), the media smiles; and the average citizen wrinkles his nose for a minute, keeps watching the news until he sees his favorite team has won, and smiles as well.

God help a country willing to give away its freedom.