Several days ago, I posted an invitation to discuss Jesus and Gas Prices on this blog. It’s a topic that, to a large extent, will reveal how much we really can engage our imagination with the concept of Jesus shaped discipleship.
For example, one evangelical has taken his particular view of rising gas prices and started a movement called “Pray at the Pump.” Somehow, the rise of gas prices is a sign of the end times and praying at the pump for God to lower prices will apparently prove that he’s in charge.
Of course, one wonders if it ever occurred to anyone that the inconvenience to the American lifestyle of mobility and affluence isn’t really something that God would respond to as an act of mercy. Most Americans are inconvenienced by gas prices because of the value they place on mobility and the decisions they’ve made about the kind of life they want to live, decisions made with the assumption of cheap gas in the background.
So somewhere a homeless man or a family struggling to put food on the table will see a group of middle class suburban Christians gathered around a gas pump, praying that God will have mercy and get things back to where we can all go about our business.
I don’t have to spend much time asking if Jesus would join such a prayer meeting.
This is the imagination and mindset of American Christians: God is committed to our lives as we imagine them. He is committed to the gas, the SUVs, the economics, the houses, the conveniences, the investments, the stability, the politics, the military and the religion that maintain the lives we lead.
And if you question this, you risk going down a hole labelled “Fanaticism.”
I grew up with parents and grandparents who had lived through the great depression. (That was an economic downturn in the early 20th century, not a psychological episode.) This event had stamped their view of life in America. They were never quite comfortable with prosperity as we are. They were embarrassed by having too much, and they were deeply aware of what poverty looked like.
My mother’s family knew what it was like to be hungry. Were it not for a wealthier relative, she was quite sure they would have starved in the 1930’s. My father’s family of eastern Kentucky mountaineers lived in what we would call third world conditions today, with just enough subsistence farming and hunting to survive in the backwoods of Lee County, Kentucky.
In the 1970’s, my father had money buried in jars in the back yard. Because he’d lived through bank runs and closings, he never entirely trusted banks.
Almost every one reading this post has their savings and retirement placed where you couldn’t get it tomorrow if you had to. And I really don’t think about it, because life seems very secure.
It is that feeling of security, and where it is, that gets in the way of knowing Jesus. It is why people are praying at gas pumps, and why millions of Christians will believe that whatever changes the American way of life is an “end times crisis,” while the daily poverty and desperation of others around the world is no crisis worth thinking of.
Here’s what I want to get to: Most people who know anything about Jesus know that he lived and taught some kind of radical economics. Christians may differ markedly on what it all means, but Jesus taught again and again that you can’t serve God and the god of financial security. Your treasure must be laid up in heaven. When you are rich in this world, you may be blind to truth and compassion. Your presumption that God is on the side of your economics may be called “foolishness” tomorrow.
Most people know this, and it appears that most American middle class evangelicals and many of their churches don’t know it. Jesus seems to be a spiritual guru, a success in life teacher, a ticket to heaven. He doesn’t mind the economic decisions I make unless I invest in porn or abortion or Democratic candidates. He’s on the side of whatever it takes for our country to have it’s “way of life,” including $2 gas in mom’s Upward soccer delivery SUV.
So….it occurs to me that, should there be a serious economic crisis in America- and would anyone like to bet on the likelihood of that?– it appears that most evangelicals are absent the individual or collective resources to process it on any level other than something like “Satan is attacking God’s people” or “The rapture will happen any minute now.”
I’d like to suggest that evangelicals need to learn how to embrace poverty. Not for show, but because at some point we will have to embrace poverty and, right now, we’d be without a clue on what to do.
We need to look at our churches, technology, luxuries, lifestyles and comfort zones with a ruthless eye. How can we untether ourselves from the God we believe has made all of this happen and told us to move into it as the American promised land?
How can we embrace downward mobility as the way of Christ without self-righteous carping, but with genuine repentance for the foolish way we’ve ignored the economic dimension of discipleship?
We need some contemporary St. Francis’s to throw away their personal affluence and show us another way.
We need Bible teaching that challenges our involvement in what is surely a doomed system.
We need leaders willing to walk away from the building and the salary, and to teach others to do the same.
We need a holy imagination of what it would mean to be “simple church” in terms of economics, and not just programs.
What will your church, your student ministry, your children’s ministry, your discipleship, your worship, your youth program and your evangelism look like in an extended economic crisis?
We need to be so formed by Jesus that the possibilities and authenticity of poverty will be beautiful to us.
We may be forced to embrace economic realities that have prayer meetings at the gas pump looking appropriate. If that’s not going to be the case, we need a new way of following Jesus now.
[…] A new Jesus Shaped Spirituality post on evangelicals and economic discipleship: Pray at the Pump. […]
I think I’m having an Allen Iverson moment here.
We’re talking about gas?! Not food, not medicine, not human rights, not justice…
We’re talking about gas?!
We’re talking about gas. About gas…
Not love. Not unity. Not war. Not peace.
We’re talking about gas. Gas!
Grace and Peace,
Raffi Shahinian
Parables of a Prodigal World
Come on now…Don’t you know that God is really more interested in my Purpose Driven Life, in other words, getting the most out of life as possible? ;)
Thanks for another excellent challenging commentary.
As Americans we believe that God owes us the “best life now”, including being able to spend our discretionary income on our own lusts. Manifest Destiny lives on in America and American Christianity!
Incidentally, I listened to the White Horse Inn a couple of weeks ago where Dr. Rosenbladt said that “the Gospel is not about you, it’s about God!” My wife was deeply offended. The American Gospel runs deep after all.
Good points, Raffi.
To put things in perspective, in February 2009, US TV stations will cease broadcasting in analog. So, to continue to get TV, you either have to buy a new TV with a digital tuner, hook up to cable or satellite, or buy one of the digital to analog converter boxes. The US government is subsidizing people to buy a converter box. Anyone, not just the poor, can sign up at http://www.dtv2009.gov and get a debit card that allows the person to buy a $69 converter box for $20.
The government has actually said that TV is an American “civil right”.
Sometimes I look at the Evangelical world and think of that “Scottie Beam Me Up . . .” bumper sticker.
I think Mark Noll said it best (in his Scandal of the Evangelical Mind book)
“The evangelical predilection, when faced with a world crisis, to use the Bible as a crystal ball instead of a guide for sorting out the complex tangles of international morality was nowhere more evident than in the responses to the Gulf War (Gulf War I) in 1991. Neither through the publishing of books nor through focused consideration in periodicals did evangelicals engage in significant discussions on the morality of the war, the use of the United Nations in the wake of the collapse of Communism, the significance of oil for job creation or wealth formation throughout the world, the history of Western efforts at intervention in the Middle East, or other topics fairly crying out for serious Christian analysis. Instead, evangelicals gobbled up more that half a million copies each of several self-assured, populist explanations of how the Gulf crisis was fulfilling the details of obscure biblical prophecies.”
We need to realize that much of the world has been paying $4 a gallon (or more) for a long time.
I’m reminded of the response of Israel to the message of some of the prophets. Paraphrased, God can’t be displeased with us, after all we are living the good life. Similarly, Job’s friends are convinced Job must have done something to make God angry at him, after all he is suffering.
Some things never change.
One of the things I wish I could do, but I don’t have the guts to ask, is to “shadow” an Amish family for a week or two. They don’t have to give a damn about gas prices or commodity traders, because they have learned to sustain one another through community. Of course, the idealized Amish utopia is myth, but there are a lot of things we need to learn from their anabaptist tradition, and learn it immediately.
Furthermore, evangelicals need to embrace the “witness” mindset. It’s pretty much clear to everyone in the world except us, that the American lifestyle is not going to last. It’s just not logically possible. Perhaps Christians need to show America that there is a better way, which is to follow Jesus. Maybe not a more comfortable way, and maybe not a more fulfilling way, but a way that allows us to follow Jesus through giving up the idea of ownership for the sake of communion with one another and with God.
Jesus says the Kingdom is here, and that has got to mean something more than praying for lower gas prices.
Amen, to the above posts. I think this increase gas prices = end times, is in the same vein as “I’m being persecuted as a Christian because the local hardware store stopped selling hot tub chemicals.” (smile face here).
“Pray at the Pump” makes me ill. Reminds me of the “White Horse Inn” episode about how American religion (even “truly” reformed churches the WHI guys admitted) tends toward the self.
Which I find amusing as Ryan brought up the Amish (whose Anabaptist leanings drive the WHI guys nuts) who are the total opposite. The Amish are NOT (as they are portrayed) anti-technology, but anti-anti-community. I commented on the following article on my own blog:
http://ekklesiaproject.org/content/view/255/9/
I freely admit that I will have a hard time giving up my computer!
Michael,
Your post reminded me of a book I have. It is called “An Arrow Pointing to Heaven” and is the biography of Rich Mullins. It was the first time I had heard anyone ask the question of how to “live a life of poverty” without trying to be proud of it. Rich’s approach was novel and came from reading St. Francis’ works. He decided to live on an allowance of $2000/month. According to the writer, he usually didn’t spend that much either, but he left his business dealings in the hands of others and just went on his way. It was a very challenging read for me and while I had appreciated his music before, I was left appreciating his testimony even more. I think we tend to recoil at the suggestion that we might be the “rich man” that Jesus so often talks about. But for so many of us, I would say that it is true.
Scott Miller,
I hear your points on the DTV converter boxes but it can be looked at another way. The government is rendering perfectly usable televisions unusable by taking back and selling the frequencies that they pick up. They’re making millions (if not billions) on the sale. Shouldn’t that make them at least a little responsible toward people who are losing the ability to use their perfectly good televisions?
[…] on June 23, 2008 I want to thank Michael Spencer for his post at Jesus Shaped Spirituality on Pray at the Pump. As I read Michael’s post, I thought that it corresponded to this past Sunday’s message […]
An excellent commentary. It does make one’s heart sick to see these things occuring. I weep for the body of Christ in America.
…it appears that most evangelicals are absent the individual or collective resources to process it on any level other than something like “Satan is attacking God’s people” or “The rapture will happen any minute now.”
When all you have is a Spiritual Warfare hammer, EVERYTHING looks like a Demonic nail.
When all you have is an End Time Prophecy hammer, EVERYTHING looks like a Fulfillment nail.
[…] tip for pointing me to Michael Spencer’s new blog, Jesus Shaped Spirituality. His post “Pray at the Pump: A Meditation on Jesus and Economic Discipleship” could not be more […]
[…] Michael Spenser’s new home on the web called Jesus Shaped Spirituality, the post is ‘Pray at the Pump: A Meditation on Jesus and Economic Discipleship‘. This is the imagination and mindset of American Christians: God is committed to our lives […]
[…] from jesusshaped spirituality: […]
[…] In the Blogosphere Filed under: In the Blogosphere — trevinwax @ 3:13 am Pray at the Pump: A Meditation on Jesus and Economic Discipleship […]
[…] Pray at the pump – As if we don’t have better things to pray about! – Jesus Shaped Spirituality […]
I paid $9.12 per gallon just a couple of days ago and it cost me nearly $150.00 to fill my tank. We live in Wales (United Kingdom). But that tank will last me six to eight weeks for two reasons: we get much better fuel economy (by the same automakers that make cars for the American consumer) and we intentionally live within walking distance of most things we need each week, including church, grocery store, doctor’s office, employment, and others.
[…] rightfully say he’s completely a selfish, self-serving crank. But I think both Sunfell and this Christian blogger she linked to are correct–this “pray at the pump” idea is evidence of a larger […]
Every way of man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth the hearts.
It’s such blind hubris to think that of all the fervent prayers on this Earth that G_d could be answering, the anguished cries of Americans paying $30 extra a week in gas should be his first priority.
Being a dutch christian I could n’t believe that it was really true that there are christians in the USA who are praying at the pump. Suddenly I remembered a song by Janis Joplin: ‘Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes’.
We should be very careful with God’s creation. I know that it is easier in the Netherlands, but not riding a car is a choice of my family. In the USA I think it could be: driving less a car. Because of God’s nature he gave to us to be very careful for it.
That’s we I nearly cannot believe that there are Amercan christians who are praying for lower prices. Do I have to pray for higher prices? Or for a principle change of thinking?
I read this story in my local paper here in Ontario, Canada and was appalled to say the least. Praying for cheaper gas prices so that “christians” that are apparently “living their best life now” can continue to drive their Cadillac Escalades and ignore those around the world that live in poverty. For most of the world, gas is not a concern whatsoever…They’re more concerned with food, shelter, disease…
How selfish have westernized christians become??