Betrayed

Three or four weeks ago, the church we attend started a new series called Consumed. We were presented with a central question...what consumes you? Christ? Money? Something else?

The opening message centered on Galatians 5: Stand free and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery...do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, serve one another in love...the acts of the sinful nature are...the fruit of the spirit is...

For me the central question became how do you position yourself before God. How I position myself before God and other people communicates my feelings towards them. Everyone tries to present themselves in a certain way, both to other people and to God(even when we know we can't). And for very few (or none) of us is that image that we portray, the image that we see when we look in the mirror. All of this is, I think, usually unconscious. So it is good to reevaluate ourselves on a regular basis, in order to understand our relationship with God. Also it is healthy to try to realign our actions with our mental priorities.

I know that the last paragraph doesn't make perfect sense...you try to compress two weeks of thought into a paragraph.

Anyway...I found the first few weeks at least mildly stimulating...then last week the theme of the sermon was Debt is Bondage. Impressive title I know. But I had some issues with it. Don't get me wrong, I thin kdebt is bondage, and I try to avoid it. I would like to not owe any money on our condo. But the sermon focused on on Credit Card Debt, and ignored everything else. This was the safe choice. In a church as rich as the one we go to lots of people have debt, and most f it isn't credit card debt. Also I have a hunch that the decision was made because the church owes a lot of money. I'm not sure of that, but I would be surprised if it wasn't true.

So that was ok...a little disappointing...but not that bad.

This week the sermon was on Stepping into generosity. Which is a worthy goal...I am not nearly as generous as I wish I was.

But the focus was on giving money to the church...which is ok...but the proposed spending really got me
Special Spending Projects: around 30,000 for a variety of missions projects...and 300,000 for a remodeled sanctuary...in addition to normal costs.

When I realized what this is all about I have to admit I felt betrayed. I felt like I had been led into this series under false pretenses. Because it seems that ultimately the idea behind this series is to use people's guilt about their own spending and materialism to fund a spiffy new sanctuary, itself a manifestation of the very materialism that makes it possible.

So instead of helping people overcome their involvement in materialism...we fuel their addiction...nice