Last night I got passed by two 53 foot trailers.  There’s not a whole lot remarkable about that.  My company truck is held down to 62 miles per hour.  I get passed by a whole lot of product.

But these two trucks grabbed my attention.  It’s fairly rare to see two trucks from the same company at the same time, especially travelling late at night.  Usually trucks that run in tandem carry some relatively important product.  I hadn’t classified this one as that important.

“Well!”  Said my mind.  “There aren’t a lot of products in the world that I would consider that important.  But I’ll give it to these, carrying Christian merchandise for a Christian store rates them pretty high in my book.”

Then I started to think about the inside of a 53 foot trailer.  About 8 feet wide, and 10 feet tall.  That’s a whole lot of room!  And there were two of them!

You would think that would make me happy.  But it didn’t.  Instead of thinking about all the souls that would be saved by that merchandise, I started thinking about how we have monetized Grace.

Leave it to the cynic, huh?

I understand it takes money to produce Bibles.  And it’s only right that a man should pay for the work of another.  But I’ve been in Christian stores.  And the Bible section is relatively small. 

So what is in those trucks?  And why is Christianity so profitable?   Is the power of God among Christians multiplied because of the merchandise being sold?  Personally, I don’t see that.  They might be selling a whole lot of stuff.  But I am witnessing old school Christianity being pushed off to the side.

I wonder what the Lord’s perspective on this is.  If we begin with the following phrase, “Freely you have received freely give”, I perceive a difficulty, albeit small.

There are a lot of products produced that have changed lives.  Refrigerators, stoves, sinks, plumbing supplies, building materials, warm coats, automobiles, and the list seems endless.  But I don’t see Christianity changing the face of America.  I see America changing the face of christianity!

For the big business it has become, Christian marketing has very little impact.  Yet every day, except Sunday, they are raking in the bucks.  Does anyone else smell an oxymoron here?

By His Grace