The Myth of the Consumerist God

My family and I were having a conversation the other night about some of the honest struggles we sometimes have with faith in God, and what that even looks like. In particular, when we either ask God for something that doesn’t manifest, or when we believe something was of God that didn’t turn out the way we thought or hoped, it raises some questions in our soul about trusting God, or about trusting our perceptions. Did we ask wrongly? Did we hear correctly? How can we trust our perceptions in the future?

I’m sure you can relate. 🙂 These are things we deal with throughout our discipleship. (And this post isn’t even gonna begin to try to be the answer to those questions.)

The Director has a friend who considers himself a Christian but struggles quite a bit with faith, particularly in the area of prayer. He looks at his own unanswered prayers and wonders what the point of prayer is when it seems to him that God pretty much does (or doesn’t do) as He pleases, whether we ask anything of Him or not.

Aaaand this post isn’t gonna address that one right now, either. 🙂 (Jeesh, Jeff, man up. Aren’t you gonna answer anything?)

But when The Director reminded us about his friend, a whole flood of thoughts came rushing through my brain, and I realized (with great sadness) what a terrible disservice we as the church have done to the world around us.

Prayer is often described as simply talking with God. The word “pray” does mean “to ask”, and we are encouraged in Scripture to ask of God, and even to be persistent about it. However, those Scriptures came out of a cultural worldview that was not nearly as consumerist as our culture is. I think we have allowed our image of God to be shaped according to our culture, and we’ve adapted our evangelism techniques to be more like sales pitches–and in the process, we’ve painted God as this Ultimate Commodity, the answer to all our needs. We encourage people to come to God simply for what He will do for them; we don’t focus on the bigger picture of being redeemed back to our Creator, or restored relationship.

Not that He isn’t all we need. But that’s not the point. The point is that our entire perspective, and our entire argument for our need for God, is that it is all about satisfying a personal need in us. Simply put–it’s not about Him; it’s all about us. Which, of course, is the underlying premise behind consumerism. 🙂

So when we present God in this light, there is this subtle, or not-so-subtle, expectation that God–even a sovereign God–will act and behave in a certain way according to how we pray, based on what we think we need. Prayer then becomes a series of magic words to tap into the Ultimate Commodity. And when people pray in this way, and God doesn’t seem to behave according to that pattern–they get disillusioned or angry, or decide there’s nothing to this “prayer” thing–or maybe decide there isn’t even a God at all. This is what I mean by doing a disservice to the world around us; we’ve described God in such a way that sets us up to be disappointed, because it’s based on a false assumption.

Sometimes the church tries to compensate for the issue of unanswered prayer by coming up with explanations as to why God might not have answered. He knows best; He’s testing us; He’s trying to teach us something through our perceived lack. However, sometimes these explanations come across as weak or even cruel, like we are somehow pawns on a chessboard being moved around by God according to whim. For someone who struggles with the idea of prayer, that doesn’t make things much better. No one wants to believe a loving God would manipulate us that way, or play games with our feelings. (I have some more ideas about this which I’ll address in a future post.)

Can you see what we’ve done here? No wonder The Director’s friend is having such a problem. Wouldn’t anyone?

I’ve said before that sometimes we don’t get the answers we’re looking for because we’re asking the wrong questions. Maybe that’s the case here. Maybe it isn’t that God doesn’t answer prayer–or only answers the ones He likes. Maybe our expectation of prayer is wrongly based on a consumerist god that doesn’t exist. I think by presenting God in this way, we’ve done great damage to genuine seekers.

To lend some perspective, let me use an illustration. I have been married to The Wild One nearly 22 years (in August). We talk about all kinds of things, we occasionally ask things of each other. We are individuals in a lifelong quest to walk together, and to love one another all our lives. But we are individuals. She has her own way of seeing the world, her own choices to make, and I have mine. If I ask her something, she always has a choice on how she responds. Try as I might (and I have tried, believe me) I cannot control her emotions, or her responses. I can only spend a lifetime getting to know her, learning what she is like, and how to best live alongside her. It is not a static formula; it’s a dance between two souls in continual motion and ebb and flow.

In fact, when it comes to marriage an other relationships, we have a word to describe the idea of saying or doing things to each other to provoke a desired response. It’s called “manipulation.” And it’s not something we consider to be healthy in any relationship, let alone marriage. No one wants to be manipulated.

Now bring that concept over to prayer. We consider ourselves to be in a relationship with God, and we describe prayer as conversation with God. Just as with our human relationships, this relationship is not a static formula (as in, I say this, God does that). It’s a dance, a living, moving thing. When a friend, spouse or other loved one does something we don’t understand or don’t like, we don’t just end the relationship–or we shouldn’t, anyhow. Nor does it mean that person doesn’t love us or have our best interests at heart. It just means we don’t get it at the moment.

So why would it be any different in a relationship with God? Human relationships are complex enough; we’re trying to get to know a God that is too big for our natural minds to even comprehend. Of course He’s going to act in ways we don’t understand. Of course He’s not always going to jump through our hoops. Why would we decide He doesn’t love us, doesn’t answer prayer, or isn’t there at all, just because He didn’t meet our expectations or that He acted (didn’t act) in a way we could understand?

The only reason we would come to those conclusions is if prayer is a key to unlocking a commodity, a way of sparking our consumerist god to action. But if He is a PERSON, prayer becomes a much deeper thing; it becomes a thing of intimacy, of relationship. It becomes an ongoing conversation, the music of a divine dance.

I ask God for stuff all the time, and I get disappointed, sad, confused, even mad at Him sometimes when He either delays (in my thinking) or is silent. But there are also many times when He surprises me with joy, when He gives me those “a-ha” moments of understanding, or when something happens that blesses me beyond words, in a way that could only be God. In this dynamic relationship, I am learning to trust God when I don’t “get it.” I’m learning to recognize more quickly that when God doesn’t just jump through my hoops, He’s not being arbitrary. I’m just not seeing the big picture, and I am learning to trust Him with the part of the picture I can’t see. And my prayer is adapting from just making demands on God to an ongoing conversation that includes worship, expressions of love and trust, admissions of fear and sin, questions, and requests. I am learning to let my prayer be part of the process, part of the dance. God’s not just part of my life; I’m part of His. I’m in His bigger story.

The consumerist God is a myth; He doesn’t exist. The true God is way bigger than that. He’s not just a God who can do anything; He’s a God who gave it all for us. If the death of Christ can’t convince of His good intentions toward us–nothing will.