A Theological Dilemma

After doing a bit of reading on marketing and one-to-one (even faith-based) marketing today, I'm in conflict.

I feel a conflict between the whole "treat people as people and serve their needs" and "document their personal data, preferences and leveraging potential like crazy in order to optimize your business and target those who can do the most for you."

I guess it could be a sign of my own personal immaturity - my own inability to look at people in both ways. But.

When reading about the success of church-based marketing campaigns, such as "Purpose-Driven" and "Passion of the Christ," I have immediate concerns with the reasons for their success.

#1: Purpose-Driven: People are not finding their purpose organically through the Word of God. They require some sort of mediator between themselves and their Bibles in order to derive deeper understanding. But, "There is one God, and one mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. 2:5)

#2: Passion: The use of film and other imagery, while important for illustration, is a subjective experience. I got particularly concerned when the site I was reading talked about triggering the dopamine effect and habituating the people you "seek to serve" to the positive experience of your products. Passion is a prime example of an experience rather than an objective statement of truth.

Our culture is such that feeling rules thought - a fact to which I can testify due to countless encounters and discussions with "charismatic" friends who are convinced that the ecstatic feelings of their experiences must indicate God's working. As a former occultist, well familiar with spiritual "transcendence," I'm well aware that the dopamine effect is no indicator that the true God is present in the experience.

Coming from that culture to biblical faith, I had to reverse almost everything about my perceptions, assumptions and thinking patterns. I had to change everything about my concept of what it is to be human. Because of a cultural conditioning towards the supremacy of emotion over reason, I had to actively learn that, in fact, the soul and mind can and do rule the heart.

The Bible traces the flow of human expression thus: thoughts - feelings and attitudes - reactions to life. It cautions us to make a conscious consideration of what we absorb:

Proverbs 4:23
Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.

Psalm 119:11
Thy word I have treasured in my heart,
That I may not sin against Thee.

Jesus also warns that what goes into our hearts comes out our mouths.

Luke 6:45
"The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.

The world's reverse philosophy has been well-absorbed by our Christianish religious culture. I see Paul's perception of the problem in 1 Corinthians 1:22-25. When I read it, I often replace "Jews" with "religious people" and "Greeks" or "Gentiles" with "secularists" in order to apply it to my current culture:

1 Cor. 1:22-25
For indeed [religious people] ask for signs, and [secularists] search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to [religionists] a stumbling block, and to [secularists] foolishness, but to those who are the called, both [religious people] and [secular people], Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

My deepest concern is that I see (1) a flock of sheep who do not know how to choose decent fodder, because so many of them have never even been offered good rich hay; and (2) the sheep are starving, and will rush to chow down on whatever a few of them may find.

Another concern I have is the lumping together of all denominations as being "Christian." That's like saying my husband is "Mennonite." True Mennonites will tell you he's not, although the rest of the world may see him that way (and he may see himself that way, by heritage) because of certain cultural differences he possesses.

There are major differences in who each of us believes Jesus Christ to be; in how we believe it's right to relate to him; and what we believe about each other's participation in the Body of Christ - or even what we believe the Body of Christ is. Yet we're told not to discuss those differences, however respectfully we may do it. That's taboo.

How, I ask, are we to look at faith in Christ - as a dopamine trigger that keeps us coming back to the religious patterns which best satisfy our experiential needs? As a subjective experience? Where is truth in all this, if "the Way, the Truth and the Life" is only my best understanding of Him?

I don't claim to have it all on straight. I don't claim to be or to have the final answer, but I do claim that God has the final answers, and we're obligated to humble ourselves and ask Him to explain Himself and His requirements of humanity. We're obligated to turn to what God decrees (and verifies in testable ways) as His revealing of Himself - the Bible.

As a writer, I am disturbed by the thought of being mistaken for a mediator. I am concerned at the very least by instructions which tell me to act as a mediator of subjective experience, our cultural idol. One of the most repulsive books I've ever encountered was called Marketplace Preaching, by Calvin Miller. His ideas about triggering the emotional experience in order to motivate Christians left me cold.

I've done the emotional experience, Christian and otherwise. It doesn't change me, in the end.

There is one mediatrix - the man Christ Jesus. There's one way to know Him - through what He says about Himself, not what anyone else tells you.


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