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Editor’s note: We often provide links for products mentioned in these posts that will take you Amazon where you can buy them. This is both for your convenience as well as being a revenue-generator for InternetMonk.com. We are providing no such links in this essay, as we cannot in good conscience recommend most of the products mentioned here. If you want to buy any or all, you are on your own. Also, before you read this essay, take a moment to read why Michael Spencer, the original iMonk, stopped shopping in Christian bookstores.

My friend Jen has a novel she really needs to finish. It starts with a man talking with his therapist. This man owns a Christian gift store, even though he is not himself a Christian. He has found Christians to be extremely gullible and easy pickings when it comes to making money.

But he recently came upon a challenge. He had a box of leftover WWJD bracelets he couldn’t sell. What to do with them?

“Then I had this great idea,” he tells his therapist. “I hung up all the bracelets on their rack, and made up a new sign: What Would Jabez Do? They sold like hotcakes!”

I have told Jen she has to finish this novel. The only problem is it will sound much more like truth than fiction.

Why is it that Christians buy so much religious crap? Is it really a problem that religious trinkets are such big business? And would you buy a What Would Jabez Do? bracelet?

Confession time. I worked in the Jesus junk business in one way or another for many years. My first payroll job (as opposed to cutting lawns in the neighborhood) was working at a Zondervan Family Bookstore in Kettering, Ohio. That was back when the stores sold everything a Christian or church would need. Books. Bibles. Bible studies. Bulletin blanks. Wedding invitations. Records albums. (Before CDs, we old people would listen to music on round vinyl discs with a tiny hole in the middle. You could not push these into a slot on the dashboard of your car. To listen to music in your car, you had what were called 8 track tapes. But that is a discussion for another day.) The books we sold included those of strong, good theology, written by people who spent a lot of time with God and his word instead of those who simply pastored large churches and were good looking.

But we also sold some Jesus junk. Pencils with Bible verses. Toothbrushes with Bible verses. Bumper stickers and combs and spinning tops and sparkly stickers—all with Bible verses. These were often bought by Sunday school teachers as rewards or bribes or however they used them, but they were also purchased by parents as rewards or bribes to keep their kids quiet as they shopped.

By today’s standards, the Jesus junk we sold in the 1970s was very tame. But I still felt awkward selling some of that stuff.

I moved on to work in Christian radio, where we ran ads for Christian crap. When I switched from on-air to sales, I quickly learned an important lesson. If a business had the word “Christian” in its name, or any other pop-religious word (like “agape” or “icthus”) we required cash—the green stuff—before we would produce and run their ads. If the business was run by an alcoholic reprobate with three wives and a drive-up heroin fulfillment center on the side, we were good extending them credit. It always worked that way.

For the past ten years or so I have worked in Christian publishing. I am going to let you in on a dirty little secret. Most publishers do not care in the least what is between the covers of a book. And when someone says, “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” you need to remind them that is the only way someone judges a book they have never heard of before. That’s why a potential author’s “platform” is so important. If you write a manuscript that is so great, so unique that I feel every true follower of Jesus needs to read it right away, but you are not a TV personality or pastor a megachurch, I won’t even be able to get a publisher to return my phone call about you. On the other hand, if you pastor one of the nation’s twenty largest or fastest-growing churches, and you have a slick and smooth delivery on TV, bingo! You and your agent can get a strong six-figure multiple book deal. What will your book be about? Who cares? It just doesn’t matter. You won’t be writing it anyway. That will be the job of a ghostwriter hired by the publisher. Your job is to protect your pretty face and your good reputation. And that pretty face on the cover is what will sell the book, not the content (or lack thereof) inside.

And who can blame these publishers? Consumers don’t rush to buy books that make the reader—gasp!—think. They want bullet point lists that tell the secret to having a better life right now. No pain, just gain. That is why Joel Osteen sells by the million, while Eugene Peterson and Robert Capon and N.T. Wright and other great thinkers and writers sell, well, much less than a million copies. Thinking is hard work. Let me open my mouth and you can feed me, thank you. Pablum? Sure. But spoon enough sugar on it and I can swallow anything.

Have you really walked around your local Christian bookstore lately? What are they selling that really offers anything with nutritional value? Well, you say, they do sell Bibles. Ok, let’s take a look at the Bible isle.

The American Patriot’s Bible, complete with stories showing how a “light from above” shaped our nation.

The MacArthur Study Bible

The Everyday Life Bible (Joyce Meyer)

Aspire: The New Women Of Color Study Bible

Holy Bible: Thou Art Loosed Edition

Manual: The Bible For Men

I think you are getting the idea. Today you might have trouble finding a Bible that is just a Bible with no Christian celebrity endorsement or agenda attached as a companion to Scripture. The Bible is a great work of art, but we have reduced it to a vehicle to advertise our brand or promote our specific political bent.

Look, I have no problem with businesses making a profit, if the goods or services they sell are legitimately needed by consumers. For instance, blue jeans are a necessity, especially in Oklahoma where they can pass as formal wear in most situations. But does anyone really need $200+ jeans? The answer is no, they don’t.

And I am all for books and music and other forms of art that draw a person’s heart upward to Christ. But is there ever a need for Scripture candy? The answer again is a resounding No.

So, just why are Christians so gullible? Why are we such easy targets for those simply out to make money? In short, why will we buy any item that has a Bible verse or religious-sounding phrase on it? I can think of at least three reasons.

Safety. We are seemingly obsessed with protecting ourselves and others (especially others) from sin in any art form. You do know that the rating system we use for movies today was developed by Father Daniel Lord, a Jesuit priest, who based it firmly on Catholic theology. This was an attempt to keep movies “safe” for families as well as promote religion. The promotion of religion has gone by the wayside for the most part, but we still cling to the safety factor, setting limits on the rating level our kids can watch. We feel better about ourselves when we keep our kids from seeing things that might make them think about sin.

The same goes for books, music and visual art, like paintings we allow in our homes. We expect them to present to us a “safe” view of life, one where if sin is committed, it is punished swiftly. Where crime does not pay. Where we think only on nice things. Where the sun always shines, birds always sing in tune, and life is always wrapped in a neat red ribbon. We demand that our artists conform to this vision of safety. They cannot explore issues of life like sexuality or doubt about faith, because that might make the consumer of the art uncomfortable or, heaven forbid, lead them to sin themselves.

And as you might imagine, safe art is no art at all. For art to reach into one’s soul, it must address four issues:

1. Who are we?

2. What makes us unique—what is our purpose in life?

3. What has gone wrong?

4. How can we get back?

A great song that addresses this issue is Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock.

We are stardust, we are golden,

We are billion year old carbon,

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Stardust, golden—that is who we are and what we were made for. And while we may not hear how to get back, we do hear where “back” is: The Garden. But it’s the billion year old carbon line that would have this song banned by many Christians. Why, someone hearing this might be lead to think about evolution. And just to think about that is tantamount to sin. Thus, out goes Joni Mitchell and her song about Woodstock. We will never know how to get back to the Garden if we don’t listen. But listening—or viewing or reading—reality is a risk, a big risk. And our safety-mindedness just will not allow that.

Religiosity. This actually goes right along with safety. There is great safety in religion. Religion is form and procedure and policy. It is rules that are followed or else. It is easy to see if you are on the right side: You just have to measure your thoughts and actions against the yardstick of religious do’s and don’ts. If you are on the right side, you pass the test and are religious. And we know that God likes religious people—at least those who are religious the way we are religious. Those who do what they shouldn’t and don’t do what they should are not religious and God does not like them.

A large number of the items on this religious measuring stick have to do with art. Going to see Toy Story 3 is good. Going to see The A Team is questionable at best. Going to see Get Him To The Greek is a sure ticket to hell. You can measure the music you listen to (12 Stones—good; Rolling Stones—evil), books you read (Clay In The Hands Of The Potter—good; Harry Potter—evil), and paintings you view (clothes on—good; clothes off—evil).

We want to feel good about our religious efforts. And why not? What is religion for if not to make us feel good about ourselves? And if we are not feeling good, we might as well give it up and just do what we want in the first place. So we place restrictions on the art we consume to meet these religious standards. When we don’t, it leads to the final reason for buying Christian junk.

Guilt. Oh sure, you used to like listening to Christina Aguilera, but now you are a Christian, so you listen to BarlowGirl, not because you like their sound or their lyrics, but you would feel guilty listening to and enjoying Christina Aguilera now that you have been saved. You used to love reading science fiction by Orson Scott Card and Ursula K. Le Guin, but now you read Left Behind. You used to go study the works of Van Gogh, but now you look at a picture of a pasty-white Jesus knocking on someone’s door.

Are you enjoying your new choices in art? No, not really. But you would have a terrible feeling of guilt if you continued to consume that which you previously enjoyed. After all, if you like something, it has to be wrong, right?

So we buy Christian crap, not because we want to, but because we feel guilty buying “non-Christian” works of art. We keep Christian stores in business, buying water bottles that say “Seek the living water.” T-shirts with ripped-off corporate logos like “Things go better with Christ.” And books and music that are such inferior examples of their media they would be laughable if their effects weren’t so horrible. So much Christian art causes us to become people who cannot think for ourselves, cannot determine what is solid food and what is baby food, cannot distinguish between what is beautiful and what is a very poor imitation of beauty.

In my next essay, I and some of our other writers will take a look how we can get away from Selling Crap To Christians For Profit and get back to what brings God glory: Art that is beautiful for beauty’s sake.