In healing people in his ministry, Jesus was binding up the brokenness in their lives. The missional church seeks to also provide ministries of healing and bind up the brokenness in people's lives today. For many in the US, this area of brokenness is materialism, which is the result of not having any sense of purpose or identity. Advertising seeks to fill this gap, promising to provide meaning, purpose, and identity through material things.
In fact, in the materialistic worldview, shopping itself becomes a spiritual quest and an all-important religious ritual.[1] In his book Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, Paco Underhill details the shopping habits of both men and women. In one section about women and shopping, however, he upholds the spiritual nature of shopping, stating that there is nothing superficial about the female relationship with consumption:
In fact, it’s women, not men, who plumb the metaphysics of shopping—they illuminate how we human beings go through life searching, examining, questioning, and then acquiring and assuming and absorbing the best of what we see. At that exalted level shopping is a transforming experience, a method of becoming a newer, perhaps even slightly improved person. The products you buy turn you into that other, idealized version of yourself. That dress makes you beautiful, this lipstick makes you kissable, that lamp turns your house into an elegant showplace.[2]
This endless consumptive cycle—for both men and women--can only bring emptiness.[3]
[1] Hirsch says, “Much of what goes by the name advertising is an explicit offer of a sense of identity, meaning, purpose, and community”—all religious/spiritual concepts. Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, 107.
[3] While Americans have made the pursuit of material things a spiritual exercise, at the same time, religious expression has been commodified. Obvious examples of this include televangelists who promise prayers of healing in exchange for money, but religious consumerism is prevalent throughout America. Spiritual seekers will buy religious t-shirts, pictures, videos, pens, bookmarks and much more religious “stuff.” For instance, Pete Ward credits the popularity of WWJD bracelets to consumerism, stating that they sold because “many of these younger teenagers’ identity is uniquely invested in the purchase and display of products.” yes"">Pete Ward, Liquid Church (Peabody:Hendrickson, 2002), 64. Furthermore, those religions that are most visual and therefore most marketable will be most popular in a consumeristic society. Note the popularity of the Catholic religion—which is rich in visual imagery--in movies. As Vincent Miller says rather wryly, “Sales and rentals of videos of Quaker prayer meetings have been disappointing in all markets.” Vincent J. Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture (New York: Continuum, 2005), 73-106.
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