I don’t want to be a Contagious, Purpose Driven, Radical, Relevant Christian

I was on Amazon.com today just checking out something that did not involve spending any of my money. However, Amazon doesn’t know that, so it helpfully provided me with a whole list of recommended products based on things I’m interested in. Because I have a pretty solid list of theological books on my wishlist, Amazon likes to recommend me all manner of theological books.

I noted today that many in the list of recommendations were along the lines of “How to Become the Most Infectious Christian Possible!” and so on. I might be making that title up, but you no doubt are familiar with the sort of book: Focused on how you can break the mold of hum-drum-go-through-the-motions-Christianity and become a Super Disciple who makes waves!

There’s a lot of draw in those kind of books. We all want to have significance. We all want to feel like we’re doing something special with our lives. In the words of a musician I happen to like named Paul Coleman: “Inside all of us there’s this desire, we want to be the star. Deep down we all want people to look at us and say, ‘You rock!'”

So when a book promises to tell me how I can get that, it’s awfully attractive.

It’s also a lie.