Outside In

In the musical In the Heights the main character is Usnavi, a second-generation immigrant from the Dominican Republic living in Washington Heights in New York City. Over the course of his life he has been told that his goal in life needs to be to move back to the Dominican Republic, because that is home – the Heights is only a stopover. Usnavi spends the majority of the musical trying to achieve this goal. Finally, he has the money to go only to discover that his home is really the community he has lived in his whole life. In the finale of the show he sings,

Yeah, I'm a streetlight! Chillin' in the heat! I illuminate the stories of the people in the street Some have happy endings Some are bittersweet But I know them all and that's what makes my life complete

…

Abuela I'm sorry But I ain't goin' back because I'm telling your story And I can say goodbye to you smilin', I found my island I been on it this whole time I'm home!¹

It is only in the revelation that the Heights are his home that he finally finds contentment in being there.

In Consuming Religion Vincent Miller makes the case that the rise in consumer culture in the west has bled into the way that the west understands religion and spirituality. The rise of visual advertising has altered the way we have understood desire and in turn infected our understanding of desire for God such that our interactions with God have become more transactional than relational.

I think that Miller is generally right about how the church in the west has become increasingly more consumeristic in how it behaves. I think that the change initiated with visual advertising exacerbated a problem that has been festering in the western church for centuries rather than initiated it itself. Christianity has always been at its core somewhat transactional. Whether it is Catholics buying and selling indulgences or the alter call “say this prayer and you’ll be saved” or the excesses of the health and wealth gospel, our understanding of salvation has always been transactional. To a certain degree there is no way of getting around it since the Bible largely frames Christs work as a transaction. Regardless of whether you see Christ as the lamb slain as the ultimate sacrifice or you see him as the scapegoat it is still a transaction, the question being who the transaction is between – Christ and the Father or Christ and humanity. Human frailty being what it is, this aspect of soteriology was bound to be exploited and twisted for selfish means at some point. It is only too easy to see the transactions with physical things and equate those transactions with the transaction of salvation.

Being a pragmatist and knowing this consumerism is happening and that there is a transactional nature to Christianity at its core, my mind automatically goes to finding solutions. I can think of two possible solutions that go hand in hand, building community and the hospitality ministries. Both of these rely on us putting our focus outward to those in need.

It has become somewhat faddish for churches to invite people in saying that their church is home-ish. In fact, the Catholic Church in the US has an entire advertising campaign build around the phrase “Catholics come home.” I am sure that most of the churches that proclaim their homeliness are earnest in their declarations, but there is something somewhat off-putting about a church declaring its own virtue to complete strangers. Vibrant community is attractive on its own and not in need of patting itself on the back. While some will come for their own selfish reasons it is the vibrancy of the community that will draw them out of themselves and into care for the community.  Much like Usnavi who could only see what he was told to desire until he saw how his life was really intertwined with the life of his community.

Similarly, to the way a vibrant community draws people out of themselves, the hospitality ministries – caring for the poor and sick, orphan care, visitation, and a dozen or so other similar ministries – draws the person performing them out of herself and into the work and care for the other. This outward focus can counterintuitively draw them deeper into themselves and the Spirit.

The key, whether it is building community and/or the hospitality ministries or something else, is to get people to care for others. Ultimately, selfishness is what is driving the increased sense of spiritual consumerism and transactionalism. Anything that we can do to help people out of their selfishness and to care for others will lead them to fulfill the desire they have been (unsuccessfully) trying to fulfill.