Princesses scare me. It isn’t their volatile behavior, creepy step-mothers, or the ferocious fire-breathing beasts that often accompany them that worry me. Rather, it’s the mind control they have over my daughter. When she sees a princess, her pupils dilate and her head cocks. It’s like invisible fairies are whispering spells in her ear. Then she turns to me and says, “Daddy, can we buy that?”
Disney’s “Princess” brand campaign was launched in 2000, when the company’s new chairman of consumer goods brought together Disney’s favorite heroines under one banner. Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Jasmine, and Ariel became a marketing dream team generating billions of dollars. They appeared on everything from DVDs to Band-Aids. The Disney spell was cast upon my daughter literally minutes after she entered the world. The hospital diapers were imprinted with Disney’s princesses, and they have been a part of her life (and mine) happily ever after.
But the company is no longer content having only girls fawning over their animated royals. They are unrolling a new lineup of products aimed at grown ups, including a princess Visa card, princess sheets and towels, princess pajamas, and even princess wedding gowns that cost thousands of dollars. The head of Disney’s apparel line says, “We want women to have a little bit of princess every day.”
You may be asking why any adult would want to get married in a yellow wedding dress resembling Belle’s from Beauty and the Beast. The answer is found in a consumer culture designed to keep adults thinking, and buying, like children. Maturity and rationality are the enemies of our desire-based economy. As Benjamin Barber says, “For consumer capitalism to prevail, you must make kids consumers and make consumers kids.”
Of course Disney is not the only company seeking to delay or even destroy adulthood. The marketing efforts of most corporations don’t want adults thinking rationally about their purchases, but emotionally spending their income to satisfy immediate desires. According to The New York Times, each American is exposed to 3,500 desire-inducing advertisements every day.
Author J.M. Barrie began his classic book, Peter Pan, with the line: “All children, except one, grow up.” Our consumer culture is trying hard to prove him wrong. A century of manufacturing insatiable desires has created a culture of immaturity and overindulgence—obesity, sexual promiscuity, and skyrocketing consumer debt are just a few signs. Although lack of self-control has always plagued humanity, for the first time in history an economic system has been created that relies on it, as our current recession and attempts at stimulus reveal. Responsible behaviors, like saving money and spending within our means, are actively being discouraged by both government and businesses in order to reignite the soft economy.
Consumerism tempts us to settle for desires far below what we were created for.
Our consumer society’s exaltation of immaturity goes beyond finances. Joseph Epstein acknowledges that today more adults are “locked in a high school of the mind, eating dry cereal, watching a vast quantity of television, hoping to make sexual scores,” and generally enjoying “perpetual adolescence, cut loose, free of responsibility, without the real pressures that life, that messy business, always exerts.” Statistics reveal that more adult children, formed to avoid responsibility and satisfy desires, are living with their parents well into their 30s; the average age for marriage has risen steadily among both men and women since 1980; and the age of cosmetic surgery patients is rapidly declining. Consumerism has made maturity an exception rather than the rule.
Psychiatrists like M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, define maturity as the ability to delay gratification. He writes, “Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.” The ability to make rational decisions and delay gratification to maximize future benefits, the very ability discouraged by our consumer culture, is the prescribed road from adolescence to adulthood. But more people are failing to take this journey, opting instead to remain in Neverland indefinitely.
Baby believers
Given the extent to which American Christianity has adopted the methodology of consumerism by appealing to and rewarding desires, euphemistically referred to as “felt needs,” we shouldn’t be surprised at the spiritual immaturity evident in the church. To believe that employing consumer values in the church will produce spiritually mature Christians is delusional thinking akin to expecting a dog to hatch from a chicken’s egg.
In an online column, Gordon MacDonald pondered why our churches are filled with so many infant Christians. Given the abundance of resources available, why aren’t there more mature men and women of God to emulate and celebrate? “What our tradition lacks of late,” he writes, “is knowing how to prod and poke people past ‘infancy’ and into Christian maturity.” MacDonald never advances a definite reason but wonders “what’s been going wrong? Bad preaching? Shallow books? Too much emphasis on a problem-solving, self-help kind of faith?” Could it be that the consumer values, both inside and outside the church, that form the uncontested foundation of our preaching, books, and ministries are fundamentally designed to promote puerility and oppose maturity?
Scripture and tradition tell us that formation into the likeness of Christ is not achieved by always getting what we want. It is not a product of seeking immediate gratification. The Apostle Paul compares his pursuit of Christ to competing in a race. It’s a focused effort of “self-control” and “discipline.” And Peter calls us to supplement our faith with “self-control,” “steadfastness,” and to do this with diligence.
Traditionally, the Christian life has been marked by releasing one’s desires, submitting to a spiritual mentor or community, and learning to take up the cross and deny one’s self. Shepherds guided believers through formative and corrective disciplines—most of them activities we would never choose to engage in if left to our desires. But these values are not championed in our consumer culture, and they certainly don’t prove popular among church shoppers seeking a comfortable religious experience.
Making mud pies
Years ago I was walking in New Delhi, India, with my father. We were hoping to catch a break in the traffic to cross the street when a boy approached us. He was probably six or seven years old, skinny as a rail, and naked but for tattered blue shorts. His legs were stiff and contorted, like a wire hanger twisted upon itself. He waddled on his hands and kneecaps, which were covered with huge calluses from the broken pavement. As I had many other times in India, I wanted to close my eyes and pretend people in such misery didn’t exist. But this persistent boy wouldn’t let me.
He shouted at us, “One rupee, please! One rupee!” The little guy was amazingly fast on his kneecaps, managing to stay ahead of us and in our field of vision. Finally, realizing he wasn’t going to give up, my father stopped.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“One rupee, sir,” the boy said while motioning his hand to his mouth and bowing his head in deference. My father laughed.
“How about I give you five rupees?” he said. The boy’s submissive countenance suddenly became defiant. He retracted his hand and sneered at us. He thought my father was joking, having a laugh at his expense. After all, no one would willingly give five rupees. The boy started shuffling away mumbling curses under his breath.
My father reached into his pocket. Hearing the coins jingle, the boy stopped and looked back over his shoulder. My father was holding out a five rupee coin. He approached the stunned boy and placed the coin into his hand. The boy didn’t move or say a word. He just stared at the coin. We passed him and proceeded to cross the street.
A moment later the shouting resumed except this time the boy was yelling, “Thank you! Thank you, sir! Bless you!” He raced after us once again—not for more money but to touch my father’s feet. He blocked our way and alternated raising his hands with shouts of acclamation and bowing at my father’s shoes. He was literally worshiping us.
This, I imagine, is how our God sees us—as miserable creatures in desperate need of his help. But rather than asking for what we truly need, rather than desiring what he is able and willing to give, we settle for lesser things. And when God graciously says “no” to our misled desires and instead offers us more, we reject him. We turn away, cursing him under our breath. We simply cannot imagine a God who would give five rupees when all we desire is one.
C.S. Lewis says: “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
The dilemma posed by consumerism, including the Christian variety, is not the endless manufacturing of desires, but the temptation to settle for desires far below what we were created for. The forces of marketing have captured our imaginations and convinced us to desire mud pies and sneer at the possibility that even greater pleasures exist. We have been re-programmed to desire immediate satisfaction rather than infinite satisfaction. We do not desire too much, but too little.
Know pain, know gain
Following in the steps of Jesus means learning to forego our immediate desires, as strong and legitimate as they may be, in order to redirect our passions toward that which is most desirable. This is the journey Jesus undertook from Gethsemane to the cross. According to the author of Hebrews, this is why Jesus accepted his destiny. He endured the cross, despising the shame, “for the joy that was set before him.” He persevered through the suffering because he knew a greater delight awaited him. Jesus accepted suffering not because he suppressed his desires but because he sought to maximize them.
As his students, we walk this same road. This explains why Paul would desire to “share in Christ’s sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” Because Paul also desired to share in his glorious resurrection. He understood that before the resurrection is the cross, before the joy is the suffering, and the road to the former always leads through the latter.
Self-denial, the surrendering of immediate desires, is the Christian life. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer so succinctly states, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” But this invitation is noticeably absent in the gospel of consumer Christianity. It promises joy and new life, a healthier marriage, more obedient children, a more balanced life, and less anxiety about the future—but nowhere do these promises carry the price of death. Never are we asked to deny ourselves. That is a value utterly at odds with consumerism: the sanctity of personal desire.
For people fully formed by consumerism, any God that expects personal sacrifice on the level that Jesus does cannot be seen as benevolent, and certainly is not worth following. He would appear more like James Bond’s eccentric villain, Goldfinger, who straps us to a table with a laser beam inching toward our midline.
“Do you expect me to talk?” 007 nervously asks.
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die,” replies a self-amused Goldfinger.
Jesus isn’t interested in negotiating, but he isn’t being cruel either. He knows that death, the surrendering of our immediate desires, is how we can take hold of an even greater joy. He illustrates this by describing the kingdom of heaven as a treasure hidden in a field. When a man stumbles upon it, he covers the treasure, joyfully sells everything he has, and buys the field. Jesus is not calling us to act foolishly, or to abandon our desires. In fact he is calling us to do precisely the opposite. Any rational person would release something of little value to gain something of greater value. Jesus is offering us a holiday at the sea, but we must be willing to abandon our mud pies in the slums.
But how are we to do this when the powers, principalities, and authorities of our world are determined to enslave our imaginations and convince us that the treasure in the field doesn’t actually exist?
The transformation of our desires happens like all spiritual transformation—by following in the steps of Jesus. It means walking the road from Gethsemane to the cross and out of the tomb. In a word, I believe the answer is suffering. This kind of pain comes in two varieties—there is suffering we don’t choose, which is often referred to in the New Testament as a “trial,” and there is suffering we do choose, which we call a “discipline.”
The Apostle James begins his letter with a paradox: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” These trials are painful situations that the believer has not chosen but which come nonetheless. Rather than lamenting the pain or wallowing in self-pity, James says to rejoice because the trial will refine your faith so that “you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” This is a counterintuitive response in a culture demanding immediate satisfaction. But for those with a higher vision, who have seen the hidden treasure, it makes perfect sense.
Dallas Willard writes: “It is absolutely essential to our growth into the ‘mind’ of Jesus that we accept the ‘trials’ of ordinary existence as the place where we are to experience and find the reign of God-with-us as actual reality. We are not to try to get in a position to avoid trials. And we are not to ‘catastrophize’ and declare the ‘end of the world’ when things happen.”
The “trials of ordinary existence” are the divine curricula for spiritual maturity. These are the laser beams God uses to put our old self with its misappropriated desires to death, and then resurrect a new self with new desires focused on a more lasting joy. When assailed by trials, little or great, we are invited to respond with the mind of Jesus in the garden. We may confess to God the impulses of our immediate desire, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” But we should not forget that the Spirit of Christ also lives within us, the one who prays, “nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.”
Detox for the soul
Beyond accepting the cups of suffering offered to us, we are also called to ingest smaller doses of suffering in the form of spiritual disciplines. By definition, disciplines are not things we naturally desire to do, because once they become automatic to our nature, they cease to be disciplines. Disciplines teach us to overcome the temptation to gratify our immediate desires so that we may attain a higher one.
While fasting in the wilderness for forty days, Jesus articulated this reality when he was tempted to turn stones into bread. He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Disciplines help us see that our immediate “felt needs” are not the most important. We are more than our base desires, and we are not sustained by gratifying them. Despite what advertisers tell us, we do not live by satisfying our desires for food, sleep, comfort, sex, power, status, or beauty. We live because it is God’s will, and our greatest desire, like Jesus’, ought to be conforming to it. “Not my will, but yours be done.” Fasting trains us to see past our felt needs and acknowledge our real needs. It redirects our attention from our immediate desire, which is fleeting, to our inner desire, which is unending.
Although fasting may be practiced in many ways—including the customary method of depriving oneself of food—in a digital age in which we are assaulted by 3,500 desire-inducing ads everyday, perhaps a new form of the discipline is warranted: the media fast. The benefits of unplugging from the media for a predetermined amount of time are too numerous to list, but let me mention just two. First, it can function like detox for our soul. Remember, the goal of consumerism for the last century has been the diffusion of desire throughout the population, and this mission has been carried out through the media. By turning off the television, radio, and computer, we stop the influx of the poison that keeps us buying and desiring more.
Second, and perhaps more important, a media fast creates opportunity in our lives to search again for the hidden treasure we first stumbled upon long ago. Consider how much time and mental space you would have to commune with God by simply turning off the screens you stare at most of the day. Rather than being stoked by marketers to desire things that do not satisfy, you could have your imagination illuminated to seek a higher joy.
Whether by trials of circumstance or by disciplines of choice, we cannot escape our calling to suffer with Christ. We are invited to follow in the steps of the Suffering Servant who indulged his deepest desire and pursued eternal joy by embracing the temporary pain of the cross. Although consumerism would have us remain forever in Neverland by running after every product promising to satisfy our desire and alleviate our suffering, the invitation of Christianity is precisely the opposite. The gospel calls us to embrace the paradox of pain by taking up the cross, and under its heavy beam discover the object of our greatest desire—God himself.
Excerpted from The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity, by Skye Jethani (Zondervan, 2009).
Skye Jethani is managing editor of Leadership and author of The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity.
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
