When The Passion Goes Out of Fashion

Christians get wood over the silliest things. The current one is over The Passion. People are talking about how this film is going to spark a religious revival in America. Now, I thought The Passion was a good film -- maybe even a great one. But to assume that one movie is going to make the U.S.A. into one big Bible belt just isn't going to happen.

Just like it didn't happen after 9-11.

Just like it didn't happen after the "seeker sensitive" movement.

Just like it didn't happen after the WWJD craze.

Just like it didn't happen after the Promise Keepers movement.

Just like it didn't after the Republican Revolution.

Why are Christians so eager to latch onto the Next Big Thing when the last dozen Big Things are lying discarded in a landfill somewhere? Why does the church get caught up in the frenzy of the latest fad like it's some teenybopper shopping for the latest trendy sneakers? Is it so desperate about its viability that it needs to continually clutch at straws?

Imagine a hospital that has turned into a health club. The patients aren't there for surgery -- they go go there to maintain their health. They ride exercise bikes, lift weights, and do Tae Kwon Do. But the problem is, they never got around to taking the hospital sign down. So once in awhile, someone comes to the emergency room because of a life threatening illness, or a gun shot wound. Nobody there knows how to do surgery or even diagnose anything anymore. One person tries to put a terminally ill patient on a treadmill, someone hands the man bleeding from a gunshot wound a band-aid. They leave with their pains intact. They were lucky -- they got more attention than most. More often, someone walks into the emergency room, takes one look at the exercise equipment and exits because they know they need a real hospital. One day, the hospital hears about a movie playing down the street about Dr. Lister. "Finally, a movie about surgery!" they say. "Now people will be lined up around the block to come to our hospital!"

This is the church today. It's a club for nice people who have it all together, but there's not much there for people who really have problems. People walk in all the time burdened and wounded, but get the message in a hundred different ways that they don't fit into the church's reality. It must be confusing as hell to the uninitiated, because the church should be all about finding compassion, forgiveness, healing, wholeness, and dare I say it, God?

Frankly, the church needs to get more interested in people and less interested in converts. After all, you don't need a motion picture, or a bracelet, or a stadium event to help people. Maybe if we stopped cheerleading a movie and actually paid attention to the words and deeds of the Person it was based on, both the church and the world would be a better place.