My wife and I were recently considering getting my daughter, who has somehow transformed into a teenager overnight, a smartphone. My wife had upgraded her phone a few months back and we were still holding on to the older model iPhone with hopes of giving it to her as her first smartphone. However, when I contacted customer service to deactivate her flip-phone and activate the smartphone, I was informed that the carrier no longer supported that model of phone and we would not be able to use it. The phone (still in working condition) had been deemed too old. I was not happy about the fact that I now have a smartphone that is only good for use as a paperweight, but it made me think more about a trend that I’ve seen in our culture for years now that is alarming.
Don’t think me a Luddite. I consider myself a tech-savvy person and I’m an early adopter of some new technological trends like activity trackers and smart home devices. I think that technology can be used as a great tool. However, this trend of always having to have the newest thing is dangerous. A popular new category on YouTube is unboxing videos. If you’ve never seen one, someone gets their hands on the latest gadget or toy from a company and they literally open up the box and give their initial reaction as they hold the device and try out some of its features. Most vloggers who do these videos get the products for free from the manufacturers because they know that when viewers see that new shiny smartphone with the upgraded camera, bigger battery, and latest security features, people will look at their months-old phone with disgust and say, “I want that.”
While this is consumerism at its worst, there is nothing inherently wrong with having the latest phone, car, or radio-controlled drone. The problem comes when this way of thinking, newer is better, slips into our view of God. When that happens, we attend church and hear the Old, Old Story preached and sing the Old Rugged Cross and think there must be something newer, or better, out there?
C.S. Lewis called this idea Chronological Snobbery. He would define it as, “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.” In other words, if people believed it 100 or 1000 years ago it must be wrong because we are so much smarter and better now. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that this trend is setting into the retail market where antiques sale prices and volumes are down as much as 80% over the past 20 years as consumers move to modern design as a preference.
So is Christianity going the way of antiques? Is it just fated to gather moss and fade into obscurity? Absolutely not. I find this intellectual fallacy fascinating because it has been popping up for millennia. Paul fought against a version of it called Gnosticism. It said that there was a mysterious secret knowledge that you need to be a “real” Christian and so it attempted to distract and lead people away from the truth. The popular idea today is that your beliefs should be as customizable as your Venti Double Ristretto Half-Soy Nonfat Decaf Organic Vanilla Frappucino. When the Starbucks model enters the church it makes people into God and uses religion to serve individualism.
In this individualistic climate, loneliness and isolation run rampant. When everything is about what makes you feel good, you resist relationships that infringe upon your idea of personal freedom and autonomy. In the same way, if the purpose of life is mapped around self-actualization and expressing your true self to the world then all of your most significant relationships shift in a very unhealthy direction.
Marriage becomes about your “soul-mate” making you happy as you pursue and become the best version of you. Friends become an avenue for self-fulfillment, and you put on and take off friends quickly based on what personal benefits they can bring you. Finally, churches become purveyors of religious services and products leading congregants to be consumers who expect the church’s teaching and activities to better their way of life.
A faith that allows people to decide what parts they like and what they want to drop smacks of inauthenticity. That doesn’t work anywhere outside of the consumer realm. I wouldn’t go to work and tell my boss, “I’m happy to continue answering phones but I’m going to stop doing data entry because I don’t feel that it is helping me achieve my full potential.” If I was in court and the judge sentenced me to time in prison, I would be a laughingstock if I said, “Judge, your belief in prison is archaic and intolerant and I don’t believe in that.” Deep in our soul, we know that in the grand scheme of things we are insignificant little specks and there is no way things should be oriented around us. We make terrible Gods.
Jude encourages us in verse 3 of his tiny book to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Why did Jude need to urge his readers to fight? In verse 4, we see that ungodly false teachers had crept into the church. Wolves had entered the sheep’s pen, and the sheep needed to be alert lest they fall prey to deception. These teachers were perverting the grace of God and replacing it with sensuality. They denied “our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
While we don’t know exactly what they were saying, these teachers were clearly, according to verse 7, claiming to be Christians while living immoral lives. Abusing the grace of God, these teachers denied the sovereign right of God to determine right moral behavior and were substituting their own standards instead. If that doesn’t sound familiar, you don’t have your eyes open.
So, let me encourage you today to contend for the beliefs of Christianity that began with Jesus himself and were faithfully passed on to us through the apostles, and church fathers, and reformers, and countless saints of God who have all along contended for the faith. This faith was once for all delivered by God through His apostles. It is not open to change, revision, or addition. We find its content in the pages of the Bible, which contains all doctrine profitable for our instruction (2 Tim. 3:14–17).
In a world of iPhone upgrades, unboxing videos, and have it your way spiritualism, I can think of nothing more needed and valuable than the faith of our fathers faithfully preached and lived. Let’s not think of the past as something we need to move on from as if we have somehow risen above it or of the future as something evil because God is already there as well. But as G.K. Chesterton said, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”