Imagine being at a youth sporting event and you get hungry. The concession stand is closed, but you spot a savior in the corner of the lobby: a vending machine. You walk up to it, put in your money, press the button, and wait for your snack to drop. If it doesn’t, you bang the side, press the button again, maybe even demand a refund. That’s a microcosm of consumerism—you control the transaction, you expect the product you paid for.
Too often, Jesus is approached the same way. We “insert” prayer, service, or faith, and expect an instant answer. If it doesn’t come, we shake the machine. That’s dangerous, because it ‘syncretizes’ consumerism and Christianity—wih a view of God as a cosmic dispenser, there to meet our needs on our terms.
Mark 5 confronts that thinking head-on. Jairus, a synagogue leader, comes to Jesus, asking him to heal his dying daughter. On the way, a woman—bleeding for twelve years, out of options—pushes through the crowd to touch His robe. Both are desperate, both receive what they need, but neither encounter is a transaction. These are not vending-machine miracles. They are invitations into relationship with the Lord of life.
Craig Bartholomew in his book, Christ and Consumerism, warns that when faith becomes transactional, we shrink Jesus to a mere supplier of blessings rather than Savior and Lord.(1) As desperate as Jairus and the bleeding woman were, they didn’t just want something from Jesus—they were seeking Him.
Paul Hiebert’s article “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle” helps explain how easy it is to misread this. (2) There is a common view of the Gospel that understands it mainly in past terms (Jesus died for my sins) and future terms (I’ll be with Him in heaven). While, good, this view too often skips the present and near future—the in-between time we live in now, where the kingdom has come, but isn’t fully here. Hiebert saw the effects of this truncated view as a missionary in India. Too often Christian missionaries would come in, lead people to Christ, but did not know how to equip them to deal with their present and near future troubles. So the locals would go to diviners and other gods/goddesses who demanded sacrifices or required other things to deal with the issue they were seeking help with. This is a classic example of what missionaries call “syncretism”– a merging of different religious practices. They took a little bit of Christianity, mixed it with a little animism, sprinkled in some hindu practices and they are not better off than when they heard the Gospel for the first time. This is the flaw of the excluded middle. This is why it’s critical to see Jesus as Savior and Lord like the two desperate characters in these two stories. In Mark 5, Jesus’ power breaks into the “middle”—life and healing happen now, pointing forward to the final restoration His resurrection guarantees.
- Craig G. Bartholomew and Thorsten Moritz, Christ and Consumerism: Critical Reflections on the Spirit of Our Age (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2000).
- Paul G. Hiebert, “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle,” Missiology: An International Review 10, no. 1 (January 1982): 35–47.