Unclear on the Concept

So the other day, here at the church office, I got a call from a very perky young man who said he would like to ask me a few questions about a recent survey and book about Christian attitudes in the U.S. The thesis is that in American society, a large part of our Christianity is influenced by commercialism and commercialized ideas, rather than by the ideas of self-sacrifice and repentance found in the gospels.

I agree with the condition, even though I think it's not something unique to modern times or to the American church -- it's kind of a common theme at many different times in Christian history. But the perky young fellow started asking me some questions as though he was also doing a survey, and I answered them, and then he mentioned that, as a result of a recent nationwide conference, a set of study tools, sermon ideas, teaching material and video presentations had been developed. He name-dropped a couple of well-known church leaders who had some role with this development

While he was speaking, I considered whether or not he would appreciate the irony that he was trying to make a sales pitch for curriculum that taught how to move away from a commercialized understanding of the Christian faith, and that his script for his sales call started out by presenting it as a survey or conversation -- disingenuous at the very least and maybe even deceitful. I decided that even if he did appreciate the irony, he wouldn't be admitting it in a situation where his call might be monitored.

So I told him that I wasn't going to be interested in purchasing anything, thanked him for his call and said that if he had said up front he was selling something, I could have saved both of us some time by declining the offer then, and hung up. A lot of the marketing firms tell their representatives to keep talking as long as there's a connection so you do have to hang up on them to get them to stop, but there's no reason to be rude about it. Well, no reason other than it would make me feel good, but that's probably not enough to get past that "Do unto others" rule the Boss laid down...