The Commercial Channel

I wish we thought about worship like we think about watching
television.

The worst thing about watching television is the
commercials. We are watching a story unfold, invested in our favorite
characters, and BAM! An interruption occurs that we did not invite. Our story,
dripping with theme and mode and meaning, teeming with joy and mystery and intrigue,
gets awkwardly pushed aside for dancing animals and jingles set to personified
cleaning supplies. It is disturbing. No matter what story we are watching –
whether we are laughing, afraid, or baffled, the unwelcome crash of our emotion
meeting erectile dysfunction medication is unpleasant at best, infuriating at
worst.

There are thousands of channels, covering every imaginable
interest. Except one. You know what channel we will never see – The Commercial
Channel. Nobody would watch that. Commercials are annoying, they are the thing
that interrupts the story we are trying to see. Sometimes there are funny or clever or interesting ones that we casually mention to the people in our lives. But, for the most part, they are pests, sideshows, inferior and distantly secondary.

Disturbingly, we live and worship completely opposite to how
we watch tv. In real life, we are trying to walk through commercial segments.
We are trying to live the commercial channel. We are seeking to jump from the
beer commercial with quasi-dressed women to the fashion commercial laced with
beauty products and the newest line at H&M. Then coffee. Then a nice car. Then
accoutrements for the car. Then a restaurant suggestion for dinner. Quick.
Superficial. Distracting.

There is a world full of story, REAL story, with the same
mystery and intrigue, humor and hope, that we adore watching other characters
live. Somewhere in the transition of watching story and living story, we completely shift our focus. We live as though our story is the distraction. The meaning of
theme and purpose and character investment is distracting us from living out
the Commercial Channel. The temporal matters most. Instant gratification, fast food, quick service. Don’t bore me with anything that is longer than a segment. I don’t have time for epic. There is no space for meaning, purpose, and development.

When we duck in to the entertainment world, we fight for
story. We shush people at movie theaters, we huff at television commercials, we
center our living room around the story-telling box (making it the focus of our
space), we flee commercial time to empty long-filled bladders so that we don’t
miss a second of the story. We imagine new and inventive ways to tell and observe story.

But not for our story, not for the real stories. In life, we
fight for commercials. We beg for interruptions. Church is rarely as important
as where we will eat after or the football game that starts at noon. Our minds
wander to what people look like rather than what they are saying/doing/living.
We pretend to be interested in the life going on around us, but really we are
fighting to see what is on the Commercial Channel.

The world needs people to show up, pay attention, and invest
in the story of their lives. The Kingdom of God yearns for men and women of
faith who will step out of their comfort snippets, discard the distractions,
and walk in to the fullness of the journey set before them. Life that is truly
life. Apathy and superficiality have become epidemics in modern Christianity.
A crisis-level disease that is crippling individual and communal stories, polluting purpose, and disappointing desperate generations.