Reality Check

Christianity on the Cheap

By Justin Long ⋅ June 2, 2009 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Every weekend, in any given city, you find yard sales. Somebody has decided they have too much “stuff.” Perhaps they are moving and don’t want to box it all up. Perhaps they need to make way for newer stuff. For whatever reason, the pattern is the same. Go down to city hall and for a small fee buy a license, then run an advertisement in the local newspaper’s classified section, and on the day of the yard sale, put up posters at nearby corners, set out some tables, cover them over with “stuff” and wait for people to come by.

People do. Thousands of people all over America descend on the yard sales, searching for something great at a cheap price. They pick, poke, and prod. They haggle over prices. They are looking for a bargain—for a 2-for-1 special—for something that is both really great and really cheap.

The “World’s Largest Yardsale” stretches over 450 miles between Covington, Kentucky and Gadsden, Alabama, covering four states. (Whether it is the world’s largest might be debatable, but it is probably America’s largest.) Individual yard sales are found about every quarter of a mile. Some are small, like a single yard. Others are huge, with dozens of tents, concession stands, and parking lots. Some residents have even made money by renting out their lawns to others rather than putting up a yard sale of their own.

What can typically be found at a yard sale? My admittedly limited experience with yard sales (mostly following my wife around) leads to this inventory: Music cassettes and 8-track tapes. Records. Movies on videocassette. Stacks of old magazines. Clothes, clothes, and more clothes. A bicycle or two. Sometimes, furniture (bookshelves, tables, and the like). From moving sales will come the occasional appliance (refrigerators, lamps, and such). Lots of toys. Lots of books.

One interesting thing is: most buyers are pretty choosy. They rarely buy something they will really depend on at a yard sale. Buying “stuff” which is obvious and immediately testable—like a book, a movie, or a piece of furniture—is okay. Things that are more valuable and suspect are not.

Another interesting thing: there is some ‘stuff’ that you just won’t find at a yard sale. Before we moved to Southeast Asia, we had to get our own house ready to be rented out while we were gone. Obviously, we had to move all of our stuff out. We couldn’t move or store all of it, so we held two yard sales to get rid of a lot of it. Old clothes, unused toys, old books, most of the beds, furniture, the television, you name it—“everything must go.” Yet there were some things that were not for sale. These are the things that held sentimental value for us, or that we might want later on when we returned. Collections of pictures of our children, some in scrapbooks and some in shoeboxes. Special books. Sentimental Christmas tree ornaments. Stuff like that.

Yard sales are great for things that have little value aside from simply being wanted on the spur of the moment. But they aren’t great for things that you have to invest in. They are good for the cheap, but not for the priceless.

For example, you might buy some jewelry at a yard sale—but would you buy an engagement or a wedding ring there? In the West, the typical ring given by a man proposing marriage to his wife is a diamond. But when did we start giving diamonds?

Although the first diamond ring was given as part of a royal wedding in 1477, the role of a diamond ring in either engagement or marriage actually didn’t become common in the West (it’s still uncommon elsewhere due to the expense) until very recently. In 1947, De Beers, the South African company responsible for 40% of the world’s diamond mining, started a highly successful advertising campaign with the tagline, “A diamond is forever.” As a result of this, diamonds became the standard gift for engagements, weddings and anniversaries, and women were encouraged never to sell their diamond rings—thus reducing the supply of diamonds and keeping the price high.

The stone is considered one of the most enduring, beautiful and expensive gems around, and is thus thought a symbol of the permanence and beauty of a relationship. There are elaborate rituals around the engagement ring: how it is selected, how it is given during a proposal, whether it should be returned if the relationship is broken before the marriage occurs. Most of all, the stone is intentionally expensive. It is a sign of extravagance.

The advertising campaigns of De Beers tap into a simple idea: the price of something is set not just by the cost of its raw materials, but also by the value we place on it. Our possessions illustrate this. Some things—like food, or certain types of clothes, or books or music—we seeks a cheap deal on. Other things—high end possessions like wedding rings, houses, cars and the like—we feel cheap deals are suspect. These possessions are ‘status symbols,’ and the more you can (and do) spend on them, the higher your status. This is not necessarily a good thing, but it is a reality.

There’s another commercial series that dips into this. Here was a recent one. The advertisement starts at an airport, where a plane is flying overhead. Inside the airport, we see people pensively waiting. A closeup shot of a sign: arrivals. Then, suddenly, the people they’re waiting on start flooding out. Small kids run to hug grandma; a subtitle announces “Ticket from Toronto: L299.” Dad and son hugging—“Ticket from New York: L228.” Two girls (sisters? Best friends? Who knows): “Ticket from Cape Town, L449.” Mother and daughter: “Ticket from Sydney, L595.” Then a quick jump from people who are hugging, embracing, kissing, laughing, talking. The subtitle: “Spending Christmas together: priceless.” Fade out to black with the announcer’s voice. “Some things are priceless. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.”

Mastercard is a credit card accepted worldwide (similar to American Express and VISA). In 1997, they created an advertising campaign which taps into this idea. To date over 350 commercials within this campaign have been aired in 106 countries and 49 languages, and it has won over a hundred awards worldwide. Clearly, the campaign has hit uponsomething big.

The simple idea is this: some things are cheap (or even free). Blogs, magazines, newspapers, offers of items for sale, television shows, music—all of these are things that are either inexpensive, cheap, or free, and all are trending toward “free.” Some things are moderate to highly expensive, and you wouldn’t want them otherwise. You look for a deal, but not “too much of a deal” or otherwise you might be quoting a proverb about “you get what you pay for.” Beyond this, there are some things that you cannot pay for. They are priceless. For example, you might pay the price of an airfare to spend Christmas with someone—but generally speaking either you have someone to spend Christmas with or not. You can’t buy a family Christmas.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with unreached peoples. The simple answer is this zinger: is Christianity something we prefer because it doesn’t cost too much? We talk a lot about freedom, simplicity of the Gospel, mercy and grace freely available. But are we living Christianity on the cheap?

Reaching the unreached requires us to pay the cost of discipleship. We need to “count the cost” of what Christ is calling us to. We need to consider that we are saved from eternal damnation, but we are saved to the Kingdom. We often seem to subconsciously view salvation as little better than insurance. But salvation isn’t insurance as much as it is allegiance, and we often conveniently forget or ignore the claims of the Kingdom on our life.

If you wanted to marry the girl (or man) of your dreams, what would you be willing to do? Money and time in courtship? Sharing problems and weaknesses in order to become more intimately bound? A diamond ring? An extravagant proposal? Willing surrender of rights (by both)? Ongoing work to meet family needs? My challenge to you: if you want a Kingdom life that is priceless, stop trying to get it on the cheap. Be ready to pay the cost.

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