Christ Is Not a Middle Class American

The title is the grab line.
This is another persistent heartache of mine. With few exceptions, everywhere I go seeking Christian fellowship, I keep running into the false Christ of the Middle Class. Not entirely wrong, because the Christ of the Bible does overlap in some ways, but there is this pernicious insistence on ignoring, or even actively fighting, the portion which is not included in that overlap. They don’t see the part of God not included in their narrow little world.
Every program, every emphasis, every message, still reeks of middle class American assumptions: materialism, a certain minimum income level (anything less is somehow irresponsible), and that nasty Rick Warren brand of legalism and human success.
Today, I listened to a guest preacher who in one paragraph of his message said it so right. God’s favor is not always what you expect, so it makes a huge difference if you can learn that everything God does is “good” by definition. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not the goodness of God. Right. Then in the next paragraph he went off into name-it-and-claim-it territory. The self-contradiction was stunning.
I’ve grown weary of dealing with the American middle class. They are so unwilling to let God carry them outside their comfort zone, even when they say words to that effect, they are still excluding a vast domain of rich and miraculous living. They just can’t let go of this world. Whenever I start working to break through that idolatry is when I get run out the door. It always happens one sense or another.
It happened again today. I’m not giving up, of course, but still sad all the same.