Shaking. My. Head.

I returned from children’s camp Thursday afternoon with the usual battered feet, sunburnt nose, and disgusting clinging odor as always. Technically this is not children’s camp we went to, but Pre-Teen camp. I still don’t know why Pre-Teen is a thing, because we already have a word for a pre-teen: child. These were little boys and girls who’ve completed third grade through sixth grade.

All-in-all it was a good camp experience and was meaningful to the boys and girls we brought from our church, which is one of the reasons we do this every year. There were seven-hundred and sixty campers from all over the region at this particular camp.

That’s a lot of lost water bottles, mangled name tags, and nighttime meds.

I’m thinking I need to add a bandana
to my non-camp wardrobe options

But that is not what this is about nor why I am shaking my head. What has me shaking my head is an amazing lesson on spirituality and American culture which might just serve as instructive on some defects we carry with us. These defects are not new, the problem is we accept them and even glorify them.

Enough preamble: here is what happened. The camp had a reward system for any camper who could recite successfully the week’s theme verse.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you is faithful and will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 1:6

The reward was a pin — not a pen but pin — to stick on the lanyard of their name tag. It is a good idea, I think. A little reward system isn’t bad to help children orient themselves in the proper directions. The pin they earned was the word ‘Refine’ and thus it was the refine pin. They sold pins of various kinds in the camp store, but you couldn’t buy the refine pin. They were not for sale. You could only get this special pin by reciting the verse. That was the only way any camper could have it — say the verse to a camp staffer — voila you got the pin. I think most all of our campers from our church earned their pins.

We arrived Monday afternoon. By Wednesday morning the refine pins were selling for $30 on the camp black market. That is not a lie or an exaggeration. The camp muckety muck said it in the morning assembly and he implied that was a bad thing and that students needed to memorize the verse, yet he said it in a way that also implied he was impressed with the supply and demand he had created in the microeconomic system of children.

Let’s not even address why children have that much cash on hand for a camp where everything is paid for. That is an altogether different topic, yet it does run parallel to these thoughts.

What we really need to address is the whole concept of a spiritual goal or spiritual task which is neither earned nor bestowed from God but that which is bought and paid for. There were children who wanted the appearance of having memorized Philippians 1:6 but who actually didn’t want to do the work, so they just bought it. They were willing to spend a proportionately large amount of money to get it, too. Does that not sound like some kind of phenomena you have seen before? Don’t blame these children, they learned it from their parents! The idea we can buy a meaningful devotional experience by purchasing a fancy new Bible or study book is rampant in Evangelical life when in reality you don’t need a new Bible as much as you need to study and learn the one you have. Or, authentic worship at church is hard, so let’s pay someone to come entertain us that way we look spiritual without actually having to worship God. And wouldn’t it be cool to have fog machine and dazzling lights? We can buy worship! Building a church community is hard and takes time, but with enough money we can construct a building and spend lots of money on marketing and WHAMMO — instant church without the spirituality that goes with it.

One of our little boys earned his pin the first day. He is very smart and has a great personality. He told me Wednesday afternoon, ‘I’d never sell my pin, I don’t care how much they offer.’ I told him, ‘Sell it, take the money, then go find another camp staffer and say the verse again, because you know it, and then you have the money and a pin.’ We had laugh over that, but I regret saying it to him. I was wrong. Yes, he’d have the money and the pin, but he would be an accomplice in someone else’s spiritual shortcut, a lesson a boy from another church will learn that, if you have enough money, you don’t need to do the spiritual work of growing in Christ. You can just buy it, because someone is always selling. I am a confirmed capitalist, but the Kingdom of God is not for sell.

Then Peter and John laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money saying, ‘Give me also this power so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.’ But Peter said to him, ‘May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money!’

Acts 8:17-20