Spiritual Accessories?

Surely you have seen the ubiquitous commercial on one of the cable news channels about the "Lord's Prayer Cross?"  If you hold it up to the light and look through the stone in the middle, you can "almost miraculously" see the Lord's Prayer text.  This reminds me of many rosaries where you can peer through the center and see the Virgin Mary or the Cross or something.  Side road:  that reminds me of a story of a pastor/church planter friend of mine in the Pacific Northwest who went to visit the neighborhood Catholic parish church.  At a very quiet point in the Mass, my friend's then young daughter spied the crucifix, and crowed, with child-like clarity, "Look, daddy!  Jesus is still dead here!"  Out of the mouths of babes...

Now back to our story...the Lord's Prayer Cross is identified at one point as a "one of a kind spiritual accessory."  My question is, "What the heck is a spiritual accessory?"  Is it sort of like a talisman or an amulet of some kind?  Does it bring the wearer "spirituality?"  If so, from what spirits?  Isn't this just a natural result of the increasing amorphous "spirituality" and decreasing sense of any real Truth in our culture today?

Let's face it.  We have know for at least two decades now that Christians have miserably lost, or more to the point, forfeited, the culture wars.  We wanted so much to blend in with the culture that we lost our saltiness.  And now, our prime symbol, the Cross of Christ, is reduced to a "one of a kind spiritual accessory."  The Cross where Jesus died for the sins of all who would believe in Him.  The Cross where the blood of the New Covenant ran down in payment for the sins of many.  The Cross where the most Holy One died, so that sin and death could be defeated.  It makes me sick.

Seek out your saltiness!  Unite with other believers in covenant believing churches and reach out to one another and your surrounding neighborhoods.  Create a "parish" mentality once again, claiming small parts of the culture, here, there and everywhere.  Pray for the day when we can see networks of these parishes across the nation, of all denominations, truly affecting and changing the larger culture.  And for goodness sakes, stay away from "one of a kind spiritual accessories!"  We need Christ, not tchotzkes, and  this dying world needs His truth and His people.

Comments

[Bing Davis]

Absolutely right. The way I see it, people will choose to "believe" in anything but the Truth. The gewgaw makers of the world are living proof of that!

[George Grant]

Bing: Don't you get the feeling that 99% of what is sold in Christian bookstores these days is just a rummage sale of doo-dads, gew-gaws, twiddly-bits, and other "spiritual accessories"? It reminds me of what Mike Horton talks about in "Made in America" when he accuses American Evangelicalism of practically resorting to the voodoo of Medieval superstition!