The Perfect Title

Rarely do the media get something right from a biblical perspective. Usually, what pop culture calls good, the Bible calls bad; and if the Bible says it’s bad, pop culture exalts it as good.

But the popular title for the day after Thanksgiving is biblically precise:

Black Friday

For it is the Friday after Thanksgiving when the dark night of the soul of our materialistic culture asserts its true allegiance, unashamedly worships its true god.

Here’s your Saturday morning headline:

Black Friday madness: Shopper pepper sprays crowd to get deal at L.A. Wal-Mart, shootings in CA, SC (Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/black-friday-madness-shopper-pepper-sprays-crowd-deal-a-wal-mart-shootings-ca-sc-article-1.982565#ixzz1epW5gq6E)

How else do you explain such bizarre behavior?

It’s idolatry.

And like all idolatry, it exposes the emptiness of life without Christ.

We’re raising a generation of idolators in homes where no one talks, but everyone has a screen to relate to. Junior’s in one room dedicating his life to the life-critical skill of flying angry birds to their objectives. Sister sits in another room texting her love and devotion to the latest pimple faced heart throb of her personal high school musical subculture. Mom’s trolling Facebook. This is all fine with dad because he has to get his fantasy team set so that he can compete in a league that only he and a handful of fellow fantasy players will remember…for about two weeks.

But, they gather often at the throne of the screen that really counts: The screen that presents pages and pages of the “stuff” they may want to buy. No, the stuff they must buy. No, the stuff they have to have. And the stuff they will get.

Even if they can’t afford it.

Even if someone else gets there first.

That’s why mom carries that pepper spray.

A lot has happened since thousands of us 60s radicals trusted in a Carpenter from Nazareth and became a movement the world could not ignore–the Jesus Movement.

But what hasn’t happened is another revival. In my new book,Reborn to Be Wild, I challenge every Jesus Movement convert and all Christians who want to see another movement by Jesus to return to our Jesus Movement roots.

If you’re from my generation of Jesus Movement radicals or if you think your heart is radical enough to ask for revival, today is a very real indicator of just how much you mean it.

Forty years ago I remember connecting the dots between Thanksgiving and my newfound relationship with the Lord Jesus. For the first time in my life I knew what I was thankful for–mercy, grace, and blessings–and to Whom I was offering thanks–the God of the Bible who sent His Son to die for my sins. I was a counterculture follower of Christ. Thanksgiving wasn’t about food and football anymore, it was about humility and worship.

It’s time for a Jesus Movement checkup. What and Who were the focus of your day yesterday? And today, are you being swept along by our materialistic culture’s only followup to a day of physical engorgement–a day to engorge our materialistic appetites?

Just how black is your black Friday? Your answer to that will tell you a lot of whether your heart is truly ripe for revival.

“Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:21-22).