"Choosy Moms Choose Jesus"?

I saw a church reader board sign recently on my commute. This is not uncommon as I like the “Dad-humor” mixed with a spiritual perspective so often expressed in such places. However, this one had me choking rather than chuckling. It simply read, "Choosy Moms Choose Jesus." OK... kind of catchy but also kind of wrong. Marketing Jesus by appealing to pride, exclusivity, consumerism, insecurities, and peanut butter? Well, I think he's OK with the peanut butter (cue the Washington Carver story).

If I were to write a blog post engaging this idea, which I am not likely to do… I would say that this well-intended reader-board wisdom is deficient on so many levels. In fact, I could probably list three or four ways right off the top of my hot head.

First, we don't choose Jesus, he chooses us. The Bible is pretty clear about this, and he didn’t choose us because we were “all that,” but because he is the kind of God that is outward-focused in his love. We were not in a place to help ourselves or with a ton of options, in fact, we were poor, sick, and weak. Here are a couple of passages that speak to this.

• Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? (James 2:5)

• For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

• (See Romans 11:5-6; 16:13; Col. 3:12;1 Thess. 1:4; 1 Peter 2:9-10; John 6:43-44).  

Second, even by bumper-sticker standards, this statement seems very impersonal and not very creative. Is Jesus merely a product to be bought, sold, selected, or rejected? Is such objectification a sign of spiritual maturity? No. He is a person to whom we must relate. He pours out his love on us—while we were yet sinners—and we must respond to that love one way or the other. However, our "choosiness" is not an advantage here. Honestly, there is much in the life of discipleship that is not easy and also much that is not held in high esteem by the court of public opinion. Having said all that, what does it say about "choosy Moms" by blatantly ripping off the Jif™ Peanut Butter marketing campaign? Perhaps choosy moms should choose more original tag lines, lest their children learn to plagiarize! Jesus is the creator of all so instead of copying the ideas of the dominant culture we would do well to be more creative and less given to accommodate the voice of another.

Third, the saying intends to play on the pride of a "choosy mom" and get her to choose Jesus in order to maintain her own sense of competence and bolster her self-image as a good mother. Ironically, it markets the programs of the church by appealing to a part of our person from which we must repent in order to fully experience the grace of God. It would seem to me, that the church’s reader board shoots its gospel mission in the foot with such a proclamation.

Fourth, the consumerism that is a great weakness of the contemporary church is in evidence here. People are often in a church for what they can get for their marriage, their family, and their own self-fulfillment instead of embracing and being embraced by God's family (the church) as they share life together over the long haul. That is a tragedy of a non-Trinitarian view of God being manifested in the church. We too often follow the "monad in our mind" that spins everything as revolving around us instead of realizing that we are only who we are in relationships with others. The church is a place for us to “...one another” because they need it and God is just that way.

“The concrete means by which the church becomes an echo of the life of the Godhead are all such as to direct the church away from self-glorification to the source of its life in the creative and recreative presence of God to the world.”[1]

Well, those are some of the seed thoughts I might try to communicate if I were to write a short blog about something as trivial as a reader board sign. I think I’ll make a peanut butter sandwich instead.

[1] Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (New York: T & T Clark, 1997), 81.