The Christian Cruise Ship

Luke 5:32

I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.


The other day I was visiting the ports of call on my television. WITF-PBS, CSPAN 1, LCTV Channel 66, CSPAN2, and PCN (Pennsylvania Cable Network). Outside of sports, I have very little that I watch of commercial TV, and when I do, I feel guilty about wasting my life. We should put TV screens on our graves instead of tombstones given how much time we have given the tube of our waking hours. The above television stations, all commercial free, reminds me how Capitalism can become--and often is-crass. These non-commercial stations actually deliver content worth watching, most of the time. I fear the Karl Marx, for all of his miserable misanthropic manifestos, was right about the inward rot of Capitalism done Corporate. Ain't nothing free enterprise about it. Check your Comcast bill recently?  My monthly bill is $81 for Basic Cable and Internet. That's it.

You'd think Comcast was running off of solar power to charge rates like these. Or hamster wheels.

As a cultural medium, television needs redemption. I hardly understand peoples' inordinate fascination with crime shows. An addiction even. Want to be entertained by evil and malice, the real thing? Watch the Philly news and get your fill. Thug Life yo.

When cruising through these channels on that day, I stopped at LCTV Channel 66 which is the local public access channel. I will watch it once in a while but the programming is pretty lame. I like the local high school news show. It is the most polished and  professional of all and I find what the high school is doing interesting and informative and compare notes with the high school I work at.

There is one program, aimed at the single girl, to keep her from getting rooked by unscrupulous contractors and the middle-aged single lady hosting the show sings this really bad song about the program.  Yet, on this day, LCTV was showing footage of a Christian Cruise Ship visiting the Bahamas. Some of the women and girls were wearing their full-length dresses, doileys on their heads, and stealing away for some ice cream. Video of the ship occupants eating ice cream cones was the highlight, plus the jaunt to Nassau to buy some touristy crap. The entertainment on the ship consisted of those family groups where everyone from Grandpa to little Jeanie, two years old, belt out Gospel tunes. I am sure the food buffet was ginormous. And, oh yeah, the ice cream bar. Belly up!

I swore to myself that if I had found myself on this ship, I would have thrown myself overboard into the seas. Unless they were shark-infested. It was everything goofy and weird about the Fundamentalist Bible-Believing sub-culture, just on the Caribbean.  I am sure the people were nice and decent, not hypocrites, yet the conglomeration of the whole culture, that peculiar inwardness more akin to an ingrown toe-nail rather than the biblical sense of being peculiar, was in full force. A little R & R with the Body is fine and even a good thing, but if it just becomes one more isolating evangelical echo chamber experience, how have we done anything different that what we normally--or abnormally do--24-7?

When non-Christians dismiss the faith as being irrelevant or openly hostile to them, with our posture of avoidance and attack, is it any wonder they feel this way? Political attack is easy. Loving sinners is hard.

As easy (sorry to use the word again so soon) as it is for me to be jaundiced by this display, it made me think about how many of us Christians spend most of our time on the Christian Cruise Ship, eating our yummy little goodies with our yummy little family and friends. The Gospel becomes unreal because it is not being tested, stretched, and challenged. We sail placid sunny seas and pray that the clouds stay away and don't rain on our vacation.  The Homeschooling and Christian School movement has unfortunately fostered a schizoid dual-culture in at least some of our kids. The Megaplex one-stop shopping church--modeled after the Mall--offers activities that keep us effectively isolated from non-Christians. We got our movies, our music, our books, our TV programs and talk radio, and yes, our cruise ships.

Christians need to be out in the world interacting with all. We must be authentic, honest, and caring. We have to be close enough to people for them to see Jesus in us, not watching from the shore while our ship passes by. In my searching for a cruise ship pic, I came across an image of "A Barge to Hell" cruise. Some hell-raising bacchanalia in the Bahamas.

I ask you dear reader, which ship do you think Jesus would be on? Further, what ship should we be on? This is not a trick question.