Skye Jethani on Religion

"The alternative to prefabricated-experience spirituality is what has been practiced by Christians for centuries: prayer."

"In a culture that insists on making God small, we can counteract the trend by focusing our imaginations on what is big."

"It is recognizing God's eternality that liberates our minds from their consumer inclination to reduce him to a commodity."

"We have a certainty about God and his ways that leads us to replace the mystery of faith with manageable spiritual formulas."

"When we expect transformation to occur through external experiences, we are opting for an inferior model of spiritual formation."

"We have all swallowed the cultural punch that believes institutions are both the means and the end of God's mission in the world."

"Silence can shatter the trivialized deity that has occupied our imaginations and provide God the canvas to begin a new work in our souls."

"We need to see beyond our culture; we need to peer through the bars of commodification and alienation and catch a glimpse of a God far larger than our circumstances."

"The abundance of our definitive words about God shows that we don't view him as a great mystery anymore, but as a sterile calculation without ambiguity or obscurity."

"How might our perception of God be changed if we turned off the radio station for a few minutes and walked in a thunderstorm?"

"Our longing to pass through the gates of eternity will not be satisfied by any external experience, but by the dwelling of God within."

"Ministries that focus on manufacturing spiritual experiences may actually be retarding spiritual growth by making people experience-dependent."

"Jesus says God isn't like a gumball machine; he's more like the wind: unpredictable, uncontrollable, no more containable than wind in a bottle."

"The reduction of even sacred things into commodities explains why we exhibit so little reverence for God. In a consumer worldview he has no intrinsic value apart from his usefulness to us."

"The "trials of ordinary existence" are the divine curricula for spiritual maturity."

"Full summary of The Divine Commodity"

"Consumer Christianity, while promising to strengthen our souls with an entertaining faith, has left us malnourished with an anemic view of God, faith, church, and mission."

"Learning to see the world as it truly is - saturated with the presence and love of God - should be the essence of Christian discipleship, or what many call spiritual formation."

"In a consumer culture "incarnating Christ" no longer carries an expectation of Christians loving God and their neighbors; but rather the perpetual consumption of Christian merchandise."

"Has the contemporary church been so captivated by the images and methods of the consumer culture that it has forfeited its sacred vocation to be a countercultural agent of God's kingdom in the world?"

"Our spiritual imaginations have fallen asleep on the comfortable mattress of the consumer culture, and before any remedy for the church can be prescribed our dormant imaginations must be stirred from their slumber."

"Let's break free from artificial relationships with unfeeling, uncaring, unloving institutions that cannot contain the unpredictable wind of God's Spirit, and focus instead on building soulish connections with real people filled with the breath of God."

"The personification of institutions in our culture means the institutional church, rather than the flesh-and-blood people of God, has become the vehicle of God's mission in the world. This is salvation via institution, paradise via programs."