Marketing Strategies

I recently read a passage of scripture that I had read and heard quoted many times presented in a rather fearful manner, perhaps this was just coming from my own neurotic frame of reference, but this time the passage illuminated with fresh revelation that fed my soul a juicy morsel of sustenance. 

The passage is in 1 Corinthians 4:5 where Paul is addressing the idea of apostleship and confronting the Corinthians on following different leaders instead of Christ.  Paul says, ”Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time, wait till the Lord comes.  He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s heart”.  This has always made me kind of tremble in my boots, but there is more to this passage that somehow I failed to understand.  It continues to say that “At that time each will receive his PRAISE from God”. 

The idea behind this is that what we do in the secret to further the kingdom of God, those unnoticed acts of ministry that we don’t post on facebook and receive kudos for from our fellow peer Christians will receive praise from God.  Our true motives and our inner lives will be exposed and the result will be praise from God when the driving force behind our acts is obedience to God and not self affirmation.

This reminded me of one of my favorite passages of scripture that Jesus taught to His disciples when He presented the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew Chapter 6 where Jesus begins by warning against doing acts to be noticed by men.  He proceeds to proclaim three times in the chapter that what you do in secret will be seen by the Father and He will reward you.   The chapter exhorts us to consider that when our deeds are done for others to see, the praise from them will be our reward, but when our deeds are done as a secret with our Holy Father God, our reward will come from Him.

I’m trying to figure out how Jesus’ marketing strategy works into our 2011 technological world where every good deed is advertised.   I am sure there are times when advertising is necessary to further the kingdom of God, but I do think it can be a terrible pitfall for the feeding of our already over-indulged human nature and the stroking of our egos.   We can easily use the world’s technique and put a spiritual twist to it, but the result is still a worldly result…vanity.

Paul is writing to the Corinthians addressing the problem of boasting in the church and the kind of chaos that has been stirred up as a result....boasting in their wisdom and spiritual gifts, boasting in the certain leaders they are following.  Paul suggests that if we are going to boast to boast in our weakness.  I don’t see many fathers writing about their sons walking the “green mile” on facebook…that’s just not good marketing.