There is nothing inherently good or evil about church size. It is the coveting of size and status that is the wellspring of evil. The underlying deception is that godliness is a means of gain. But Paul’s solution is to see that godliness is in fact a means of gain (I Tim 6:5-6). The question is, what do you want to gain? A life of faithful, godly ministry is loaded with gains. You gain life, immortality, joy, peace, and closeness with God. There’s no prohibition against wanting those things. You’ll never covet access to God, no matter how much you want it. In the end, the solution to coveting is wanting the right thing.

You shall not covet… — Deuteronomy 5:21
“Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor” (Ecc 4:4). Really? All toil? All skill? All driven by envy?
What would that say about your ministry? It would say that your ministry (yes, yours), is in your own human, fallen way, driven by envy. You want reputation, or accolades, platform, or influence. In other words, you want the same things everyone wants, and ministry is a tool to get it. That doesn’t mean godly, Christ-honoring ministry is impossible, through God’s grace. It means that those engaged in Christian ministry (which, at some level, includes every genuine Christian) need to be aware of our covetousness and the direction it will try to see us.
The phenomenon of the megachurch serves as a useful foil in exposing the particular bent of our covetousness. The proliferation of megachurches in America, combined with the advent of the digital age has brought the issue of covetous comparison much closer than ever before. The country pastor can no longer pretend that he is the only voice that can be heard for miles around.
The country minister’s experience is much like living in a remote and forgotten suburb that is going through rapid gentrification. It is not as if there are suddenly more wealthy people everywhere, while your standard of living has remained flat. It is rather that you feel a heightened proximity to large amounts of wealth. Similarly, it is not as if there are suddenly more godly, brilliant, or charismatic Christian leaders in the world. It’s simply that the celebrities feel much closer.
Our visceral response to the megachurch kicks out in two directions.
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We should acknowledge differences, advantages, and imbalances, and strive to help those who are less fortunate. But we should not consider inequality an inherent obscenity. It is a base sort of spirit who says: “Because everyone [or, more often, because I] cannot enjoy that, no one should.”

Thieves are typically pegged under one of two caricatures. The first is the burglar ruffian who picks your pocket, breaks into your car, or steals your Amazon package. The second is the white-collar fat cat, embezzling from his employees and clients or pulling the strings of a Ponzi scheme. Both are met with public condemnation, and both are hunted by the emblems of justice (i.e. the local police and the FBI).
But what about the systemic, institutionally protected forms of robbery? These are forms of legal theft which break no laws, yet distort principles of just ownership. The motives and methods behind such thefts vary. Some prey upon the “haves,” others upon the “have-nots”—yet both are committing nothing short of swindling, depriving others to build themselves up.
Sharks and Minnows
We can see theft happening in the ecosystem of “Economic Sharks.” In true Darwinian style, these sharks prey upon the weak and poor — those who have few resources and little recourse. Often the sharks pose as those who wish to help and lend a hand — but the hand they offer holds a handcuff. They let the little fish swim right up to them, and then swallow them whole.
In what world can interest rates of 15, 20, 25% be considered conscionable? And yet it’s all above board because, after all, they (the prey) signed the contract, didn’t they? The sharks have it in writing. Their defense is that the financial institute, the loaner, has to protect their risk. But this is a mere smoke screen for extortion.
What of gambling (or its well-dressed cousin, “gaming”)? We provide for casinos to be set up on Native American property, as if this is some sort of national reconciliatory concession. Do we think native peoples would somehow be helped by legalizing an instrument of economic predation in their backyard? Of course, location is not so much of an issue anymore, as we’ve now flung the doors wide open for online gambling. Tell me, are we helping the poor by putting a portal to financial ruin in their pockets?
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The slide towards hate starts several dials below spewing expletives. We as Christians need to examine our hearts when it comes to engaging with those who disagree with us, especially those whose purposes aim to subvert and shatter the Christian worldview. What do we want for these people? Do we actually want their salvation, or do we just want them out of the way? If we let a gospel of sacrifice set our pattern in answering these questions, it will unravel threads of murder.

 “You shall not murder”
“Have you lived a good life?”
“Well, I’ve never killed anyone.”
Christians know that line won’t stand up in God’s courtroom. We quickly pivot away from murder to press the sin issue from other angles. “Have you loved God perfectly, every moment of your life? Have you ever coveted something? Have you ever lusted?” When we swing the spotlight to focus on catching surface sins, the nuances of murder scuttle away to nest in the safe, dark shadows under the bed. So while Christians point the finger at the more obvious and ostentatious sins of the world around us (usually sex and greed), we unwittingly harbor and nurture some of the very sins that make us most repulsive to unbelievers, namely murder.
Jesus raises the bar on murder to such a height that we hardly know what to make of it. In Matthew 5:22, he traces murder down to the root of anger, even a hasty insult. Because the final fruition of murder seems to come so far downstream from anger, we wave away our outbursts. And the dismissal has some merit. Anger is not the same as murder, and we’ll cause all manner of difficulties if we treat the two exactly the same. Anger has a progression. Somewhere along a progression of repeated surges of anger directed against a single target, that anger congeals into hatred. When that happens, a Christian has more than dipped his toe in the stream of murder; he’s starting to wade.
You don’t hate anybody, do you? That depends. In-person, or online? Are we talking about an individual or a collective identity group? A person’s online digital persona and reputation often comes to represent just as much, if not more, of their identity than their physical presence.
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In ages past, the principle of respect for authority was tied to a position, not a person. To varying degrees, our society has revised, reversed, or erased this distinction—and not without some benefits. We now resist the externalism of traditional hierarchical societies. In that sense, we are a people seeking to look on the heart, and not simply the outward appearance (I Sam 16:7). But this has not come without a cost. We now fuse person and position completely, attempting to calculate respect accordingly. 

“Honor your father and mother… that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
Few things seem more American than rebelling against authority. After all, that’s how we started as a country, right?
Leaving aside lengthy historical and philosophical discussions of 1776, it shouldn’t take us long to realize that a revolt at our nation’s inception does not make revolt per se some sort of abiding standard. There’s a time when complaining and protesting is understandable, if not desirable. Yet more often than not, our posture towards government authority (and authority in general) remains in a sort of frozen state of whiny, petulant, adolescent rebellion.
There’s a reason why the fifth commandment focuses on honoring one’s parents. The way we view authority as a whole germinates from the way we are raised to view our parents’ authority. Indeed, it takes a lot of spiritual growth in our relationship with God to move above and beyond conceiving of Him as anything more than an overgrown version of our parents.
Today, we can see our lamentable failure of respect for authority cropping up at all levels of our society. Schools, for instance, have to spend increasing time and energy stepping in to fill the gaping hole of moral formation left by the dissolution of the family. Sadly, an ongoing succession of teachers, each serving their one-year term as interim parents, is unlikely to shift the fundamental relationship between that future adult and his authority figures. That relational dynamic to authority is cast and set by parents.
There’s nothing remarkable or apocalyptic about people in our age complaining about authority, even good authority. Think about what Moses’ suggestion box would have looked like. And he freed Israel from 400 years of bondage. The roots of rebellion against authority go back (as do all sins) to Adam and Eve in the Garden. Human beings have an unshakable hubris that we know better. We’re never far from the comfortable, imaginary throne of: “If only I was in charge.” It must be acknowledged, however, that the pitch and constancy of this chorus of disrespect have reached a terrible (and frankly embarrassing) height in our time.
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No one, most especially his disciples, spent any time around Jesus without being made to feel uncomfortable. That’s a good test of whether we have encountered the Jesus of the Bible: Am I challenged and convicted, as well as loved and saved?

If ‘90s trends are truly back, it’s about time we dusted off the W.W.J.D. bracelets—the Evangelical craze that attempted to stamp into teenage minds the importance of imitating Jesus. What would Jesus do? Usually it turned out that He would bring His friends to youth group, and stay away from alcohol, sex, and drugs. By comparison, today it’s hard to imagine such a question could spark any substantive reflection or life change. After all, Jesus is my homeboy. He’s got my back. Jesus is there to pick me up when I get down. He’s got plans to prosper me, for my welfare, not my destruction. Jesus is always there for me. He never judges me. Jesus loves and accepts me.
The W.W.J.D. acronym for the ‘20s should be: “What Wouldn’t Jesus Do?” Is there anything that you can definitively cross off? Or is Jesus everyone’s favorite silly putty? He simply takes the shape most convenient to that person at that time, then afterward, he squishes right back into his neon eggshell.
It is in this way that the third commandment is most often trampled in our world. People invoke Jesus’ name to provide moral authority to all sorts of far-reaching, banal, and even horrific causes. As mentioned in my previous article, Christians have a history of getting God’s name and intentions wrong. Yet professing Christians no longer hold a monopoly here; people from a wide variety of beliefs hold that Jesus was, at the very least, moving the same direction they are.
Seven Worse Demons
The life and words of Jesus have seeped deep enough into Western culture that someone who has never opened a Bible has enough familiarity with popular “Jesus snapshots”, that they can readily construct cardboard caricatures of Jesus who play the appropriate roles, such as:

Jesus the non-judger
Jesus the religious reformer
Jesus the compassionate
Jesus the bringer of equality

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