Earlier this week, I was in Pittsburgh. I was there attending a leadership conference at Pittsburgh Seminary and meeting with my new church development coach, BJ Woodworth, lead pastor at Open Door. At the PIttsburgh airport, heading home to Tampa, I rode the shuttle train to the terminal in order to catch my plane. I saw the picture below and the slogan, "I am what I shop." I was stunned by the plain message: I am what I shop. Really? The advertisement was meant to encourage us to shop at the "air mall," the shops and restaurants available near the gates where we would later board our planes to other locations around the country and world.
The advertisement claimed that my value as a human being was the result of my shopping. That sounds ludicrous. But the message was plain and maybe has crept into our thinking as consumers. I reject the message. I am NOT what I shop. I have repeated another message numerous times over the years in sermons and in youth programs. "I am a child of God. Please treat me that way." I first heard this slogan at a Logos Youth Systems training in Orlando in 1992. "You are a child of God and I will treat you that way," is the other side of the same coin.
Earlier in the day, on my way to the Pittsburgh airport, I read in the newspaper the horrible report of the security guard being shot to death at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Hatred and violence are based on the fact that some people do not believe that every human being has value. I believe everyone has worth because they are a child of God. At home, I took out a book I love by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream. In that book (pages 40-41), he writes the following:
"One of the most blasphemous consequences of injustice and prejudice is that it can make a child of God doubt that he or she is a child of God. But no one is a stepchild of God. No one. God's love for us and our love for others is the single greatest motivating force in the world. And this love and the good it creates will always triumph over hatred and evil. But if you are to be true partners with God in the transfiguration of his world and help bring this triumph of love over hatred, of good over evil, you must begin by understanding that as much as God loves you, God equally loves your enemies."
You are not what you shop. You are a child of God. I am a child of God. I will treat you that way. Believe it. Treat yourself that way. I believe that love and the good it creates will triumph over hatred and evil.
