This past Sunday I preached from Acts 19:8-20 and used a quote from the forward of Daniel Boorstin’s book “Image: a Guide to Pseudo Events in America” . I tried to connect the idea of magic, or the manipulation of spirits, (which we see in that Chapter with the Seven Sons of Sceva, who were using the name of Jesus as a kind of magical incantation to get what they want) with our cultures worship of consumerism, hedonism and nationalism. Comparing their idolatry with ours, Boorstin helped, heres the quote:
When we pick up our newspaper at breakfast, we expect --we even demand--that it bring us momentous events since the night before. We turn on the car radio as we drive to work and expect “news” to have occurred. in the evening, we expect our house to only to shelter us, to keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer, but to relax us, to dignify us, to encompass us with soft music and interesting hobbies, to be a playground, a theatre, and a bar. We expect our two-week vacation to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless. We expect a faraway atmosphere if we go to a nearby place; and we expect everything to be relaxing, sanitary, and Americanized if we go to a faraway place. We expect new heroes every season, a literary masterpiece every month a dramatic spectacular every week, a rare sensation every night. We expect everybody to feel free to disagree, yet we expect everybody to be loyal, not to rock the boat or take the Fifth Amendment. We expect everybody to believe deeply in his religion, yet not to think less of others for not believing. We expect our nation to be strong and great and vast and varied and prepared for every challenge; yet we expect our “national purpose” to be clear and simple, something that can be bought in a paperback at the corner drugstore for a dollar.
We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars to be spacious; luxury cars to be economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for “excellences,” to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy. We expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly, to go to a “Church of our choice” and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God, and to be God.
Never has people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.
We are ruled by extravagant expectation:
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