“We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!”

—1 Corinthians 4:10

The idea of a fool for Christ is an important one. It takes the truth that the world sees the message of Christ as foolishness: that the weak would be made strong, that the poor would be made rich, etc. It does sound foolish, when we look around us at how the world works. But Jesus is the pinnacle of hope in faith. He dares us to dream bigger. He proclaims the need for reversal from two-thousand years ago in a manner that still feels relevant today.

On the other hand, there are a LOT of genuine fools supposedly working for Jesus. And I don’t mean that in the good sense.

I mean real idiots.

And the culture around us is always waiting for someone with lofty values to betray their virtues.

If you don’t know about Preachersnsneakers, it started as an anonymous Instagram account, where it claimed, “without judgment,” to just be a place to marvel at the intersection of Big-League Megachurch faith and Sneaker Culture. Sneaker Culture, if you don’t know, is a very big deal. People are spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars a pair for limited edition sneakers. It’s a thing.

In fact, it’s kind of like megachurches. The services are held online in the form of YouTube unboxing videos, where whip-smart sneaker aficionados post unboxing videos for the faithful and give their reviews of various shoe offerings from different companies. There are the old stalwarts like Nike and Adidas, and then there are upstarts like Obra and Veja. There will be many more.

And of course, rock-star preachers who pastor churches with 10,000 weekend attendees are eager to get in the game to show how “hip” and “cool” they are.

They’re not.

They’re just not. Jesus was not concerned with anything like this. Jesus was a homeless preacher railing against empire, trying to get people to get back to basics to love and to serve one another better. When you follow a Lord like that, you shouldn’t have sneakers that only royalty can afford. You should reject that kind of ostentatious materialism out of hand.

Some will disagree. “They make a lot of money, and they should spend it.” “They get many of those things as gifts. Should they refuse them and offend the givers?” “How will we reach the younger generation if we don’t dress in a manner they can relate to?”

My response: how shallow do you think young people are?

Do you honestly think they can’t see right through this?

And since when (sorry Dads) did a guy in his fifties ever look cool in blinged-out sneakers on a church stage?

Honestly, I don’t care what they wear. We’ve already seen through the artifice to the truth: you don’t follow Jesus, you don’t live a life he would condone, and you’re consumed with the kind of things that time ravages. Remember the parable, and this quote from Luke 12:20, “Fool, this very night your life is demanded from you, Then who will own what you have accumulated?”

Does scripture say you can’t have nice things? Or that you shouldn’t be wealthy? No! But it does teach us that what we do with our resources and where we put our focus says much about our relationship with our God and with our world. I call on pastors featured on PreachersNSneakers to do better. Stop sending the wrong message. Start living in a manner more worthy of your calling.

And consider serving in a smaller church, where you can build real relationships, rather than just your brand.