Disposable Plastic Christianity

I did a message in a tent revival in 2014, in Kerrville, Texas, with the title of “Counterfeit Christianity.”  I even had a banner stating this exact title, along with banners asking, “Rock or Sand, Where do you stand?”  and “Are You Willing?” 

These banners, along with this title today, are a visual reminder of where we are in our walk with the Most High. 

 

And they are reminders of all the good things we try to do which are pleasing to the Lord Jesus. 

Such as, "Are you willing?” 

These “good things” address being available, able, and willing to do anything the Lord wants us to do.  He wants us to fulfill His mandate in us, by being with those we are supposed to be co-laboring with, when, how, and where we are to preach the Gospel. 

Nothing is automatic.  It is all faith in the One who can order our steps. 

 

What is plastic Christianity? 

 

Years ago, when the New Orleans Saints, the NFL football team, from Louisiana, was playing poorly, the fans wore paper sacks with eye holes in them, on their heads.  They did this out of shame for their home team, who could not win a game.  Pictures of the hundreds of fans showed the sacks, up close, showing bewildered fans with their arms crossed, sitting down. 

Ultimate frustration.  No cheering for a losing team.  Their identity was temporarily hidden, from view, with the sack. 

 

In this very manner, some Christians wear an invisible mask.  A lot of Christians have a hard time being real. 

At least, this has been my experience in 40 years of preaching in prisons.   

 

Inmates in prison, rarely hide their emotional state when under the anointing of God in the chapel.  I see it clearly. 

Many times, as the Word of God goes forth, the emotional triggers that are pulled in their hearts are evident.  Physically, they will lean forward in their metal folding chair, and put their elbows on their knees, place their faces into their open hands, and weep silently. 

No plastic masks there. 

At that point, they do not care what anyone thinks of their display of unheard emotion. 

Crying in prison is a sign of weakness. 

Not in God’s eyes. 

 

 

Plastic Christianity can have a religious spirit attached to it.  It can also be just an issue of immaturity. 

Nevertheless, it is plastic. 

This plastic reference involves something in them that seems artificial. 

 

Think about the quality and flavor of Vanilla extract.  Many bottles of this extract that we buy at the local grocery store are artificial, with fake ingredients. 

But try taking a real vanilla bean, scraping the innards out of it, and gently boiling it in water. 

This becomes the real deal. 

 

There are many differences between artificial and real.  Flavor is only one of them when it comes to our walk with God. 

Most Christians do not know how to have an open dialogue.  A lot of this may be jealousy, envy, pride, or arrogance.  I am not sure.  I have an easier time discussing the Bible with non-believers, than with the plastic Christian. 

The artificial always wants to debate what I preach.

   

Case in point:  Many times, when I am done preaching, and after praying for all the men who want prayer, here he comes. 

Just think.  Several men are crying at an altar, weeping in their repentance, receiving Christ as their personal Savior.  They are having a metamorphosis before all who are there. 

A solemn, anointed moment at an old-fashioned altar of mercy. 

Up walks Bubba now. 

I call them Bubba, as a reference to a red neck who stares at a can of frozen orange juice for ten minutes, because the label says, “Concentrate.” 

 

So, this Bubba guy walks up to me.  I am at Snake River Prison in Oregon, in 2019. 

He has his Bible open in one hand, and the other is waving at me to get my attention.  The first sign is the open Bible.  He has something to critique about the sermon I just finished preaching. 

The second sign is the look in his eyes.  Beady. Wide open, with a certain giddiness in them. 

“Hey Joe, I want to point out something you said in your sermon.” 

He goes on to say, “Well, I never sin any longer, because my understanding of grace, will not allow me to sin.  I quit sinning years ago.” 

Red flag moment. 

I am waving it, in my mind, in a torrential windstorm. 

Hard to hold on to the flag. 

He goes on to begin to correct me.  I have patience, but many non-plastic Christians, and the ones who just got saved, want me to pray for them, as time would allow. 

He says, as I am walking away, from him, to talk to others, “SO, you think I am a Pharisee?” 

“No sir, I am just a messenger, with a message.  I will pray about your opinion and thank you for your advice.” 

I meant it, but I know a religious spirit when I encounter one. 

 

Remember, this is my 40th year of prison ministry.  And I was a convict, too, in a Texas Prison, back in the day. 

Can’t con an ex-con. 

Impossible. 

 

I could have quoted the scripture that says, “We have all sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God.” 

I did not cast my pearls before the swine, smelling the spirit of religion. 

Besides, he claimed to be Jewish, and we know the difference between Kosher and non-Kosher. 

Frying the bacon now. 

 

We always want to win the lost, or the ones who present a religious spirit.

 

In the church world, and in the ones, I was a part of and on staff with, I saw it all. 

Altar calls with salvation.  Good teaching and preaching.  Evangelism outside the four walls of the church. 

All was good for the first few years. 

Then, for whatever reason, money became an idol to the higher up staff, and the church went sideways. 

(NOT all churches have been infected this way.  I am simply giving a warning to any who will listen).

2nd Timothy 2:22-26: 

*Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.  But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife.  And a servant of the Lord Jesus must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will. 

 

(I share this scripture, not as a disclaimer to what you are about to hear, but as a warning about what not to do in the church). 

 

I have been exposed in 40 years of ministry, to the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I focus on the good, but will call out the ugly or the bad, when I see it. 

Yes, I always do it in love, and with a rebuke, never to injure or harm anyone. 

 

 *One man offended, is harder to regain than a fortified city. 

Proverbs 18:19.   

 

 

After pioneering two separate churches, I know the office of the pastor, and functioned, in it, as the Word says to do. 

In the Lord, no wolves entered the sheep’s dwelling place under my watch. 

 

Pastors have an obligation to tell the truth, no matter what. 

Plastic churches house non-transparent parishioners. 

Stuck in the world of fake love. 

Focused on church activities and events, more than praying for one another. 

Social gatherings. 

Charity events. 

All good works, for sure. 

 

But the motivation for some of these hardcore, plastic pieces of the Body of Christ, is to alienate themselves from the true Believer in Jesus.  They hide behind a religious attitude, infecting the water hole with poison, made from pre-judgmental philosophies.  

They infect, instead of affect, goodness in the Body of Christ. 

They are termites in the temple.  Chewing away at the good wood of a congregational member’s foundation.  Their selfishness and spiritual bigotry are a disease that there is no vaccine for. 

 

It is called melting plastic that stinks.  It never stops stinking even after it is cooled off. 

The plastic blob is still there, but in a different form or shape for next Sunday’s church service. 

 

This may sound harsh, but what is worse? 

Calling this out?

Or allowing the insanity of the religious spirit to grow and dwell among us? 

 

We must lead them to Christ, or ask them, with love, to please stop, or depart. 

Wolves shall not live with sheep.  The sheep die, and the wolves get fat. 

When all the sheep are gone, the wolf runs to the next available door, and enters in, unannounced. 

Matthew 23:1-4: 

*The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.  Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do.  (Being a talker, not a walker). For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them off with one of their fingers. 

 

“Shall I stop there?” 

 

Jesus goes on to say many things about their hypocrisy and plastic attitudes. 

Devouring widows? 

Pretentious prayers? 

Blind guides? 

Fools and the Blind?  

 

 

Real plastic is described as a synthetic material made from a wide range of organic polymers (not natural DNA proteins, but like nylon or plastic substitutes). 

 

Why would any Christian (follower of Jesus) want to be fake? 

Or non-organic? 

 

It is called many things.  Maybe they have not been born again yet.  Or they are insecure in their belief systems.  Or, they are being a pretender, an actor in a play, and full of self-indulgence as a true hypocrite. 

The water hole just got deeper with poison.  The temple foundation is weakening more through the dry rot of indifference, racism, and judgmental finger-pointing in the church world.  

 

 God forbid, a woman, who is divorced, not of her own doing, perhaps, be laughed at during the women’s bible study? 

They do not want her there, and they never say a word with their filthy mouths. 

It is their body language that screams, “We do not want you.” 

It makes these “Holier than Thou” females look better without her. They do not want their clique tainted with the likes of that divorcée.   

Their own cesspool of hatred and indifference towards any new married or single women who would join their cult of compromise, should have never existed. 

It is time to flush their toilet of apathy.  And pray the commode does not get clogged with their selfish desires to succeed, and overflow on the new carpet in the sanctuary. 

Stinky huh? 

 

The lost and hurting souls need real, not plastic. 

 

Polymers in plastic are substances composed of repeating structural units called Monomers, linked by chemical bonds.  Think of them as a chain of building blocks. 

“It is a ponderous chain,” the Jacob Marley character quoted in the famous book by Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol.” 

Link by link, they are forged into a critical-thinking Christian. 

 

Again, an oxymoron. Like bitter/sweet.  Candy is good this way. 

But so-called Christianity is supposed to only be sweet.  Not bitter envy and jealousy. 

 

The real problems with the possible fake Christians are that there does not seem to be a hunger for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us Jesus. 

If there is hunger, it seems to always want the “plus something” added to it. 

The plus, this or that, gets in the way of everything else in the hunger to know the truth. 

 

You can’t serve two masters, and you cannot have any real fellowship with another professing believer who serves two masters. 

Most of the genuine Christians are earmarked with mercy.  They are stamped by God with grace and love. 

 

Genuine Christianity never toots their horn of knowledge.  They let their maturity shine without a spotlight of flesh admiration showing. 

 

Genuine: One day, about 7 years ago, my son and I were traveling back from Houston.  We were detoured off the highway to a small town because of a car wreck ahead.  During this slower driving time, my son put on the song by Casting Crowns. 

 

“Who am I, that the Lord of all the earth would care to know my name?  Would care to feel my hurt?  Who am I, that the Bright and Morning Star, would choose to light the way, for my ever-wandering heart?” 

 

I looked over at my oldest son, and he had his hands and arms in the air, worshipping the Most High.  Tears were flowing down his cheeks like a river. 

He was having a moment with the Master. 

 

After the song ended, I kept silent.  Did not want to disturb his moment. 

 

Suddenly, with tears still flowing, he said to his Daddy, “Pop, I want to do what you do, okay?” 

 

Wow.

 

I held his hand for a while and wept with him. 

He and my youngest son joined me at the Ferguson Unit Prison the next year.  It was Father’s Day, the day I preached three services in a row. 

My oldest, testified about Jesus that day.  My youngest played the piano with the “All Inmate Worship Team.” 

They helped me water baptize two young inmates after the service.  These were two 19-year-old inmates who had gotten saved a few weeks, prior to this holiday.  The Chaplain was off that weekend, and as before, many times, I did the baptisms.  It was my honor to do so. 

 

After the services, we left.  On the way out, my boys got in their car to head back; it was a four-hour drive to our home.  I stayed the night, one more night, as I was going to preach in a local church outside the prisons the next day. 

My sons were talking on the way to their car, and I could hear them. 

 

One said to the other, “Ole’ Pop was surely proud of us today, huh?” 

The other said, “Yep, I know his Father’s Day will be one to remember.” 

 

Wow.  They will never know how I felt to see them weep before the Lord that day. 

They will never know how I succumbed to the Spirit of God to win souls that Father’s Day. 

They will never know.  Or will they? 

 

See, the real Christians showed up that day. 

Not perfect, but real. 

Not plastic.  Not metal.  Not wooden. 

We did our best to present the Gospel to men who needed hope. All three of us.  Me, and my two grown sons.  They felt the presence of God that Father’s Day.  And so did the 250 men in attendance in the Prodigal Son Chapel. 

Many, dozens of them received grace and forgiveness.  They needed more than plastic baggies to hold their tears of repentance. 

They received some metal and wood that day though.  They received the nail scarred hands and the Cross of Calvary into their hearts.  Without the sting of death creeping up on them. 

 

Metal and wood.  Symbolic, and real. 

 

My boys received and gave the truth to men locked away from society. 

They received honor from the men by being allowed by them to be a part of worship and baptisms. 

 

I also heard from them as they walked to their car, “Did you see those 19-year-old inmates come out of the water from the baptism?  Have you ever seen such joy?  Wow, glad Dad taught us right.  I don’t ever want to be where they sit.  I would not want to be so stupid; I would end up here.” 

 

“Thank God”, they said simultaneously as they got into their car, out of ear shot from me, now. 

 

I drove away and headed on to the hotel. 

 

Paul Newman, in the classic 1967 prison movie, “Cool Hand Luke” sang a bit of a song with a banjo while in this horrible prison.  Sitting on his top bunk, with his legs dangling over the mattress, he slowly strummed and sang the following: “I don’t care if it rains or freezes, as long as I have my Plastic Jesus.” 

 

Plastic. 

 

Not for me. 

Hope that never happens to you either. 

 

Plastic is prison.  Whoever is made of plastic is doing life without the possibility of parole.  Until Jesus intervenes. 

Then, and only then, can you receive the pardon you need.  He is the key that unlocks the door to your heart. 

 

*Behold, I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears My Voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and dine with him, and he with Me. 

Revelation 3:20. 

 

It is time to eat.  The Bread of Life, Jesus, always has a perfect, spiritual aroma. 

Let us eat, not with plastic forks and plates.  Let us dine with the real tableware. 

 

He is our Author and Finisher of our faith. 

He is the Gold Standard we follow. 

 

Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins