Should A Christian Take Part In Black Friday Holiday Shopping?

Now, if you really must go shopping on Black Friday, why don’t you at the very least take a handful of gospel tracts with you and pass them out to the lost and dying people you will meet there. You may be the only Christian witness those people will ever see.

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” 2 Timothy 3:1-5 (KJV)

I was reading an article called “America Has Wised Up To The Black Friday Con” on the New York Post website earlier today, written from a worldly perspective, and it got me thinking about it from a Christian perspective. Is Black Friday really something that a Christian should participate in?

When the first Christian pilgrims and Puritans first came here to what would become America, they brought with them a deep and abiding faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Holy Bible. The Puritans founded the very first school in America, Roxbury, and the very first college, Harvard, as well. While America was never a theocracy, it was absolutely founded on Jesus Christ and the King James Bible.

In 1639, a group of New England Puritans drafted a constitution affirming their faith in God and their intention to organize a Christian Nation. Delegates from the towns of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield drew up the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which made clear that their government rested on divine authority and pursued godly purposes. The opening lines express the framers’ trust in God and their dependence on his guidance: “Forasmuch as it hath pleased the All-mighty God by the wise disposition of his divyne providence so to Order and dispose of things, . . . [and] well knowing where a people are gathered togather the word of God requires that to mayntayne the peace and vnion of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affayres of the people.” Moreover, the aim of the government so instituted was religious: “to mayntayne and presearue the liberty and purity of the gospell of our Lord Jesus which we now professe, as also the disciplyne of the Churches, which according to the truth of the said gospell is now practised amongst vs.”¹ Like their neighbors in Massachusetts Bay, the Connecticut Puritans determined to plant a “Christian Commonwealth,” what Governor John Winthrop hoped would become a “City upon a Hill” that would inspire believers everywhere as a model Christian Nation.

One hundred and fifty years later, when George Washington took the very first Oath of Office as president, America as a nation was officially begun. Even though America was set up as a secular state, you cannot separate it from its Puritan origins. None other than Revolutionary War soldier and legislator Noah Webster had this to say about the place of the Bible within the American system of government:

“In my view, the Christian Religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed… no truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian Religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.” source

Now, why do I bring all this up? And no, I am not looking for a debate on the whether or not America ever was a Christian nation or not. But what I am doing is calling you to remember our true roots and Christian Biblical heritage as Americans, there is a reason why Almighty God has blessed this nation far above that of any other in the annals of modern history.

“For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.” Jeremiah 4:28 (KJV)

The shocking difference Black Friday shopping in 1983 and in 2013:

As you can clearly see, Black Friday in our day has become more like a demonic ritual than a pleasant holiday shopping experience like it was 20 years ago. 

In 2015, we are a nation that is hopelessly divided, confused about the way forward and fearful of the future. And why? Because we have forgotten the God of the Bible, having kicked Him out of our schools, out of our courtrooms, and out of our healthcare decisions. We have become self-centered, self-indulgent and hedonistic. There is perhaps no greater evidence of this than the satanic manifestations of the Black Friday holiday shopping event. There is a site called blackfridaydeathcount.com that gives you all the stats of the number of people either killed or injured in Black Friday shopping since 2006. In 2014, holiday shopping between Thanksgiving and Christmas was recorded at $616,900,000,000.00, with an estimated 140,000,000 people shopping on Black Friday weekend.

So where is God in all this?

As Christians, we are called to be “salt and light” to a dying world, a beacon of hope in the ever-gathering darkness. Black Friday represents the very worst in human nature, as it plays directly to our innate sense of greed, possessions and love of the things of this world. Things that have no place in the 2 Corinthians 5:17 (KJV) “new man” that we have become after becoming born again.

Someone once asked DL Moody if you could smoke and still be a Christian. His rather profound answer was “yes, but you’d be a dirty Christian”. You can, of course, still be a Christian and participate in the worldly spectacle of the demonically-inspired Black Friday, but why would you want to? Is there nothing within your born-again spirit and God-given conscience that objects to it? Is lining up like rats in a cage to push and shove your way to saving money on a flat screen TV in line with a good Christian testimony? Probably not.

Now, if you really must go shopping on Black Friday, why don’t you at the very least take a handful of gospel tracts with you and pass them out to the lost and dying people you will meet there. You may be the only Christian witness those people will ever see. Target and Walmart will have hundreds of people standing outside waiting to get in, you could hand out a stack of tracts in no time at all. This Thanksgiving, go give God the glory and tell somebody about Jesus.

“Only one life, ’twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last” – CT Studd, 19th century missionary to China, India and Africa.

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