The Incredible Shrinking Christian

I was just eating a Klondike bar here at the office, a sort of high calorie mid-afternoon snack, when I noticed how thin the chocolate coating (over the ice cream bar) was. I couldn’t hold the treat—even very gently—without the chocolate shell cracking to pieces.

And then it hit me—has the company that makes this product downsized the confection’s candy coating? Is this another example of a food company shrinking the product size and keeping the price the same (or worse yet, raising it)?

So I went to the Internet and googled “klondike bar.” That’s when I discovered that the people who make the Klondike Bar also manufacture Breyers ice cream. As much I like Breyers, it really frosts me that they have trimmed the size of their container—first from a half-gallon to 1.75 quarts and then recently to 1.5 quarts. Yet the price remains the same (or higher.)

Breyers and other manufacturers’ decision to downsize their packaging often escapes the attention of consumers. While the reduction in package size for items as diverse as bar soap, candy bars and corn chips is easy to overlook, I noticed right away that some ice cream containers were getting smaller. I also noticed that containers for Blue Bell and Publix (my favorite local grocery) ice cream were still the traditional one-half gallon.

This all-too-common resizing of product packaging and the contents of the product itself make it more important than ever that consumers compare unit prices (e.g., cost per ounce) to insure they aren’t being unnecessarily shorted.

The more I focused on this little corporate trick of slowly shrinking the size of a product (What company announces on the box front: “NEW Smaller Size!”?), I realized there may be some shrinkage going on in the church as well. And I am not referring to the purging of church membership rolls that some are advocating.

Do Bible-believing Americans have less influence on the culture today than we did in the 1980s? Are more and more of us sitting out the struggle to bring the “salt” and “light” of the Gospel to bear on society? Is the state of the culture reflective of many Christians’ decision to minimize their presence and silence their voice? Are we shrinking back from that which God has called to contend?

It irritates me when I discover that a box of Cocoa Krispies has mysteriously shrunk in size from 24.3 ounces to 24 ounces seemingly overnight, but I barely notice when I am gradually giving less of myself to God and His causes and more to my own promotion and pleasure. This downsizing has serious implications for our future.