Please understand, I don't believe my church has strayed from the gospel message. They continue to have weekends where people's lives are changed from all accounts, yet I feel I've gone back in time. There was a joke in the late 1970's, early 1980's that a good Baptist Seminary taught a great sermon consisted of three points and a joke. I guess the updated version for the twenty-first century is movie clip, motivational story, and a life application.
I wonder what the Desert Fathers would think of this approach. These people wandered into the desert of Egypt in the third century to escape persecution. They remained in the desert after the persecution ended under Constantine I because they had found God.
True, Jesus told us to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19), so maybe the hermit approach of the Desert Fathers is not the best approach, but is trying to find God in a Hollywood movie a better alternative?
Consider Romans 12:1-2: "So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." (The Message)
How does placing Hollywood front and center in each service measure against "don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking?" Doesn't placing Hollywood in a service demonstrate we have become so adjusted to twenty-first century living it doesn't faze us to place the world right in the middle of church?
I understand people coming through the doors of the modern church are looking for a bridge. I understand that in order to reach the world, you have to attract the world. But where is the line crossed between going to the world and becoming the world? Where does the pursuit of God get so muddied with our use of worldly images, those seeking don't see God anymore?
Jesus himself taught us to "seek first the kingdom of God" (Matthew 6:33). Jesus was talking about worry in this passage, but I believe that if we truly seek God's kingdom, not only will clothing and food be provided, but spiritual life as well. I simply can't believe that watching Spiderman helps me seek God.
I think the best modern example of seeking the kingdom of God was provided by Donald Miller in his book Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road*:
I’ve learned, too, that I don’t really know very much about anything. I mean, I used to have all these theories about life. I thought I had everybody figured out, even God, but I don’t. I think the woods, being away from all the clingy soot of commercialism, have taught me life is enormous, and I am very tiny in the middle of it. I feel, at times, like a droplet of water in a raging river. I know for a fact that as a grain of sand compares in size to the earth itself, I compare in size to the cosmos. I am that insignificant. And yet the chemicals in my brain that make me feel beauty when I look up at the stars, when I watch the sunset, indicate I must be here for a reason. I think I would sum it up this way: life is not a story about me, but it is being told to me, and I can be glad of that. I think that is the why of life and, in fact, the why of this ancient faith I am caught up in: to enjoy God. The stars were created to dazzle us, like a love letter; light itself is just a metaphor, something that exists outside of time, made up of what seems like nothing, infinite in its power, something that can be experienced but not understood, like God. Relationships between men and women indicate something of the nature of God—that He is relational, that He feels love and loss. It’s all metaphor, and the story is about us; it’s about all of us who God made, and God Himself, just enjoying each other. It strikes me how far the commercials are from this reality, how deadly they are, perhaps. Months ago I would have told you life was about doing, about jumping through religious hoops, about impressing other people, and my actions would have told you this is done by buying possessions or keeping a good image or going to church. I don’t believe that anymore. I think we are supposed to stand in deserts and marvel at how the sun rises. I think we are supposed to love our friends and introduce people to the story, to the peaceful, calming why of life. I think life is spirituality.So go, find your group of people to learn to love, and hope they learn to love you in return. Share the story with them, let them understand life is spirituality. Help heal the pains and hurts of people who have been turned off by commercialism, especially commercialism in Christianity. Let them understand the beauty of God, the purpose of man, is relationships. Jesus came to restore our relationship with God so we can enjoy Him again. I don't think Hollywood will ever be able to show me that.
If I could, if it would be responsible, I would live in these woods forever: I would let my beard grow, hunt my own food, chart the stars, and write poems about mountains. But I know these days are passing. This morning I made a call to Colorado, and the camp out there offered me a job. I will be leaving Oregon in a week, leaving behind Paul, Henry, and the boys. Leaving behind the meadow. I start wondering if, when I leave this place, when I leave all these guys who don’t share my faith, when I leave these militant women always complaining about men, when I leave the starlight above the mountains, if I will go back to my old faith habits, jumping through hoops, trying to please God or, worse, subscribing to self-help formulas and calling it faith. I hope not. I hope I never lose this perspective. Walking through the meadow on the way over to see Paul, I promise myself if I ever get frustrated with life again, if I ever get into river-deep debt, I will sell it all and move out into the woods, find some people who aren’t like me and learn to love them, and do something even harder, let them love me, receive the love of somebody who doesn’t share my faith system, who doesn’t agree with me about everything, and I will sleep beneath the stars and whisper thank you to the Creator of the universe, as a way of reacquainting myself to an old friend, a friend who says you don’t have to be smart or good-looking or religious or anything; you just have to cling to Him, love Him, need Him, listen to His story.
*Donald Miller: Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, TN, 2005, pp. 244-246
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