Manufactured & Mainstream

To be honest with you, I’ve been struggling a lot recently with certain situations that have come up in my daily environment. It’s as if that now that I am done focusing so much on my certification tests, I have found a new hurdle that I must learn with patient endurance to leap over, to soar over with wings as eagles, to jump over better than a conqueror would, and to land firmly planted on Solid Ground. It makes me wonder where all these obstacles come from that can either steal my joy or teach me to have faith that moves mountains.

“To great sections of the Church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the ‘program.’ This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us.” These words by A. W. Tozer back in the 1940s seem to ring so powerfully true today. They address some of the murky thoughts that have been battling in my head and heart for a while… What have we become? It bothers me that some worship pastors in mega-churches make millions while rural communities within the same state boundaries have a crumbling building; it bothers me that some overseas missionaries are glorified but we forget to plant and harvest our own fields; it bothers me that “prosperity gospel” sermons become the latest craze but can’t really satisfy the starving masses. Don’t take me wrong: I would take a raise any day! And I believe we do need missionaries to go across the nations to grow the Kingdom of God. But is this what we are restricting ourselves to? If we don’t feed our own flocks, how can we expect to continue sending out the Word?

Maybe one of my biggest struggles is that my childish, utopian idea of a Christian environment is becoming tainted a crimson red fast and furiously. Why are we not better? Why do we bicker so? Why do we not work together, trust each other, believe mountains will crumble? All along growing up I blamed my problems on certain non-Christian influences or my location. Little did I know… No. We are still fallen. We still have a sin nature. And we must battle it. Wherever God leads us. Wherever God places us.

It seems weird to think that I feel so untrusting, so un-belonging, so estranged, so disconnected…even in a “Christian” environment. I dare not say that my situation compares to that of Daniel in Babylon and Medo-Persia or Esther in the king’s court, but am I catching yet another glimpse of what it means to live as a gypsy in this temporary universe, to be in this world but not of it, and to focus on the unseen? My roommate coined a word to describe the situation I feel that I am in: it’s as if it’s all “manufactured Christianity.” But isn’t that just what mainstream Christianity has become and not my current situation only? It’s terrifying, really, when you ponder upon its ramifications upon the Kingdom of God. Are we simply missing the point?

But where do we draw the line between growth, attempts to draw the masses, keeping the focus on the cross of Jesus, and becoming successful–is there any more black and white? Where is the line in the sand? Should I really be the one drawing it?

“Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” –Jeremiah 2:11-13