Second-hand God

We live in a world of experts. When we need our car fixed we take it to a mechanic. When we need toilet installed we call a plumber. When we need to cook a roast we look to the Food Network stars. I believe this has infiltrated the church and our people too often turn to “God-experts” to get their problems solved instead of going to God Himself. We have become a consumerist society that would rather have someone else do the work for us than spend the time learning to do it ourselves.
Just take a walk through any Christian bookstore and even some of the other bookstores and you will see rows and rows of book written by men and women telling us something about God or something about how we should live our lives to be more successful, blessed, and just plain more spiritual. Now don’t get me wrong, I think there is value in reading books, I have a rapidly growing library myself, but I do think that these countless books often make the problem worse. Stay with me.
The danger in having and relying on “God-experts” is that we live vicariously through them. We rely on them and get our only spiritual food from them second-hand. There is nothing wrong with listening to sermons, reading books, attending seminars, etc. I do it myself and I learn a lot through them. The problem comes when we rely on them for our only source of spiritual food. My pastor is a great theologian. In his sermons he does an excellent job of teaching the truth of God’s Word. If I were to rely on his sermons alone and in effect get my knowledge of God second-hand and I would be lacking. I would not truly know the word of God but rather only what PJ says about the word of God. Are you tracking? As Christians our responsibility is to dive deep into the word of God ourselves.
If I want to lose 20 pounds it would seem silly for me to stand outside 24 hour fitness and look through the windows at the people exercising and never go in. Or what if I stood by the door and asked people what it was like when the exited? I would likely hear responses about how they feel better, have more energy, have lowered their cholesterol and blood pressure. But does any of that do me any good if I don’t enter in myself and climb on the elliptical? NO! People we need to stop doing that very same thing with our faith. We need to stop living through others and start putting the effort into learning ourselves.
I will leave you with these two thoughts. “If crisis were to hit your life today, would your knowledge of God be found to be too thin?” and “Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The way to God is vigorous and requires total attention.”