We live in a fast-food culture. A culture where people are used to being deserving and valued consumers of other peoples' labor. We want choices, we want service with a smile, and we want it NOW!
This has cast an impression upon the Christian community as well; and we now find ourselves in a religious version of this fast-food culture.
Let’s look at one aspect of this.
Where’s My Order?!
In this religious fast-food culture people want to just drive into church, get the “practical stuff," and then take off. There is no patience, and hardly any tolerance for doctrine or meditation on Biblical truths.
A shocking number of church-goers seem to have no desire to delve into the Word themselves. The tendency is to sit back and let the pastor chew it up and spit it out for us. We aren’t interested in the content, just the application. There is a self-righteous resignation that us simple folk don’t need to (or can’t) understand the Bible for ourselves on a deep level. That’s why we pay a pastor. He can deal with the Bible and just tell us what to do. Like a high priest interceding with Scripture on our behalf.
Faithful pastors find their audiences nodding off whenever they work through doctrines or concepts, and heaven forbid they go past time. Particularly in conservative churches, this has resulted in application-heavy preaching replacing preaching through a text, and in some cases eclipsing all forms of expository preaching altogether. People want to hear their list of dos and don'ts for the week. They want their religion fast, hot, and easily digested.
This impatience and laziness results in two catastrophic problems.
The first is that without depth of personal Biblical understanding people end up pursuing a dead, performance-based religion. The insistence on just getting what is "practical" and neglecting the weightier matters of Scripture produces a society of Christians who are trying to do a bunch of good works (the practical stuff) with little or no clue as to why or how. Without a thorough foundation of gospel truth, their rule-following is aimless and pointless.
The second problem is that without personal investment there is no personal relationship being fostered with God. Without this relationship a person’s Christianity is a vain and empty thing. Activity and worship in a congregation must be the outflow of the personal and experiential relationships with God the members hold dear. Christ did not die on the cross so that we could be in a club of moderately good people. Christ died and rose again so that we might be the sons and daughters of God, and that we might know our Heavenly Father.
Under Grace,
John Fritz
John Fritz is the Volunteer Coordinator for Thoughtful Life Ministries and the primary author of the Thoughtful Life Journal, which is published weekly from March through September. The purpose of this blog is to challenge and encourage those who have a desire to cultivate a more meaningful walk with Christ. Visit our Homepage to learn more about the ministry and our annual two-week summer Discipleship Program for teens and young adults.