It’s awesome to watch babies and small children at Christmas and birthdays–especially when it’s their first one. It’s fun to watch them, because they just don’t get it.
Everybody sings and cheers and smiles and laughs around them, and they just look wide-eyed, with a puzzled confused look on their face.
You buy them toys, and wrap the toys as presents. Babies don’t know what to do with presents yet, so you have to tear the wrapping off for them. The baby gets excited and distracted when he/she sees the new toy, plays with it for a bit…
…and then plops down and plays with the wrapping paper and the box.
When I look at the culture of the church of today, it sort of reminds me of that. Not that I’m calling everyone babies or anything (although if the footy fits…).
🙂
No, what I mean is that in so many ways, we seem to be more concerned with the wrapping paper than what is inside the package.
Here’s an example of what I mean. There’s this mega-church (one of many in my town) that I drive by almost every day. On either side of the campus’ main entrance from the street, the iron fencing slants inward toward the building, resembling an open gate. And as you drive by, the first things that catch your eye are these professionally made vinyl banners with elaborate graphics that are hanging on the fence on both sides of the entrance-way. They look almost like mini-billboards. The banners change every few weeks or so…because they are advertising the Wednesday and Sunday sermon series for the month. That’s right; a brand-new big vinyl sign every time the topic changes, with a catchy, hip name that is certain to make you curious. One for the midweek teaching, and one for the weekend series. On both sides of the entrance, so you can see it clearly traveling in either direction. Probably hundreds of dollars spent every time there is a new series. And yet, somehow you know that if you as a Christian were to go in and listen to the sermon, that catchy title is probably just a new spin on a topic you’ve heard many times before. It’s all about the wrapping.
Another way this plays out, I think, is just in the multitude of expressions of Christianity we have now. So many of them, and so varied, that sometimes it’s hard to conceive that all of this is actually just one church, the Body of Christ. Some churches like it loud, some like it soft; some like choruses, others prefer the old hymns (and many churches now offer separate services for both, to catch both crowds). And of course, there are theological differences among the churches that are nearly impossible to keep up with; and while some of those theological differences are more significant than others…for the vast majority of churches, the foundational belief is still in Christ, which means at heart we are more alike than we are different. But we are so concerned with the peripherals that we will only go to this church here, and we simply cannot have anything to do with “that” kind of church over there–although we know we are all trying to follow Christ! Of course, the consumerist mentality we’ve adopted complicates things even further, because we are programmed to pick and choose our favorite flavor of Christianity, or choose a church based on what we get out of it.
If you think about it…if the center of our faith is Christ, and we have that in common with one another…why is there so much flap about this other stuff? Because with us, it’s all about the wrapping. We’re simply not as concerned with what’s inside the box as we are with how the box is wrapped.
As an unfortunate result…sometimes there is stuff in the box that gets past us. Sometimes we ought to be more concerned with what is actually in the box–or not in the box, as the case might be.
You see, when we are so focused on the packaging and the box, rather than what is in the box–when we are more concerned with style than substance–at some point, people begin to realize the box is empty, that whatever we thought we had in there, isn’t there anymore, or maybe wasn’t really there to begin with. It basically amounts to false advertising at that point. And I think this happens for two basic reasons:
First…when we focus on the wrapping and the box, we get overconfident in our particular picture of God. When we get too proud of our packaging, we start acting and thinking like we have God figured out, that our particular interpretation of Scripture is “it.” In essence, this kind of thinking is an attempt to box God into our parameters. But, if I can complicate the analogy just a bit–God is not contained in our box. He is far too infinite for that, and none of us finite humans can get our minds fully around Him. I have often expressed this in the form of a little tongue-in-cheek riddle:
Q: What do you get when you try to put God in a box?
A: An empty box.
So when we start thinking our box is the one that contains Him, the time will come when someone actually looks inside the box and finds that He is not there–or at least that what is in there is certainly not the whole picture.
Second…when we focus on the wrapping and the box, we get neglectful, even forgetful, of the treasure within. And in so doing, we cheapen and water down the substance of our faith. It’s another way of saying we over-market the watered-down version of Christianity when we do this. We spend so much time decorating the outside to make it appealing, that people do not even realize that there is something much deeper and richer to discover. The end result is a superficial, shallow faith; the box might as well be empty, because no one is even paying attention. As far as we are concerned, the packaging is the present.
So, what do we conclude? Well…as much as I like presents…maybe we aren’t supposed to be boxing this thing in at all. Maybe this Jesus is so glorious in His own right that we don’t really need to box Him up and decorate Him with our favorite color of wrapping paper to make Him look more attractive (what a silly thought that is). Maybe if we’d turn our focus back to the substance of our faith, which is Christ, and simply be Christ-followers in front of people, we’d find that Jesus never really needed us to advertise Him–only to lift Him up within our lives. Maybe if we did this, the world would re-discover the true church that has been hidden within the walls–and the light would come out from under the bushels. Maybe we’d discover we are not many churches, but one Body–because the same Light would shine from all of us.
Maybe we’ve been missing the point. Maybe we would do well to leave these beautifully wrapped empty boxes behind.
Wayward Son
Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo.
I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.
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This metaphor is excellent, and what I appreciate most is your consistent reference to the one Body. I have been trying to speak concerning this in my city with pastors and ministry leaders for years and very few respond. One even suggested I go start my own church, then I could teach to the people that want to hear what I have to say. He obviously didn’t get the point.
This mentality of oneness may get you labelled an “idealist” or “antiquated.” If so, you have company in Kansas. Paul taught there is one body, one Lord and that we are to strive for the unity of the Spirit, speaking with one voice from one mind. You are so right that it is this testimony the world needs to see – not another new vinyl banner.
Douglas,
I’ve lived in many places, and the town I live in now, while supposedly a beacon for Christianity, honestly has one of the most fragmented church cultures I have seen. It is nearly impossible to get larger numbers of churches (specifically church leaders) to work together–not just because of their theological differences but because they compete for numbers and distrust one another. In my view, the whole setup misses the point. 🙂