Bumper-Sticker Christianity

Beware: Bumper-Sticker Christianity is a danger to our spiritual health.  With the virus of Bumper-Sticker Christianity, I put my focus on what I think constitutes someone as being a good Christian, and most of the time it’s a label: “Church attender,” “S.S. teacher,” “non-smoker,” “non-drinker.”  Jesus even goes so far as to identify some positive labels like “tithing,” “praying,” and “fasting” in Luke 18:9ff.  But here’s the point: Labels don’t define who we really are on the inside.  You can be a S.S. teacher and fake it.  Does that mean you shouldn’t teach S.S.?  No.  But it does mean that your heart needs to match up with your head and your hands.  What’s on the inside needs to match up with what’s on the outside.  

I hope we have a lot of people who commit to a lifestyle of prayer and fasting.  I hope we have more people who long to cultivate an intimacy with God and grow in spiritual disciplines.  I hope we have every person who considers Owensboro Christian his or her church home to grow in their commitment to tithe.  This is a part of deepening our walk with Christ!  BUT, if we’re praying, fasting or tithing out of a confidence of our own righteousness, and we look down on everyone else, then keep your tithes.  Don’t be fake in your walk with God.  Don’t dishonor Him with empty ritual and meaningless sacrifice.  

Oh, the passion and motivation that come out of our relationship with Jesus.  When we receive His love, and we grow in His love, we are internally motivated to give our tithes and offerings, to pray and to fast.  We do it out of devotion and honor.  We are hungry for more of God’s presence!  We thirst to drink of the living water of the Spirit!  Our integrity flows out of intimacy with Christ not out of religious obligation or merely to escape judgment.  When has the threat of negative consequences ever changed moral behavior over the long haul???  I did prison ministry for two years in New Orleans, and I didn’t see a whole lot of change in moral behavior based on the threat of getting caught.  No!  We change from the inside out!

So much of this flows out of our view of God.  If we view God as “The Punisher” who is always watching us to see when we make our next mistake, we are looking for “external motivation” to control our behavior.  This is a “Willy-Wonka-and-the-Chocolate-Factory” type of god.  For those of you who’ve seen the movie, do you remember how Willy Wonka’s dad was a brutish dentist (not that all dentists are mean)?  He never let Willy have any chocolate at all.  There was no relationship that Willy had with his dad, and so he was totally externally motivated to stay away from chocolate.  What that led Willy to was sneaking around to get little pieces of chocolate every chance he could, until he finally rebelled all out and cut his ties with his dad and went to the extreme of creating his own chocolate factory.

This is the way a lot of people view God and Christianity.  God is “The Punisher” god who doesn’t want us to have any chocolate or have any fun.  At first that external motivation works a little bit, but we keep finding ourselves craving chocolate–whatever your chocolate happens to be.  And so eventually you wind up doing one of two things: (1) you either reject this view of God altogether and you just eat all the chocolate you want–which leads to a very sick and unhappy person in the long run; or (2) you accept this view of God, and you live your life in guilt, sneaking around to eat some chocolate, but coming to worship services pretending like you don’t.

What if there’s a third alternative?  What if the problem starts with our view of God as “The Punisher”?  Who can fall in love with that kind of god?  What if God is not “The Punisher” but “The Lover”?  Well, that changes everything.  If we receive this love, and we fall in love with Him, then we move from an external motivation to an internal motivation.  Then it doesn’t matter how tempting the chocolate may be, what motivates me to follow God is not an external list of rules but an internal drive of love to honor Him.  This is when I grow in my prayer life–because I want to talk with God.  This is when I grow in my spiritual disciplines of tithing and fasting–because I have received the lavish love of God, and I want to share it with Him and others.

This coming weekend at Owensboro Christian Church, we’re going to take a look at the pitfalls of Bumper-Sticker Christianity.  Don’t forget that this is the weekend to set your clocks back, and be sure to remember that our service times are changing to 8:15, 9:30, and 11 am on Sundays (Saturday nights stay the same–5:30 pm).  Bring a friend, and join us this weekend as we talk about how our outside needs to be driven by what’s on the inside.  See you then!

Rick

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You’re currently reading “Bumper-Sticker Christianity,” an entry on Rick Grover’s Weblog

Published:
October 28, 2008 / 7:30 pm
Category:
Bumper Sticker Christianity
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