Over the Top

Perhaps I err on the side of under-done and under reacting. That may be a product of too many emergency runs as a firefighter and emergency medical technician. It takes a lot to get me excited. Having a slew of kids probably didn’t help. (Hence the title of my first book, “You Can’t Scare Me, I Have Kids.)

But it seems to me, we, culturally, generally tend toward “Over.” By that I mean we over react, over wrap, over protect, over legislate, over talk, over think, over eat, over work, over schedule, and many times, over do. There have been times that I have met Christians who were “Over-Saved.” If you don’t know what I mean, Look at this video. We, generally, are completely over the top. Thoughtful moderation doesn’t seem to make sense to us. Our political parties are over the top in one direction or the other; unable to find any middle ground. We hover over the top of our children, stunting their emotional and spiritual growth, in paranoia induced protectiveness. We have nonstop news available to us – 24/7. Talk radio goes on and on and on every day throwing fuel on the fires of the things that divide us. We dissect every word every politician utters to find something to accuse them of. If anything negative happens we turn toward Washington and demand our legislators do something to fix it and make sure nothing like it ever happens again. They respond by over-legislating and basically making matters worse. (One of the three greatest lies – I’m from the government and I’m here to help.) Over reaction has become the norm.

This blog was motivated by a package I received a couple of days ago. Take a look at the picture of the Bible software, and the packaging it came in, I recently ordered. The software is the single compact disk resting on top of all the packaging used to deliver it to me. What is that all about? All of that packaging and all I got was the disk. No manual. No instruction book. No advertising; just a disk. Maybe since it cost almost $80, the supplier wanted me to feel like I was getting my money's worth. Thus, the big boxes and that tool of the devil, shrink wrap. They didn't use all of that packaging to protect the product. It is extremely difficult to damage a CD. The packaging was for show; to make me feel better. And all it really accomplished was to irritate me. It was just more stuff to dig through to get to what I wanted.

As I look at and study the church, I wonder where and how we have gone over the top on this whole church thing. How much of what we do is just packaging that people have to dig through to find God? Have we wrapped the message of Jesus in so much of our pride, prejudice, confusion, comfort, traditions, doctrines, rules and regulations that the amazing truth that God loves us and has shown himself and made himself available to us through his Son, Jesus, has become unattainable? And have insisted on packaging the gospel message in a plain, brown wrapper? We seem to have the theory that if what we are doing is exciting, fun, attractive and engaging, it must not be truly Christian. Often we seem to insist on wrapping it in the same wrapping as when it came to us? Any attempt to modernize, update or incorporate new methods is unholy.

My favorite unholy thing most churches now do and use to share the gospel is to use a video camera and show videos in worship. I hear comments from long time church members, like myself, that sound something like this. “I’ll never go to a church that uses a video in worship. It is unholy. It is just wrong. What are we trying to do, entertain people?” My thought is: Entertain them? Lord, no! We seem to be dead set on boring people to death. Entertain them? Heavens no. Let’s make them suffer and work to hear God’s word and come to know Christ. We certainly aren’t going to make the word easily understood and packaged in a way that is normal and even vibrant to them. If it was good enough for my daddy, it’s good enough for them. Of course my daddy grew up in a house without electricity and drove a car without air conditioning. But when comes to church, well, that’s a different story.

We, of the church, must take a hard look at what we are doing, and what we are not doing, that may be making it difficult for the unchurched to connect with the church and hear the awesome good news of Jesus. We must.

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved