Each Sunday we attend church services; we sing our songs and shake hands then the pastor delivers his message. As we listen to the message he begins to point out different meanings in the Scripture, different things we never saw on our own. Where did he get that from? God must reveal things to him that aren’t revealed to me.
This thought process causes us to elevate the pastor to something he is not. We start to believe he holds the secrets of the Bible – we may not necessarily describe it this way, but our behavior tells another story.
Pastors live an unfair life. People have expectations of them that go way beyond what they should. He is human like the rest of us. He makes mistakes, he is wrong sometimes, he sometimes gives bad advice – he isn’t God and he doesn’t have an inside line to God. The pastor doesn’t have anything any of the rest of us don’t or can’t have. It’s more a matter of want.
The Danger of Secondhand Faith
It’s much easier to be spoon fed our religion. To sit in church or Sunday school and be “taught” what we believe. This leads us to an inability to defend our belief. We simply are taking in what we are told without understanding it. Given that we already believe the pastor has one-up on us with God, it’s no surprise we think this way.
Where did he get the information that we are hearing? When we read our Bible, it doesn’t say all those things – or does it?
Hebrews 4:12 tells us that our Bible is not some static historical text but is “alive and active.” If it’s truly alive and active, why do we only hear the same old stories from it? We tend to focus on familiar passages and skip over more difficult ones or those that don’t seem to have much relevance. We do this because we are, in fact, seeking relevance. We read the Bible as a textbook when we should be reading it like a text message. Something that is happening right now, is important for us to know and understand and is entirely relevant to our day.
Accepting What We’re Told Isn’t the Same as Believing
When we allow ourselves to be spoon fed what we believe, we really don’t believe anything at all, we simply accept what we are told. Social media has become the platform for this – it seems if somebody posts something it becomes our truth without question. In the ‘old days’ people had jobs that were called ‘fact-checkers.’ This job was important because it prevented the news caster or speech writer from delivering a story that turned out to be untrue. It saved embarrassment, it also prevented nefarious people from controlling people’s perception.
Not so in our day, we read everything as if it’s true. We even read our Bible as if its true. It in fact is true, but we read it as if it doesn’t have anything new to tell us – this is where the problem lies.
When we choose favored texts, we also apply the meaning we learned at some time in the past to it, we don’t allow it to speak to us fresh. When we bypass harder texts without digging in to find out their meaning, we also limit our ability to understand and be spoken to.
We get our daily news from TV and social media, and we get our message from God on Sunday at church. This sounds like God only works one day per week or doesn’t have much more to tell us that we don’t already know. We are being spoon-fed what we believe, and we are eating it up like baby food. Flavorless, easy to swallow, easy to digest. We understand the saying “you are what you eat” and yet don’t see that this baby food we are eating makes us who we are – flavorless and easily digested by life.
Finding a Deeper, More Personal Faith
But is there more? How then can we be mature Christians and live a deeper, fuller, more meaningful existence? Sounds like a great spot to insert some Christian platitudes like pray, do your daily devotionals, participate in church more. While all of these are true, they leave most people empty and undirected.
How do you decide what you believe in? Most people rely on their upbringing. Added to that personal experience brings about a sense of morality that is applied to most thoughts and actions. Few people have the luxury of studying subjects that go beyond their careers, this has them relying on what others tell them, often no fact checking occurs.
A quick AI search on how people form their beliefs gives a list of things, the one I picked out was called “deconstructing.” I found this particularly interesting because I think it’s a missing piece these days. Taking what someone tells you and breaking it down into pieces. Checking the pieces to see if they make any sense or questioning if there is more or another side of the story. Good old-fashioned fact checking, but in smaller easier bites!
We need to break away from the easy path and make God’s word important enough to explore. Simply because Scripture revealed something to the pastor or teacher does not mean it finished speaking. Scripture can speak to all of us, where we are, with our level of understanding and according to our need at that moment in time. Consider why God thought to capture a particular passage and why you are reading it this day. Events that occurred thousands of years ago were captured for you, this day… when you see in this light, passages carry more meaning because they mean something to you. Not just a history lesson – a life lesson.
Your understanding of scripture is driven by your desire to know and hear from God. The effort you put into it determines the result you get out of it.