It has been a while since I was last able to write to my blog. Life, family, and church has kept me pretty busy the last couple of months. I have had the privilege over the last few weeks to participate in a training session for newly graduated Theology students (soon to be pastors) from my Alma Mater, Southwestern Adventist University. My church hosted them as they learned, hands on, to do evangelism. It has been a wonderful experience for me and my church. While I’m sure they have learned a lot in their field school classes, I continue to learn as well. As I sat in some of their training classes, accompanied them as they visited with people, or listened to them preach, I remembered when I was in their position and felt the excitement, and the apprehension, of entering ministry.
One day, a couple of weeks ago, I was out with one of the students doing visitations when we stopped briefly to get rehydrated. As we considered the moderate offerings of the gas station, a bottle grabbed the attention of the student. It was a unique bottling concept for ice tea. It had a small separate container at the top which contained the tea. The idea was that after opening the bottle you twist the container which would dispense the concentrated tea into the purified water below. After a good shake, the tea was ready to drink. The uniqueness of the tea and its delivery system intrigued him, so he bought it.
He was excited by the potential of this novel drink. The design of the tea’s packaging, as well as the writing on it, promised a fresh, distinctive tea experience. He followed the instructions and watched with a smile as the caramel color of the tea mixed with the water. So far it was just as great as the bottle advertised. Then he drank some. I asked him how it was. “Eh.” It wasn’t anything special. In fact, according to him, at best it tasted like watered down tea. Definitely not what he was expecting.
We marveled at how much thought had gone into the design, while seeming little had gone into the taste. While the bottle and the concept looked great, there was no flavor.
As we talked about it more, we soon wondered how much this product could parallel our Christian experience. Could it be possible that we could put more thought into our presentation than we do for its content? Could we work hard to present beautiful churches, exciting music, and unique ministries, yet have no substance—no flavor? Not only is this possible, it was prophesied by Paul:
“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:1–5, emphasis mine).
Sadly, this passage is not describing the moral decay of society in general, since it describes people who have a “form of godliness.” It is speaking of those claiming to be God’s people—this is about Christians. In other words, Paul warns that in end times there will be Christians who work hard to advertise godliness, while in reality, they have no spiritual substance. He warns that, in these last days, some Christians will become all design and no flavor.
How does this happen? In Romans 1, Paul gives a similar description of people and says they become this way because “they did not see fit to acknowledge God” (Romans 1:28). Another way of saying this, is that they didn’t think it was worth it to to have God in their knowledge. (The Greek word for “knowledge” in this passage refers a knowledge through experience. Therefore, they didn’t want God in their experiences.) A few verses earlier, he describes the actions of these people: “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).
I mention this passage because I believe that we will become the people described in Romans 1 and 2 Timothy 3 when we stop having a relationship with God. If we put the appearance of our ministries, our churches, or our “Christianity” ahead of truly knowing our God, we might present “a form of godliness” but we are rejecting its power. Because all of our beautiful buildings, trendy ministries, and beloved doctrines are worthless outside of a relationship with Christ. Honestly, claiming to be a Christian without having a personal relationship with God is false advertising.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want these passages to be a reflection of my life. So I want to worry less about having the most unique “packaging” in Christianity and to be the most original in my ideas, and focus more on truly knowing my God. I want God to be in my experiences; I want to know Him. Because it is our experiences of, and with, Jesus that puts the substance—the flavor—into our church services, our ministries, and our witness. It is our experience of Jesus that adds power and hope to our lives.
“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3, emphasis mine).