Plastic

Sometimes I wonder about the solidity of our beliefs and the hold we have on our faith.  I have seen people who will seem solid and passionate about being in church, interacting with God's people and worshiping "in Spirit and truth."  In a few months they will cease being faithful and will be clearly drifting away.  I wonder about the change.  Maybe a sermon didn't strike them the right way.  Maybe someone said something that they took in a negative way.  Maybe they found something better to do with their time.  People often remind me of our cat.  She can seem shy and stand-offish but that dissolves in an instant when someone scratches her behind the ears.  Cats, and people, are fickle.

Paul was talking to Timothy and he observed this trait of people and made a prediction.  He said, "the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires (2 Timothy 4:2-4)."  Michael Card writes that we have a tendency to create god in our image ... forgetting that God is God.  To Moses God says,  "I am the God that is real." When we create a God we can fit into our little package, we end up with a plastic god ... an idol that is arguably worse than the idols of the Old Testament.  Because we supplant the real God with "our god" and claim they are the same.  This is taking God's name in vain in the very worst way.

Our world gives us a plastic god and a plastic Jesus.  The real Jesus is assuredly not amused and not altered by our false beliefs.  People want a god that meets their standards.  The real God does not bow to the standards of any man, any denomination and any nation.  Isaiah calls God, "He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, (He) who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in."  I don't know about you, but I need a God who is greater, stronger, higher than even my imagination.  Not a plastic god that I can carry around in my pocket.

Randy