obese Christians

April 14, 2004

an obese Christian is one who attends all kinds of Christian events, such as fellowship outings, church events and activities, praise and worship nights, evangelical meetings, parachurch events and Sunday morning worships. each event serves their spiritual appetite, often resulting in over indulgence and finally spiritual obesity.

obese Christians are like squirrels preparing for the winter. they scurrying about from tree to tree preparing (or sometimes hoarding) acorns for the winter. while sometimes self-indulgent (squirrels may take more than they need), these squirrels have a purpose for their actions. and so do Christians. these Christian events help to strengthen and deepen our faith. and while seemingly innocent and entirely positive, there are dangers. severe dangers at that.

by constantly attending these type of events, there can be a potential that it [our faith] ends there. we forget that our purpose here is to not gather in holy huddles with other believers, but to share the greatness of the Gospel with others who have not heard or seen it. we forget that the purpose of the church is NOT for the members, but for the world. Jesus didn't come to this earth to heal the healthy, but the sick. for what reason does a healthy person need a doctor for? i think a lot of churches struggle with this. we make excuses about needing to solidify our own faith before sharing it with others. we make excuses about first developing our own community before opening it to others. we make excuses about not having enough resources, manpower, or experiences to share our faith with others. and so quite often, what ends up happening is that we all sit on our hands and do nothing. we end up becoming obese in our spirituality. and to put it bluntly, we hoard it to ourselves.

and to be quite honest, the extent by which we hoard is appalling. look at the enormous wealth of Christian material is available to us as resources. just walk into your local Christian bookstore, and you'll be utterly amazed at how many products they carry. it's ridiculous. don't get me wrong. i don't think we should go to an extreme like completely abolishing products like books, cds, etc. there are places for these types of resources. but, at the same time, if we poured the same amount of resources that we spend on ourselves, into things like missions, developing third world countries, sponsoring children, imagine the impact and difference we would make for the glory of God!

the sad reality, however, is that we rarely do that and that includes our churches. most churches reserve about 10% of their financial resources to missions. the rest of the 90% goes towards expenses like salaries, utilities, mortgages, etc. wouldn't it be incredible if that ratio was reversed? maybe i'm living in a fantasy world, but if the early church could do it, why can't we? it certainly is a model to follow, or at least aim for. the early church gave to the communities and those in need. acts 4:32-35 records that the early church believers considered their possessions to be common property with each other. there was not one needy person among them. can we say the same thing about our churches? about ourselves?

if we continually sit on our hands, what are we doing? if we love God, we love our brothers and sisters (1 john 4:21). it's as simple as that. and love, friends, is not passive. it is active. so then, what can we do? as individuals, we can actively love those around us, by praying for them, spending time with them, getting to know them, being there for them, and sharing Christ with them through the words we say, and more importantly through the things we do. as a Christian community, we can actively serve the community through a variety of things (simple things include free car washes and food). one model that we can follow is the body of believers in abbostford, british columbia. the local churches in abbostford have the vision of sharing the love of God within their city, together, as one body (see www.loveabbostford.com). what they are doing there is incredible and very encouraging.

we need to start becoming involved in our communities and knowing the issues that exist with them. if the church is not aware of these very present social issues, there is a problem. we are called to be the salt and light of the earth (matthew 5:13-16). but we must remember, that light is only apparent in darkness, not in the present of other light. the church should be a beacon of light to the world. but how can it be a beacon of light, if it doesn't know where to shine (or what to shine on)? the sad reality is the majority of local churches aren't reaching local communities because the focus is still mostly internal. think about the local churches in your city. which of them are really making a difference in your city? which of them are making the 'headlines' for their impact in the city?

so often it isn't Christian churches or groups making the headlines for their service to their local communities. it's other religions, or other groups. what does that say about them? about us?

i must admit though, as a Christian living in sub-urban richmond hill, i am very disconnected with the issues like homelessness, drug use, violence in my community and the GTA. and to be honest, i don't care much about them. it's not that i don't want to care, but a large part of the reason why i don't care is because of my ignorance. because i simply don't know what's going on around me. i'm so focused on myself, that i am oblivious to what's around me. i fall into the same sort of dangers that i've been writing about.

the second danger about spiritual obesity is that there is also a potential for us to hoard these experiences to ourselves and allow it to become me-centric. it becomes all about us, what we feel, our own personal encounter with God, our thoughts, when the whole point of these experiences is to point us towards Him, a Him-centric mentality.

sometimes i think we focus on so much on the 'building' part of ourselves that we forget just how much we can grow in serving. and, ironically, serving is probably the BEST way for us to grow, because we aren't simply caught up in theological discussions and debates, but instead, the things we know make the long journey down to our hearts. and that, is much more valuable. if we ever practiced the things we knew in our minds in our daily lives, the world would be a different place.

so what next? what can we do? we can start opening our eyes to the issues and people around us and taking our focus off ourselves. we can start serving the community after we've understood their needs. we can start praying for our communities. we can start actively living out our faith in everything that we do, for the purpose of glorifying and magnifying God in all things.

Posted by Leo Chan at April 14, 2004 12:00 AM