hardback or hard look

I was just wanting to buy a book, not intending to make any statements or seek any answers to the mysteries of modern capitalism but it seems as though destiny had it’s way… I simply went in to a bookstore to find a book by a popular Christian philosopher. It seemed like minutes but after an hour of being lost in all those titles I wanted to walk out with about ten books. Then my loyalty took over and I went to the Christian bookstore about a half a mile away and l couldn’t find the book. They didn’t know the author since he wasn’t a pop-culture icon, and they could get the book in five days. So I ended up using the bathroom. Re-affirmed in the fact of my disdain for the “Christian culture” and my own conviction of the contributions I make to the problem.

The problem isn’t that a chain bookstore has a greater selection of the deeper and more intellectual works of Christendom than the local Christian bookstore, it’s that as a pastor I have contributed to the consumer appetite that says; fresh and easy is better to read than deep and heart wrenching. Too many programs that say, “if you attend you are a disciple”, and too many distractions to keep us from hearing what God has to say to us. All of those spiritually mature people that I speak to are looking for something more, more meaty. John Wimber said it best, “the meat is in the street”. Disciples are those that are like their master, to do in imitation what our master did, is a sign of spiritual maturity, do it enough and the master’s practice’s become your own. What did the master do? He prayed, read scripture, walked with people, invested in them, healed the sick, loved the outcast, touched the untouchable, and taught about God’s relentless pursuit for the hearts of men and women.

So I guess worse than the lack of books in a Christian bookstore maybe the greater sin was to ignore the others in the chain bookstore who where seeing the very rare occurrence of someone actually walking into the religion section. I confess, I was lost in my little world of intellectualism, not even bringing up the titles to the Buddhist, or the atheist who works there and is paid to discuss these books with me (talk about a captive audience)! So my soapbox crumbles… I have no place to stand other than these two things: first, I’ll buy online, second, when I do go back to the bookstore, I’ll ask for a divine appointment and look to see what the Father is doing. Then use the bathroom.