AMY LARSON
Staff Writer
If your church youth group was anything like mine, you remember the nights when some of the kids got up and did skits. I always felt bad for them because the skit never really flowed, and there was always that one student that had no idea when it was his turn to speak — it seemed like anything that could go wrong did.
Because of all the improvisation from forgotten lines and broken props, I was usually distracted enough to miss what the skit was actually about. There was one particular skit that stuck in my mind, though. It began with these two boys trying to figure out their identities and visiting different places in their search.
First, the boys visited a chicken coop, clucked, flapped their “wings” and decided they were chickens — they stepped inside a garage, made some car sounds and decided they were automobiles. In each of their locations, another character would come and remind them that, though they were in a chicken coop (or wherever), it did not make them chickens. Finally, the two boys came to a church and decided to go in — once inside, they went through the same motions as everyone else in the church — shaking hands, bowing heads, flipping pages and so on. The boys found out that simply being in a church did not make them Christians.
I loved this skit because it reminded me that my own walk with God was not based on my Sunday morning attendance or how many times I showed up for morning quiet time that week — it was so much more than these simple acts.
I believe God is pleased when we go to church and read our Bibles, but sometimes it seems like we try to do all these things to assure ourselves that God approves of us — we just want to put checkmarks in boxes on our to-do lists. We feel like maybe if we do enough, we’ll be deserving of God’s love, grace, and blessings — but part of the beauty of those things is that they are gifts given to us solely because God cares for us so deeply. Our formulas do not impress God, because God is just not a formula God — He wants a relationship. Our walk with Him has less to do with how many times we attend Sunday school and more to do with the way we treat others, the things we choose to say and do and the places we go.
At Pepperdine, and throughout our lives, it is important for us to remember that being a part of a certain group does not make us Christian. I have seen people be incredibly kind on Sunday morning only to be a completely different person on Monday. I, too, have been guilty of this.
A relationship with Christ, like any relationship, takes effort on our part. If I stopped spending time with my best friend, she would not be my best friend anymore, and the same is true with Christ — if I simply go through the motions of being a Christian without my heart being in it, my relationship with Christ will deteriorate. Just because we go to church does not mean we have a relationship with Christ. We must examine our hearts. Church is great and it helps us grow, but the definition of “Christian” has less to do with church and more to do with love.
10-06-2006