Churches Offering Mud Pies Instead of Ocean Vacations

At my home we sometimes receive direct mail advertisements from large area churches. One received last week promoted a new "teaching series" that will start in January. Asking about the possibility that we could make choices from which we "would still be benefitting from 5 or even 10 years from now," the ad promised a "new teaching series on what it means to build a life that lasts."

Lasts. Even as much as 10 years from now. This is the message that this church has to offer?

Reading the mailer, I could not help being reminded of C.S. Lewis remarks in his address, "The Weight of Glory." Lewis was contrasting the Christian hope with secular alternatives that proved human longing to often be too short sighted, but his message nowadays would seem to strike even some Christian ministries between the eyes. Lewis said:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

There is something horribly sad about a church offering a 10 year benefit when Christ in fact offers eternal life. We are in the midst of a cultural celebration of the incarnation, when the God of glory who created all of the universe took on humanity and lived and died and rose in order to bring about forgiveness of sin, victory over death, and eternal life.

Eternal life. That is far better than a 5 or 10 year return. I think I will pass on the mud pies.