The Cult of Haste
\nCopyright by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved <\/p>\n
The speed of contemporary culture has had a deep influence on the Church. In a profound sense most Westerners are caught in an ever increasing quest to have as much as possible as soon as possible. It is reflected most clearly in our love affair with technology. From the microwave oven to e-mail we have sought to erase the need for time. Everything must be now, everything must be instantaneous. The rhythm of life has become a staccato. Befitting our identity as the original \u201cinstant gratification\u201d society we have made a virtue out of impatience.<\/p>\n
This cultural ethos has penetrated the Church most obviously in the tendency for Western believers to expect spiritual growth overnight. From a biblical perspective discipling and sanctification do not appear to be processes operating at a high rate of speed. A good argument can be made that salvation is an instantaneous event but nothing in the word of God hints at spiritual maturity being gained that way. No one becomes a perfected saint without grace and truth being moderated by time. Paul knew this; more importantly Jesus knew this. In the haste we Christians share with our secular fellow travelers we have forgotten that the Inventor of time has not, even with the advent of human technological innovation, ceased to use it. There are no \u201c10 Easy Steps to Spiritual Maturity\u201d. God never intended the journey to be easy\u2026or short.<\/p>\n
Many believers today are caught in a cycle of frustration. This is because we often hear messages that imply two things. The first is that we are not where we should be. In and of itself this is not necessarily a bad thing to be told. There is always room for growth and change in our walk with God. But it is also true that we cannot arrive at perfection, at least experientially, in this life. That must wait until we are face to face with our Lord. The problem is that, all too often, the tone of the \u201cwe are not where we need to be\u201d sermon communicates not only that are we not where we should be, but that we should be approaching panic because of it. Grace to grow at our own pace, which perhaps might be God\u2019s pace, is not part of the message.<\/p>\n
The second implication in these messages is that we can accelerate our growth if we take whatever the approach of the teacher happens to be. In fact sometimes the not so subtle inference is that we can reach whatever the spiritual goal of the moment is immediately if we simply repent of our lack of faith. The problem, we are told, is that we do not believe God can do it in a moment if we just confidently expect Him to. This message is very dangerous. Why? Because God does not expect us to grow faster than He designed us to be intrinsically capable of growing. It is analogous to Him expecting a Giant Redwood tree sapling to grow to its mature height of 200 feet overnight rather than over hundreds of years. God does not hold the sapling accountable to do that, in fact it is a safe assumption that the thought never entered His mind. Why would it when He, in divine wisdom, created the tree to grow at a much slower speed?<\/p>\n
Both these messages are influenced less by Scripture than by how much we have unconsciously embraced the values of our secular culture. We want spiritual growth and we want it now, just as we want money, pleasure, respect and any number of other things now. The amount of lottery tickets Christians buy is mute testimony to this fact. What we are setting ourselves up for is frustration and disappointment. The sad thing is that people who claim to know God, and I include myself here, should know better. <\/p>\n
There is an answer and it involves a different kind of repentance. Western Christians can decide to opt out of the manic pace of a macro-culture that they are supposed to be in but not of. Admittedly we cannot all become Luddites and buy a farm in the country. In fact nowhere in the Bible is their some kind of blanket condemnation of technology. God has gifted the crown of His creation with the ability to invent, to create instrumentalities that can improve the quality of life. But He has also warned us not to depend too greatly on the works of our hands or, for that matter, to let them define the pace of our lives.<\/p>\n
We need to intentionally cultivate a counter-cultural resistance to speed for the sake of speed. We can start by giving ourselves the grace to grow at the pace our Lord ordained us to rather than what others tell us it should be. Those in our midst who have baptized and hung a cross around hyperactivity should be actively challenged to rethink their approach to the Christian life. Voices need to be raised in affirmation of God\u2019s sovereignty over time and against attempts to speed up sanctification according to human timetables rather than His. Finally, in prayer, we can to take a surgeon\u2019s knife to our daily lives and cut out that which is wedded to the Cult of Haste. This may result in a lowered standard of living for some as they purposely seek to do less and live more attuned to God\u2019s perspective on time but it can liberate them from a life lived out of step with Jesus Christ. The result of this kind of change will be a blessed collective sigh of relief from a church that has been unnecessarily pressured into ungodly haste. We will lose nothing but the self-inflicted misery that comes from trying to live up to the expectations of men, rather than God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Cult of Haste Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved The speed of contemporary culture has had a deep influence on the Church. In a profound sense most Westerners are caught in an ever increasing quest to have as much as possible as soon as possible. It is reflected most clearly in our love… <\/p>\n