I have found myself asking this question recently: Is a series of 20 minute get togethers enough to be able to know someone? It may even be the same 20 minute setting every week, but if it’s online, and because of the way we ‘feel’ about the video or podcast, are we really that much closer to what that person is like during the other 23+ hours of the day?
When you were young, and maybe you still are, you deliberately took as much time as possible, over a long period, to get to know the love of your life. If you relied on the same 20 minutes, once a week, at the same time, do you think that would give you enough information to decide if you wanted to marry, and spend the rest of your life together? Not to mention commit yourself to all the financial and emotional needs?
The internet is a minefield, and I’m sure you already know that. But how seriously do we take some things that are said there, especially when they are said with some authority and conviction? I have learned recently, that a short 20 minute sermon is not enough to form a correct and accurate opinion of someone, and even more so if that time is pulled down from an untrusted website.
Like it or not, we can all crave a Godly figurehead that we can respect and look up to. We want to believe them when they preach, but does that short window give us enough time to throw our lot in with them, perhaps calling them our ‘example’, ‘mentor’, ‘teacher’, or even ‘Pastor’? There are many self proclaimed Bible preachers on TV and the internet who command a large following, and for many it’s all down to the 20 minute sermons they preach.
Some followers don’t even live in the same country as their leaders. So, when your life is falling apart and you need a counsellor, can you ask them to drop in and pray? If a loved one is at death’s door, who will be there with you to comfort? If you want your baby to be dedicated, will your distant ‘Pastor’ perform that sacrament for you? Marry you? Bury you? Who do you fellowship with, and who do you give your tithe and offering to? And the list goes on.
It concerns me greatly that some very well educated, clever Christians are sucked into the ‘online church’ because it tickles their ears with what they want to hear, at least for 20 minutes a time. Is that really what is intended in Hebrews 10:24-25 by “ And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”?
No comments:
Post a Comment