Dangers of Buffet Faith
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
Have you ever been to an all-you-can-eat buffet? My family loved going to them. This was probably because my mom had four kids within four years of each other! The premise is simple, right - for a flat fee, you get to eat as much food as you can stomach. The best part was that you got to pick the food you wanted. So it was always a blast when we’d look out the car window and see the big sign saying “Fresh Choice” and we’d practically cheer!
As a kid, I never built what most nutritionists would have considered a “balanced” plate. While most people had plates that at least had some greens on them, mine was filled with pizza, ice cream, and chocolate brownies. You know, the essentials! I consistently had a habit whenever I had the power to choose what I wanted, to only get what I wanted. Oftentimes I’d leave not feeling great or with an upset stomach because I didn’t accept the things I didn’t want. Whenever I was at a buffet, I would choose based on my wants, not my needs.
I’m surprised there aren’t as many buffets now. We live in a culture that seems to thrive on the philosophy of leveraging your choice so that you can have all of your wants. We build our followers and who we’re following on social media. We curate our entertainment feeds with subscriptions and algorithms that will feed us exactly what we desire. Culture customizes and synthesizes our news to give us what we want. Our culture loves to give us what we want, when we want it.
So why do we feel so sick?
The truth is we do this all the time with the Bible. We pick and choose what we want to read and avoid the parts that make us uncomfortable.
Yet Jesus says, ““Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
We even treat our churches like a buffet. Do you know how the American church was started? Broadly speaking, it was started by Protestants fleeing the conflict and persecution they were experiencing in Europe during the Reformation. Then they came to America and started to plant churches for whom?
For themselves.
We treat church like a buffet. They began churches by themselves, for themselves, and for people like them. You can see this today. Instead of finding the nearest God-honoring, Bible-believing church, people go “church shopping.” How’s the worship? Will it bring me to tears? How’s the pastor’s preaching? Is it funny or entertaining enough? Does this church fulfill all my preferences? The American church has emphasized a false sort of “discipleship” over evangelism (if it’s even possible to separate the two!) A “discipleship” that leans heavily into following the culture or rules of the institution and not the heart of Jesus.
The worst part is that we treat Jesus like a buffet! If you go to LA and say to the people there, “Hey, did you know that Jesus teaches that we should love and pray for our enemies?” The response is generally positive. “Absolutely! We should totally love everyone, the world would be so much better if everyone loved each other!” But if you add, “Also, Jesus teaches that we should maintain a sexual ethic and keep sex in a covenant relationship called marriage.” You’ll probably be cussed out. If you go to the other side of the world, you’ll get the opposite. A positive response to Jesus’ teaching on sex but a negative response to his teaching about how to treat our enemies.
The problem with treating Jesus like a buffet is that you’re not really following Jesus. Oh, you might like certain ideas that Jesus says, but you slowly start to build your version of Jesus. It’s like that scene in Talladega Nights: I like Baby Jesus best. For some, that’s the truth. You like the Christmas version of Jesus the best because he’s a baby boy who was a miracle baby. When we do this we begin to build a fake Jesus. We make Jesus in our image. We begin to follow a fake Jesus.
When you follow a fake Jesus you get fake power.
We all would prefer a Jesus who walks like us, talks like us, thinks like us, votes like us and dates like us. But that is not the Jesus we need. Only by accepting all of who Jesus is will we experience all of Jesus’ resurrection power.
Following Jesus and having authentic faith means accepting all of who Jesus is, and not just the parts we like. My challenge and encouragement for us is to surrender the fake faith we’ve built so we can follow the real Jesus we all so desperately need!
