21st century Western culture has produced the most sophisticated consumers in history. We know how to compare features, find the best price, and generally make well-informed decisions about the things we purchase.
Perhaps we’ve become a bit too good at consumerism. We spend a great deal of time consuming and the ‘shop and compare’ mindset permeates most of our decisions. Sadly, this applies to the search for God as well.
Rather than searching for the truth then dealing with the consequences, we tend to reverse the process in our search for the truth about God. We look at the consequences of a belief in one god or the other and then pick the one that best suits us. This approach is unique to the search for God. In no other circumstance do we look for truth in this way.
Imagine, for example, that we wanted to find out the truth about gravity. Someone may tell us that ‘gravity is a powerful force that helps us but can also do us harm if not respected. If we step off the top of a tall building, the truth about gravity will produce grave consequences for us.’ If someone else told us a slightly different truth; that ‘gravity is a benign force with nothing for us to fear. Far from harming us, gravity allows us to float through the air without fear of negative consequences.’
One may chose to believe the latter truth because the outcome of bad behavior is less traumatic. However, belief in something that is untrue does not benefit us in the end; even though it may make us feel more comfortable in the mean time. Just because someone is more comfortable with the belief that gravity makes one float, does not mean that one should step off the tops of tall buildings.
Unfortunately, this is the mistake that many of us make when searching for the truth about God. We look at different religions, philosophies, and spiritual movements and compare the impact to our lifestyles. Just like new clothes or a new car, we try them on or take them for a test drive to see if we are comfortable with them. We look at the implications to our daily behavior; will we have to change the way we currently live? Not surprisingly, we are drawn to religions or philosophies that requires us to make few changes to our currently lifestyles. If any changes are required, they are usually ones that we are quite comfortable making. We are certainly not interested in a religion that tells us that our current lifestyle in wrong. The Bible tells us why this is in John 3:19-20:
…Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, unless his deeds should be exposed.
Why do we take this approach to finding the truth about the biggest decision of our lives? Why is our search for truth on this subject so different than our search for the truth about anything else? Much of it has to do with the goal of our search. If we are searching for a way to make our daily lives better, our relationships and our jobs better; then ‘God’ simply becomes another self-help fad. ‘God’ becomes another things we’re shopping for in order to bring us happiness. ‘God’ becomes no different than that new car or bigger house that we thought would make us happy. Is it no wonder, then, that people ‘find’ and then quickly ‘lose’ God. Fads come and go.
In order to find the truth about God, we must be willing to deal with the consequences of the truth regardless of our comfort level with them. The consequences may mean a change in the way we live. They may mean that we have to stop doing things we are currently doing but, down deep, know we shouldn’t be. We may have to start doing things that we may not be comfortable with.
Until we are willing to deal with the consequences, the rules, the impact of the existence of God, then our search will be in vain. Because, until then, we are not looking for God, we are simply window shopping.