À la carte Jesus

I went to lunch with a friend the other day and he suggested we go to one of those “make your own” pizza places that are heating up (no pun intended) the lunch scene. The concept has carried over from simple sandwich shops to single serving pizza shops to build your own burger joints. Restaurants are shifting away from generic entrées and adapting to à la carte style menus, where you can create your own dining experience, tailored specifically to your tastes and preferences.

Customization is highly desirable, even expected, in our culture. We alter our houses, our closets, and our cars. We tailor our clothes to fit our bodies, we buy sandals that mold to the arch of our feet, and we sleep on mattresses that adjust to our bodies. We have a liking for things that are modified to our own preferences, tastes, and opinions. We like to pick and choose in order to have the à la carte experience.

But when did we start to also have an à la carte Jesus?

The world will tell you the idea of “Truth” with a capital “T” is something that is very much personal; We define our own values, beliefs, and ideas of right and wrong. With this logic, we've reached an epidemic of everyone is seeking truth with no one able to find it or to define it. We left it so open-ended and so individualized, that nothing holds weight outside of its beholder. In a “what floats your boat” mentality, we are left with only our own opinions and our own accountability, and if you factor in how many times you have been wrong or mistaken or failed, there is not much hope for trust in your own judgment. 

The beauty of God’s word is that it brings us the very Truth our souls so desperately crave. The Truth with a capital “T” kinda stuff. 2^nd Samuel 22:31 tells us, “God's way is perfect. All the LORD's promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection.”

Perfect.

God’s way is perfect.

All His promises are proven true.

But despite the irrefutable, undeniable perfection and sovereignty of God and the flawed and crooked nature of our ways, we opt for the à la carte option; we tailor God to us instead of us to God.

It’s a contradiction. We come to know perfection, God himself.  The very One who died so we may live. But we don’t accept all of him.  But we don’t accept all of Him. We remove bits and pieces of His Truth and replace them with our desires and compromises. We choose fun times, hazy memories, tempting options, and slippery slopes because after all, God loves us and He forgives. He will forgive our bad decisions and all will be well. He’s got to expect us to fail at some point anyway, right?

Stressed?

Late Friday afternoon I was driving to meet with my coach and my head just started pounding. It had been a rough few weeks and I was exhausted, and my throbbing migraine was yet another reminder of the accumulated stress. It was that feeling where you no longer have words and you just want a time out.

I've never been stressed like this. A lot of things had come together, all creating a perfect storm of stress, and led to me stressing about not stressing about the stress that was stressing me out. Did you follow that?

As I made the drive and was woken by the sudden breaking of 5 p.m. post work commuters, for a brief moment, it was a feeling of defeat. That's it life, you win, I'm out. But before I surrendered to life's trivial trauma, the lightbulb went off: "have you prayed about it as much as you've stressed about it?"

There it was.

And the answer was probably not.

Okay, no. I didn't.

I was trying so hard to manage that I forgot the very essence of what makes all things possible.

Life's stresses are not unique to me or you. They're an every day, every person reality. Things happen. My particular stresses were a combination of a few things, with the major being going to the doctor and hearing bad news. When a doctor says this is bad, you know it's bad. I'm a sick person, and I am still learning how to deal with it, how to balance and how to take care of myself.

But, what I so foolishly forget is that I actually don't have to be figuring this all out on my own.