Walking The Ancient Path
Many people act as if their favorite two words were new and improved.
We seem to believe that newer is always better than older, that the way we do things today is superior to the way we did them in the past, and the way we do them tomorrow will be even better still.
It is true that some things work more efficiently now than they did before.
The world’s first multipurpose electronic computer was a thirty-ton monstrosity called ENIAC that consisted of some eighteen thousand vacuum tubes and miles of copper wiring.
ENIAC was created in a Pennsylvania lab in 1946, and when it was turned on, the lights of Philadelphia dimmed.
By 1971, all of ENIAC’s computing power could be squeezed onto a tiny silicon wafer the size of a postage stamp.
The ways we record and play music have changed, too. Few people today play 78-rpm records, 45-rpm singles, or 12-inch vinyl albums.
Even cassette players using magnetic tapes are on their way out, having been replaced by digital compact discs, which can cram more than an hour’s worth of music onto a platter that’s less than five inches in diameter.
Granted, our technology has improved over the years. But has human life made corresponding progress?
People still suffer illness and die. Medical science has prolonged our lives and devised new treatments for many common ailments, but life still has an ending and a beginning.
And no science known to humanity has been able to decrease the amount of greed, anger, jealousy, or cruelty in the world.
When it comes to Christianity, churches have been evolving ever since the time that Jesus’ first disciples gathered together to remember his death and resurrection.
In the twentieth century, the Pente¬costal Revival, the Charismatic Movement, the Jesus Movement, and the Seeker-Sensitive Megachurch Movement have reinvented the way people do church.
But behind all our efforts at improvement, God is an eternal, unchanging force who hasn’t changed the basics of what it means to worship him.
Older isn’t always better, but newer isn’t always better either. Before you jump on the latest religion bandwagon, stop and think.
Find out what has gone before and compare the new approach to the old. And if new proposals seem like shallow attempts to be hip or relevant, stay with the ancient paths that believers have walked for millennia.
God, you’ve been around forever. Help me to cling to the things that are truly good in your sight, and not just the things that are new.