The year is 2016 and the Summer Olympics are being held in the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The world's greatest athletes compete, for personal victories and for national glory. Nations join together in community and contest and, for the first time in what seems like two years at least, the majority of the world seems to get along alright. Back at home, they are cheered on by loving friends, adoring fans and frenzied patriots who would love nothing more than to see the ol' "U S of A's" squash the competition. One local church (and probably several others) decided to hold an "Olympics watching party" of sorts. That sounded just fine to me. But as I discussed the subject with some friends of mine, they stated their objection to the idea. The most notable objection was the increasing pervasion of Humanism in the church. This idea struck me as odd at first, but as my friend continued to speak, his opinion began to seem much more reasonable — disturbingly so.
According to the Westminster Catechism, an important document in establishing Christian doctrine, the chief end of man is to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." According to Humanist philosophy, the chief end of man is the happiness of man; our highest goal is to make ourselves happy. And so we see the modern church, an organization growing more and more obsessed with making church "fun." Church becomes a show, musicians become performers and the pastor becomes nothing more than a motivational speaker who's out to make us feel better about our sad little lives. The church becomes a platform we use to entertain ourselves with man-centered festivals, be it the Olympics or the Super Bowl. Services become geared not towards the glorification of God, but the invitation and inspiration of new members. At least two churches I've visited recently offer a "free gift" if it is your first time as a visitor. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with gifting visitors; it just seems like we're trying to bribe people to come to our churches. There's a fine line between leading people to God and leading people to church.
Honestly, this article is not about whether or not a church should hold an Olympics watching party or not. This could be applied to just about any non-spiritual function. We wanna get together at church and watch "Winnie the Pooh?"Honestly, the same idea. The idea of this "party" is just a platform from hosting this conversation. Holding a church function for the sake of our entertainment is never really a good thing. And that's the danger of the persistent Humanist principle.
Now, there are some good ideas at play here... but that's a discussion for next week.
