Now I'm Going To Make One For Loneliness

My new favorite commercial is a cell phone service where the guy in the cubicle is making paper voodoo dolls. A woman asks him about them and he says one is for overages and one is for roaming. She says that their cell plan doesn't have roaming or overages. He is pleasantly surpised. "So they work!" he says as he looks at the dolls. She leaves. With his new found power his voice chases her, "Now I'm going to make one for loneliness."

I think this commercial taps into something very serious. When something happens, good or bad, we often run that result through a pre-existing filter for explanation. This voodoo doll guy never had the option of believing the causation of the good phone plan had to do with anything but his paper voodoo dolls. Even when the answer was right in front of his face and clearly explained. No, all he could understand was the power of the paper voodoo dolls.

So, he took that formula and appiled it to another problem he had - loneliness.

Don't we do this in church? Saddleback is purpose driven, so we get all excited about being purpose driven and get out our voodoo dolls and try to make something happen? We might be missing the real source of the power and the change.

Misapplication of formulas is not only a great cause of failure or even abuse in churches, but also a significant source of spiritual disillusionment. "What is God doing here?" is a better question than "What did God do over there?" OR "What did God do back then?"