Christianity: a terrible hobby

The person of our times is almost always the dabbler. Our riches have done that to us; and we have consented to its effects like the best of the bourgeoisie before us.

Sure we do not go by titles as baron and baroness, szlachta or nobleman, but we do read their playbook, and it is a terribly hopeless approach to everything we profess.

Our gardens, our vacations, our inner and outer decor have common ideas among them, one of which is the absence of commitment; and this too is how we Christians continue to approach the most important tasks we have been given.

Rather than face the Christian life with all of the embarrassment of the artist, we strive against all Gospel accounts to be of the most respectable stock, the envy of our communities by way of our experiences and presentation.

To be a success at this however requires that a person be enough of a green thumb as the traveller filling his passport with far off places. He must be able to say ‘hello’ in five different languages rather than hold a decent conversation in one of them. He must, if we allow the enumeration to continue, be fascinated enough with everything rather than be passionate about any one of them.

And this is precisely where the modern Christian finds himself. Foolish enough to believe that he can make anything he wants out of himself, he strives to be everything, and by doing so strikes a fatal blow against the one thing that he was baptised to be.

It is sad isn’t it?

That the people for which God died and revealed more of the plan than most should take it seriously enough to care how it looks, but not so seriously as to perfect the endeavour.

The artist isn’t like that.

The artist, to the chagrin of almost all who know him, gives everything to perfect his craft. He sees the world through a lense that can only be seen by the rest of us when he has finished his opus. He sacrifices everything – everything the dabbler insists is necessary – to perfect a stroke of the pen that none of us knew was even there.

He is, in other words, convinced that the world needs what he was brought here to do; and when a Christian approaches his baptismal call like that, there really is no stopping the message.