Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Don’t Give Me that Hot Tub Religion

by Dave Wilkinson

Romans 12:2, Philippians 1:12-21

January 17, 1999

According to theological tradition, the temptations we face as Christians come at us from three sources: the world, the flesh and the Devil. We know enough to be warned about the perils of the flesh and the wiles of the Devil. Those temptations stay the same. Lust now is the same as lust was a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago. That doesn't make it easier to resist but it does make it easier to recognize.

The "world" is different. Each generation has the "world" to deal with in a new form. For "World" is an atmosphere, a characteristic mood of each age. And it is nearly as hard for us to recognize the particular temptations of our culture and our time as it is for fish to discover impurities in the water. It’s just too close to us. There may be a sense that things aren't right. We know that the spiritual atmosphere erodes faith, dissipates hope and corrupts love. But it is hard to put our finger on what is wrong.

However, there is one aspect of our "world"-- the mood of our age — that we can see and identify as harmful. This is the common assumption in our fast food, drive through, 433 MHz culture that anything worthwhile can be done at once. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. We, as a people are not accustomed to "delayed gratification." Our attention spans are shaped by thirty-second commercials. This means that Christian discipleship is hard because discipleship and discipline come from the same word, and we really aren't in to discipline.

"Newsweek" writes of some Baby Boomers who return to church: "They inspect congregations as if they were restaurants. They don't convert -- they choose."

That attitude may be fine if what they are looking for is an opportunity for genuine growth. But often, that isn't what our undisciplined taste buds cry out for. J. I. Packer of Vancouver's Regent College writes:

"I was one of a crowd who spent much of a Saturday afternoon in a hot tub. My student's said 'try it; you'll like it.'

"As I sat there savoring hot tubness, cracking small jokes and adjusting to the feel of being bubbled from all angles, it struck me that the hot tub is the perfect symbol of the modern route in religion. The hot tub experience is sensuous, relaxing, floppy, laid-back: not in any way demanding, whether intellectually or otherwise, but very, very nice, even to the point of being great fun."

Packer writes: "Many today want Christianity to be like that --- happy gatherings free from care, real fun times for all ... Modern life strains us. Relationships are brittle, marriages break; families fly apart; business is a cutthroat rat-race, and those not at the top feel themselves mere cogs in another's machine. Automation and computers have made life faster and tenser, since we no longer have to do the time-consuming routine jobs over which our grandparents used to relax their minds. We have to run more quickly than any generation before us simply to stay where we are. No wonder, then, that when modern Western man turns to religion what he often wants is total tickling relaxation, the sense of being at once soothed, supported and effortlessly invigorated.

What should we say of Packer’s hot tub religion? Certainly relaxation is good. The fourth commandment shows that. Alternating hard labor with fun times is right too. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Jesus so often went to banquets, the fun times of the ancient world, that he got called glutton and drunkard. Enjoying our bodies, as opposed to despising them is part of the discipline of gratitude to our Creator. Without these "hot tub factors," as we may call them, our Christianity would be less godly and less lively, for it would be less human. But if there is not more to our Christianity than hot tub factors -- if we embrace a self-absorbed hedonism of relaxation and happy feelings, while dodging tough tasks, unpopular stances and exhausting relationships -- we fall short of biblical God-centeredness and the life to which Jesus calls us.

How can we get beyond Packer's "hot tub religion?" The best way is to follow Jesus Christ -- for he is our model, our example. Dallas Willard writes in the Spirit of the Disciplines, "if we have faith in Christ, we must believe that he knew how to live."

The first thing we can say is that Jesus "thought biblically." His mind, as we see in the way he handled the temptation in the wilderness, was shaped by the word of God. Paul says, in Romans 12:2, that the road to personal transformation is "the renewal of the mind." We’re going to look at what that means through Romans 12 -- how we follow the example of Jesus and think biblically.

Jesus’ prayed. In fact, prayer was the one thing Jesus' disciples asked Him to teach them. They watched him multiply loaves and fishes but they didn't' say "teach us to do that. They saw him raise Lazarus from the dead and didn't ask for instruction. But they did say: "teach us to pray." They saw prayer was central to His life. Jesus often went off by himself to pray. That should teach us something. If even Jesus needed to pray, we need it that much more.

Bill Hybels, pastor of the Willow Creek Church and former chaplain to the Chicago Bears, writes: "I played on a park district football team. Before our first game, I learned that I would play middle linebacker on the defensive unit. That was fine with me. My favorite professional athlete is Mike Singletary, all-pro middle linebacker for the Bears.

"I stood in my middle-linebacker position, determined to play with the same intensity and effectiveness I'd so often seen in Mike. I crouched low and stared intently at the quarterback, readying myself to explode into the middle of the action in typical Singletary style. The battle raged. And reality struck with a vengeance. Using a simple head fake, the quarterback sent me in the opposite direction of the play, and the offense gained fifteen yards.

"So went the rest of the game. By the fourth quarter I came to a brilliant conclusion: if I wanted to play like Mike Singletary, I would have to do more than try to mimic his on-the-field actions. I would have to get behind the scenes, and practice like he practiced. I would have to lift weights and run laps like he did. I would have to memorize plays and study films as he did. If I wanted his success on the field, I would have to pursue his disciplines off the field."

To follow Jesus means that we follow his entire life, including the behind-the-scenes disciplines that prepared him to shine when the pressure was on. It means we "practice the activities He practiced."

In my own experience, a prayer list like the one in the bulletin and a daily devotional like the one on the registration pad are very helpful. I sometimes use a prayer book -- to help my wandering mind.

Another form of prayer is journaling. Journaling is another way to focus our minds. Hybels writes: "I occasionally meet leaders who seem to avoid the slide into artificial Christianity. I ask what their secret is. In almost every case, they say, "journaling" --the daily process of evaluating their lives in written form.

"Now if you think I ran right out to buy a journal, you're dead wrong. I thought the idea was ridiculous. I envisioned the saints of antiquity, with fragile parchments and ink-dipped quills. People who had time for that were not like me. they didn't have my schedule, or live with my kind of pressure. Besides, blank sheets of paper scare me. I'm not the "deep" type; I haven't had an original thought in my life. What would I write?

"Well I had to admit that too often I repeated the same mistakes again and again. Too often I went to bed with regrets about my actions. Too often I made decisions inconsistent with my professed values. In a moment of honesty, I faced the fact that I was living under the tyranny of an unexamined life.

"At that time," Hybels writes, "I was chaplain for the Bears. Occasionally I'd join them while they watched films and did post game analysis. They would go over every play of the previous game so they could learn from their mistakes and not repeat them in the next game.

"Finally, I understood. The journalers were simply telling me to do postgame analysis! How could I expect to be conformed to the image of Christ without evaluating my mistakes and progress? How could I grow without examining my character, decision-making, ministry, marriage and child-rearing?

Another important key to doing what Jesus did is to stay firmly connected. The gospel says that Jesus "called twelve." He called them to teach them and to recreate His ministry in them. But above all, He called them to be with Him. Jesus was not a lone ranger. During his agony in the Garden of Gesthamane, He asked Peter, James, and John to watch with Him. He stayed connected. That should be our model.

That includes worship. The gospel says that Jesus went to worship "as was His custom." Why? Did he need it? Did Jesus ever listen to a preacher and say "I never thought of that?" I don't think so. But he stayed connected with people and he stayed connected in corporate worship.

Another characteristic of Jesus is that he served. He said "I am among you as the One who serves."

Some time back on the old Merv Griffin show, the guest was a body builder. Merv asked, "why do you develop those particular muscles?"

The body builder stepped forward and flexed a series of well-defined muscles from chest to calf. The audience applauded. "What do you use those muscles for?" Again, the guy flexed. "But what do you use those muscles for?" Merv persisted. The body builder was bewildered. He didn't have an answer except to display his well-developed frame.

This reminds us that our spiritual exercise -- Bible study, prayer, reading Christian books, listening to Christian radio and tapes -- are also for a purpose. They're meant to strengthen our ability to help build God's kingdom.

And there's a great bonus for us in actual service -- joy. If you are only going to take one thing away from this sermon, take this, Over the years I've heard people complain about a lack of genuine fellowship in churches. But I've never heard that complaint made by someone who's involved in authentic service. Service draws people together in the pursuit of common goals. That inevitably opens the door to significant relationships.

Tony Compolo, a professor and well-known Christian speaker writes in A Reasonable Faith: "Every May I can count on some student coming into my office, looking across the desk at me, and saying "Doc, I don't think I'll be coming back to school next semester."

"Trying to act professional, I'll rip off my glasses and intently ask, 'pray tell --why?' He'll bury his head in his hands and moan, 'I need time, I need time.'

"If I ask why he needs time, I can predict the answer. He'll say, I need time to find myself." Sometimes it seems as though most of the young people in the western world are trying to find themselves.

"The student almost inevitably goes on to say, "Doc, I'm tired of playing all the roles that have been prescribed for me by society. I'm tired of being the person my family expects me to be, the person the church expects me to be, the person the school expects me to be, the person my friends expect me to be. I have to come to grips with the real me."

When confronted with such a passionate tirade, I usually respond with a retort provided by Paul Tournier and say, 'fella, suppose that after you peel away each of these socially prescribed identities, after you tear away each of these socially dictated roles -- you discover you're an onion!'

Now that's a real possibility. For just as an onion is nothing more that the sum total of its skins, so it may be that the human personality is the sum total of all the roles that person has learned to play. If there was such a thing as a self waiting to be found, undoubtedly by now someone would have found it. Out of the hundreds of thousands of young people who take time off to find themselves, one of them would come back and say, "Hey, Doc, I did it. I looked and looked and finally found myself!"

But the reason this doesn't happen is that there is no such thing as a self waiting to be found. Rather than waiting to be discovered, the self is waiting to be created. And there is only one way to create a self, an identity, a meaning to one's life, and that is through commitment. Compolo writes: "Show me somebody with a clear-cut commitment and I'll show you somebody who knows who he or she is and what life is all about. I have yet to meet a person who has dedicated his or her life to Jesus Christ without reservation who lacks an identity or a purpose for being. I have yet to meet a person who has said, "for me to live is Christ, to die is gain!" who doesn't have a definite image of who he or she is. The problem," Compolo concludes, "is that most people would rather play the game of self-discovery than make a genuine commitment, for commitment -- the kind of transformation called for in Romans 12:2 -- costs everything.

A Presbyterian elder in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, got a call one night. It was not an ordinary night. Pittsburgh had undergone an ice storm. It had rained and then everything had frozen. The whole city and everything in it were covered with ice. Police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances were not on the road.

This elder got a call from his pastor. A family in the church had a little boy who had pneumonia. The youngster had suddenly taken a severe turn for the worse. They called the hospital and the hospital said, "bring him in" -- they were unwilling to send an ambulance. These people didn't have a car. They called the minister of their church asking if he would help. His car was in the repair shop some ten miles from his home -- no way for him to get it. But this Elder lived near this family, so the minister called him.

He got into his car. He passed three small accidents before he got to the house to pick up the boy. You couldn't stop for stop signs; you couldn't stop for traffic lights. You could stop only when the momentum of your car was stopped by natural things about you.

They brought the little boy down, wrapped in a blanket. The mother and the child got into the front seat, the father in the back seat, and they started off. The had several minor scrapes as they went along the road. They were going just a foot at a time. They came to the bottom of a hill and as they managed to skid to a stop, he tried to decide whether he should try to make the grade on the other side, or whether he should go to the right and down the valley. And as he was thinking about this, he chanced to look to the right and he saw the face of the little boy. The youngster's face was flushed, and his eyes wide with fever and with fear. To comfort the child, he reached over and tousled his hair. Then the little boy said to him, "Mister, are you Jesus?" Do you know in that moment he could have said "yes." for him to live was Jesus Christ.

People who piddle around with life never know moments like that. Safety first instead of Savior first. Thrift first instead of tithing first. Business first instead of blessing first.

Paul writes: "Don’t let the world squeeze you into its own mold. Instead, be transformed through the renewing of your mind. And then you will know the will of God and you will discover that that will is something that is good and acceptable and perfect."

Now that’s a future.