Prone to Stray
All they had to do was stay faithful. That was all God ever wanted of them. Yet, it was so easy to go to their idols. It was so easy to hoar themselves out to other gods. Why couldn’t the Israelites stay faithful? I fear that the same answer can be found in our culture today. Christianity in America has become exactly what both Ezekiel and Hosea talk of. First, Ezekiel speaks of the jewels. America is the best at displaying those jewels in which the country has come to be blessed with and we can find them quite evident on Sunday mornings. Why is it that the biggest churches are the quickest to show off their new building or flaunt their newest sound system? The answer lies in the fact that are flaunting their jewels just like the Israelites did with their land, people, and nation. It is our ability to make the religion something it is not and all the while Ezekiel cries out in trying to get both the Israelites, and possibly many Christians today’s attention. All we were asked to do is pick up our crosses; to have a child like faith. But we are so much more attentive at numbers, the best music, or the best pastor, or just merely the best current study. We stray away from our faith. We forget that Jesus is the center and everything else revolves around that. All though this may be the intent, or hope of the church, it is hard to see in the way they convey what they want to show.

Further, Hosea understands. He probably understands American culture far better then many people that live in the culture do. He understands what it is like to have a wife flaunt her to many different idols in a sexual sense. Funny how Americans, and specifically Christians, have rather high statistics when it comes to people being divorced. We have found that if we do not like where we are at we will drop it just as quickly as we picked it up.

My question is simple; and I ask the question because I don’t know how to go about answering it. I want to ask when will the church stop accepting simple complacent Christianity and trade it in for a faith that will die for what it believes? I want to ask why money is so important and pleasure is what fulfills us? I ask why I am so quickly able to worship whatever idol I am struggling in my life? Even if it is simple unbelief, but as I put anything in front of Christ I instantly have an idol. I fear the answer is that we don’t know how. The realization is that we, as far back as the Israelites, were so very prone to stray. I am not different then the nation God tried to bless only to see it walk away. I see both myself and many Christians constantly embrace faith only to turn around and then embrace an idol in the form of sex, drugs, alcohol, or even just wanting to spend time with someone we love more then spending time with the God who loves far more. Still I turn with a stomachache. Some kind of sick taste in my mouth. I am unable to answer these questions. That is when I realize that Christ died for my ability to stray. We all will end up starting with this, and hope that Christ takes over and radicalizes who we are and what we are becoming from there.
Prone to Stray 10/17/05 Curtis P. Brophy