Faking It Doesn't Make It
If you ever feel like the economy is tough, take heart, you could be fake-employed, like countless young workers in China who are joining "fake" companies which host "fake" employees. The workplace looks real. There are cubicles and computers, copy machines and break rooms. All the sights, sounds, and "feel" of a real office. But it's all just a facade! And for a small fee, all of these fake features can be yours. According to reports:
The rate's not too expensive; you'll pay around $5 per day to go in and pretend to do work. (What it costs you in dignity, on the other hand, is something else.)
It's not a total loss, meanwhile! The fee can sometimes include 'lunch, snacks and drinks,'and moreover fake workers can use the fake workday to 'search for jobs, or to try to launch their own start-up businesses.'
Many express that it doesn't just give them a place from which to look for "real" employment, but it provides them a place to feel like they belong, a place where they can share camaraderie with their fake workmates, a place to find social fulfillment through relationships forged with their fellow fakers at the water cooler or break room, and primarily, a place to provide them with a sense of purpose and structure.
But alas, it is all hollow. In the words of one such company's advertisement (literally called the "Pretend To Work Company") ...
Here in my company, we pretend to work. There is no activity. You are unemployed, so come to me and do what you want.
Sadly, the post-modern, post-Christian era church has all too much in common with these fake companies. Hoards of attenders gather in beautfiful structures, longing for a sense of belonging, a sense of camaraderie, social fulfillment, and above all else, a sense of purpose and structure ... but all without a geneuine comittment to the real thing.
Structure without substance. Fellowship without faith. Participation without personal comittment, without genuine profession, without power to save.
As church leaders, we are challenged to provide genuine structure AND substance where posers can be salvifically transformed into genuine believers, finding true fellowhip in the very real family of God.
As attenders, we are all challenged to ask ourselves, why are we really here?
" ... having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people" (2 Timothy 3:5, ESV).
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of impurity. / In the same way, on the outside you appear to be righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness" (Matthew 23:27-28, NIV).
"They profess to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good deed" (Titus 1:6, NIV).
"Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men" (Isaiah 29:13, NIV).
"Now the Spirit expressly states that in later times some will abandon the faith to follow deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons, / influenced by the hypocrisy of liars, whose consciences are seared with a hot iron" (1 Timothy 4:1-2)
"Work Makes Free"
Johnny V. Miller delivered the following message:
When I was a teenager, I became fascinated, appalled, and grieved by the literature of the Holocaust … One scene that haunts me is a picture from Auschwitz. Above the entryway to the concentration camp were the words, Arbeit macht frei. The same thing stood above the camp at Dachau. It means, "work makes free"—work will liberate you and give you freedom.
It was a lie—a false hope. The Nazis made the people believe hard work would equal liberation, but the promised "liberation" was horrifying suffering and even death.
Mr. Miller adds:
Arbeit macht frei. One reason that phrase haunts me is because it is the spiritual lie of this age. It is a satanic lie. It's a religious lie. It is a false hope—an impossible dream for many people in the world. They believe their good works will be great enough to outweigh their bad works, allowing them to stand before God in eternity and say, "You owe me the right to enter into your heaven."
But it's the love of God that liberates. It's the blood of Jesus Christ that liberates. He died in my place, and I am free.
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Be Perfect!
"'Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.' When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, 'Who then can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible'" (Matthew 19:24).
God issues rules and commands not because He expects that we will be able to keep them, but because it is the only way to show us how far we all fall short. When God appeals to rules and laws it is to teach us that we shouldn't rely on rules and laws.
We naturally associate faith with religion, Yet, one of the remarkable things about Jesus' ministry was that he was always at odds with those who were the most religious. That's because, more often than not, religion focuses on what we have done for God.
Jesus, on the other hand, focused on what God has done for us. He understood that religion is really about faith in one's self. Rather than trust in human effort, biblical faith trusts in the mercy and forgiveness offered to us in Christ.
Sadly, too many fail to see this. Blinded by their own pride, they end up self-righteously clinging to the rules. What these people fail to see is that God uses religion as a tool to create a dilemma that no religion can solve.
But the humble will see how they fall short and will begin to search for something more. They will turn from the hypocrisy they experienced in their own failed efforts to be good enough and search for grace.
And that's when, just beyond the condemnation of the Law, they find the mercy and acceptance of the Temple. That's when, just beyond Jesus' words “be perfect ... as your Father in Heaven is perfect,” they find a perfect Savior who goes to the cross to exchange his perfection for their sins (Matthew 5:48).
Those who go beyond religion find grace, while those who get stuck in legalistic religion remain condemned by their own failures to uphold the legalistic demands of their religion. Instead of ever saving themselves, they become trapped in the fruitless effort of trying to save themselves.