I have to be honest. I didn’t know what in the world this guy was talking about.
I’m usually able to get a good sense of what a person bases
their beliefs on by asking good clarifying questions and listening closely for
a few minutes , more or less. Not so
with “Buddha” as he called himself. I
had reached out to him at a park to initiate what I hoped would be a Gospel-centered
conversation. What I finally concluded
was that he believes in anything and everything, except Christianity.
Buddha tended to speak in vague, religious-sounding terms to
describe his beliefs, but before I could ask the meaning of any of them he
would flit into another line of thought.
He had grown up heavily involved as a Catholic, but seems to have become
enamored with all the latest sensational stories and conspiracy theories on the
history channel and YouTube. I can
hardly blame him, because compared to the eye-candy of the internet, the Bible
can seem slow moving and predictable in contrast.
In Galatians 1:7 Paul wrote about some of these distracting
voices in his day – “Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and
are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.”
Whether for the sake of some sort of financial gain or outright spiritual
warfare, there are plenty of wolves and false teachers out there trying to distract
us from our main source of clear truth and direction.
I struggle with the same problem, to a lesser extent. If I try to do my daily Bible reading
discipline on an online Bible, the temptation is to take what too often turns
out to be extended breaks - surfing the internet, watching a trending video, or
otherwise looking for some juicy tidbit of information to feed my confirmation bias
and boost my ego. The Bible, on the
other hand, often tells me things I don’t want to hear, or challenges me to
make changes I don’t want to make.
Reading the Bible requires discipline and intentionality. I find I need to read it from a hard-copy
book rather than a screen in order to keep from getting distracted. Lately I’ve been discovering the benefits of
listening to an audio version of the Bible, often while exercising or doing
menial tasks, and I often like to set the playback on chapter loop mode and
listen many times over as a way to meditate on God’s Word.
I’d like to say I always feel highly motivated to sit down
and take in God’s word, but I often don’t.
With all the distractions out there, it can be especially hard to get
started. But I’m almost always glad I
did. After the familiarity of reading
the Bible over and over set in over the years, for me probably the greatest
motivator is to be able to have a fresh word or insight to share with others, especially
for someone like Buddha who is can be very distracted and confused by all the
competing media voices trying to get and keep his attention. But in doing so I’m
also feeding myself, getting that important reminder, that new insight, or that
fresh revelation that only God’s living word can give.
Thanks Buddha, for allowing me to record our
conversation. It can be seen HERE at https://youtu.be/dENN6TjiiwY
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