Cotton Candy Preachers

I love Chris Farley's SNL sketches! One of my favorites is the motivational speaker, and yes, i know lots of people like that one. But my favorite of those is the one not as many people know- Spanish Matt Foley! "Hola Ninos! Me llamo Matt Foley y yo soy un motivational speaker! Yo soy trecente y cinco anos, trece divorcianos, y yo vivo un van, circa de un RIO!"

anyway, with all that said- I remember being in middle/high school- we'd gre REAL motivational speakers somtimes. And i remember a few times a few times some friends and i decided this person just HAS to be a Christian because of the outlook they portray. And often times we'd get to talk to the person afterward and discover that we were right!

So it's not uncommon for Christians to have a positive outlook on life! I try to be a positive person (although some of these blogs might often betray that desire) and I know that we truly have a reason to be hopeful, positive and have a handle on life. Well, no one really has a handle on life... but...

Anyway, I've been a little put off recently by something I'm seeming to find a lot more of in the past few year. I call it the Cotton Candy Preacher. Now, I'm not going to name anybody particular, although one of these guys has a book called "Your Best Life Now". Excuse me for saying so, but that sounds like something Matt Foley might entitle one of his motivational speeches. I'm sorry, but a title like that, even though the book may contain God in it, seems to be catering to what people want/ask for. (see Christian Crack and the Mega-Church). It seems to be Christian Crack.

The preaching of God's word needs to be something applicable. I cannot tell you how indecipherable it is to listen to a preacher go on about some aspect of theology that they think we need to believe in, but has nothing to do with today's faith! Theology is relevant- because we must know what we believe, and whether we believe in say- free will vs. predestination- affects how we live. But how many times do we get frustrated at the preacher who barely speaks a word of english in his sermon while he gives every single root word in greek, hebrew, etc, etc...

On the other hand, there are the preachers who only give practical advice on life. The only way you can tell they are preachers and not Dr. Phil or something is that they mention God. I also want to know practical stuff, but there is a way to relate theology in practical easy terms- or stuff that has at least some substance to it! The greatest preacher, Jesus, taught in such a way that He had to explain himself to his disciples- His preaching was so deep that He had to explain himself! That tells me that there are some DEEP things that we often times just gloss over!

Take the ancient practice of Lectio Divina- means divine reading- it's an old practice of a way of reading the bible that uses reading, speaking out loud, meditation, and practice- it's something that's REALLY not tough, but it is SO good at helping us read the Bible for understanding! Taking time to think about something- meditate on it as you read it and and pray it over and over again- and it's a practice that we can modify from a thousand years ago into today and it's still not hard to do!

I used to go to the circus to get my cotton candy- now some people go the church... although some people might think church is a circus nowadays, too (barking like a dog for some of the charismaniacs, politics for the ultra-old staunchy church).