Sugar with artificial sweeteners. Salt with No Salt. High Test with Diet. Eggless eggs. Sugar free. Fat free. Taste free! Energy drinks. Energy pills. Weight loss pills. Diets without dieting and workouts without exercise. Surgery when none of these work. Housekeepers, tutors, daycares and babysitters. Families without parents. Parents without responsibilities. Psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists and counselors for relationships without intimacy. Drugs when none of those work. Time needed with time out. Direction with Redirecting. Choosing our battles for really choosing none at all. Discipline with Permissiveness. Frustration, anger, abuse, giving in, giving up and drugs when any of those don’t work. Cash with credit. Freedom with debt. Personhood with Possessions. Real purpose with status .Peace with stress. More debt when that doesn’t work. Pastor’s with CEO’s. Church boards with corporate directors. Servants with managers. Called ones with volunteers. We end up with leadership without service and service without passion. We fire one and hire another and when that doesn’t work we start another program.
The church has been substituted with bigger buildings, bigger crowds, and bigger budgets. The presence of God with program, presentation and pretension. We have come up with substitutes for just about everything. A substitute is a replacement or an alternate. Most are intended to be better for us but that’s rarely the case. Substitutes often replace values. Values that if I allowed to develop in my life would make me a better person on many levels. Moderation, discipline, self-control, selflessness, commitment, sacrifice, love and compassion for others and love for God are often the things that get side-lined.
The extra effort required to develop these core values makes substitutes more attractive to us. Substitutes are easier on the front end but not in the long-haul. Living a valueless life will always create problems for us in every area of our life whether it is our health, finances, relationships, ministry or relationship with God. Substitutes can never fully replace the real. The replica is never as valuable as the original. Let’s be careful that we aren’t diminishing our values by substitution, particularly our values that honor God. There is only one substitute that I am certain of that was better and that was Jesus becoming our substitute for sin. He took our place and the place of our sin that we might be free and have the opportunity of an eternity of peace.
