The Church Shopping Temptation

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it seems to be a given among most people that a globalized world facilitated by travel and communications technology is a larger, more diverse, and more expansive one. But I’d argue that the opposite is true. To whatever degree you embrace this notion of a global community, I think your experience and understanding of yourself and the world, will actually become narrower, more closed-in, and more homogenous.

What that expansion of our horizons actually does, is it gives us an unhealthy ability to pick and choose what aligns best to our preexisting preferences.

Think about a huge supermarket where I can find the most eclectic arrangement of foods and goods that perfectly suit my temperament, mood, and preferences so that there is hardly a limit on the specificity of my wants and desires. I can be as self-centered in that process of selection as I might like.

What I end up with isn’t a greater diversity of goods which challenge my selfish preferences and forces me to be more open to new experiences, but instead only those things which reflect back to me the person I already am.

Whereas a small local corner store, with a limited selection, is one that isn’t going to have everything that is exactly calibrated to my selfish tendencies. Instead, it’s going to have a selection that forces me to choose things that I wouldn’t otherwise if there was more variety.
I’m going to have to buy the only kind of apples they carry, rather than my favourite from a selection of 5 different kinds. I’m going to have to take whatever kind of coffee they carry, rather than choose my very special preference from a selection of dozens – and so on.

And so I’m forced to experience true variety and diversity by having my range of options limited to those things that I otherwise wouldn’t choose if I didn’t have to.

The small and the local is actually the most varied, exotic, and diverse experience of the world you can have because it is filled with a variety that you wouldn’t choose for yourself, forcing you to stretch and grow in maturity.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that something of this principle applies to the temptation to shop around for different churches that suit our preferences just right.

Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com

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