There Is No "Build-A-God"

Not too long ago, if your child wanted a stuffed animal, you went to some local retail outlet and bought one off the shelf.  While there may have been a large number of possibilities, still the options were limited to the stuffed animals in stock.  Enter the “Build-A-Bear Workshop” franchise which began in 1997 and now has over 400 locations worldwide and online.  At Build-A-Bear children can create their own stuffed animals.  They can be as creative as they like, for Build-A-Bear allows children to be sovereign over their own creations, leaving the toy store with a unique critter unlike anyone else’s.  The only question is, what does the child want in a stuffed bear?  But what may be desirable in a fuzzy friend is not desirable when it comes to God and the Christian Faith.

Neither the Lord nor the faith is left to our desires.  While there is much diversity within the body of Christ, there is only one Lord and one faith (Ephesians 4:5).  We are not free to “build a God” or “build a faith.”  The one true God and the one true faith have been handed down to us in the Word.  We must reject the temptation to be our own creator and humbly accept that which the Lord has revealed to us.  Pragmatism, the god of “what works,” is a creation of our own imagination and ingenuity.  We must rest in the true God of the Word.

Gary E. Gilley, “It Works For Me…, Pragmatism and the twenty-First Century Church,” PFO’s “The Quarterly Journal,” Jan-Mar 2015, p.9