It was a hot, muggy Friday evening, the last night of Vacation Bible School, and I stood in the parking lot of the church, cooking fish that my father-in-law and I had caught for the big celebration dinner scheduled to begin in just a short time. I didn’t notice the young man who had come up behind me until he spoke. "You the preacher?" he asked.

After checking to see if he was armed and dangerous and determining that, from the look of him, he was neither, I said, "Guilty as charged. What can I do for you?"

"Oh, I don’t need anything," he said. "One of your church members invited me to come for the fish fry, and I just wanted to meet you."

He introduced himself and we shook hands. I asked if he attended church anywhere on a regular basis (no dancing around the issue for me – just go for it!). He had a smirk on his face as he answered, "No, not any more. Oh, I used to go to church when I was a kid, like everybody else, I suppose. In fact, I attended THIS church when I was growing up, even got baptized here. But eventually, I outgrew the need for God and church and all that religious stuff."

"Really?" I said. "Tell me how that works. I mean, how does one ‘outgrow the need for God and church and all that religious stuff’?" He said, "Well, the way I see it, religion is sort of like training wheels." My curiosity was aroused. "Training wheels? What exactly do you mean by that?"

"You know," he said, "like the training wheels you have on your first bicycle when you’re a kid, before you learn how to ride. You have these little training wheels on the back to balance the bike so you don’t fall over so much. Well, religion, to my way of thinking, is sort of like moral training wheels. You need it when you’re young, before you’re old enough to get out into the world on your own, before you know what you’re doing. Once you get more confident in yourself, in your ability to handle any obstacle that gets in your way, you take off the training wheels so you can ride alone, be independent. That’s the way I look at God and church and religion. It’s just training wheels. And I don’t need them any more. I’m all grown up now. I can handle it by myself."

I have since discovered that the point of view as stated by a stranger in the church parking lot is much more popular than you might think. Despite the claims of the Religious Right, that America is "more religious" now than it ever has been, I find this new interest in religion, for the most part, to be about a mile wide and six inches deep, all form and no substance.

All over the world, wherever the English language is spoken today, people are saying "God" in a thoughtless, careless way. In courtrooms and Senate chambers, witnesses are being sworn in with, "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" They answer in the affirmative, then sit down and tell anything BUT the truth. Tough guys swear vengeance, saying, "So help me God, I’m going to kill that sucker." We never have needed God’s help to kill. People look at fancy automobiles and pickup trucks, saying, "God, I wish I had one of those!" as if God were a genie in a bottle, waiting to grant our wishes. Folks who bang their thumb with a hammer or skin their knuckles on an engine block find other creative uses for God’s name, none of which are particularly religious. And teenagers – I’m not picking on you, just making an observation here – use the expression "Omigod!" to mean a variety of things, including: "WOW!" "No Kidding!" "Oh, no!" "All Right!" Or "What in the world?"

"God" must be just about the most often-used word in the English language, second only to the word "I". But the word is thrown around carelessly. People don’t seem to hold God in the same reverence as in years passed. And the same holds true for Jesus.

You hear people say all the time, "You know, I really admire Jesus. He had a lot of courage. I admire his teachings, his noble example, and he was certainly ahead of his time in many regards. But I have to confess that I’m somewhat offended by the notion that we ought to worship him, and I have a big problem with this notion that Jesus is God. That seems a little excessive to me. Just the fact that he was a very good person is enough for me."

That point of view is also more widespread than you might think.

A few years back, a theologian named Jaroslav Pelikan wrote a book titled Jesus through the Centuries. The book presents and discusses the many different images of Jesus in art and literature down through the ages. It’s interesting to see all the different views of Jesus that evolved with the passing of time: Jesus the moral example, or role model; Jesus the teacher of noble virtues; Jesus the miracle worker or magician. I suppose there is some truth to the claim that every age has tended to remake Jesus in its own image.

What is the predominant view of Jesus in the year 2000? Is there only one predominant view, or are there several, a menu from which we can pick choose? Liberation theology, for example, depicts Jesus as the revolutionary, with ammunition belts crisscrossing his chest and an assault rifle in his hands. Feminist theology depicts Jesus as the liberator of women – if they can get past the fact that he was, after all, a MAN! And the so-called "Jesus Seminar" isn’t really sure if ANYTHING the Bible says about Jesus is accurate, so we really don’t know enough about him to form an opinion one way or another.

I think the predominant image of Jesus today is Jesus, the good friend. Jesus is the kind, empathetic, nonjudgmental friend who comforts and consoles and rarely, if ever, criticizes or condemns. Folks today want a 24-hour-a-day, on-call Savior, always there when we need him, but he doesn’t stick around and embarrass us with his presence when we think we don’t need him.

Life in America in the year 2000 is demanding and stressful enough without making religion into another problem, a guilt trip, a source of criticism and bad feelings. So if folks are comfortable thinking of religion as training wheels, admiring Jesus as a really nice man who got a raw deal from the government (go figure), and making casual, thoughtless references to God every now and then, what’s the big deal?

The Jesus who is portrayed in many contemporary sermons, probably in some of my own, is a Jesus well suited to the religious tastes of the most affluent nation in the civilized world. People who are reasonably healthy, reasonably happy, relatively affluent and secure don’t need a savior who makes radical demands for change, a savior who disturbs the status quo and disrupts the pattern of life in America, 2000. We don't need that! So we get a Savior who ALWAYS blesses, ALWAYS affirms, ALWAYS embraces us just as we are, without one plea.

When your children have everything they want, much less everything they need, you don’t need much of a Savior, do you? After all, you’ve already got just about everything this world has to offer. You don’t need much of a God, so most of us modern folks don’t get much of a god. Our "god" is our good friend, the one who always brings out the best in us, because way down deep we believe that we’re basically good people. Our "god" is the one who always blesses and affirms, because we don’t believe we’re really capable of doing much evil, just little glitches every now and then, like Columbine High School. Our "god" is the one who gives us everything our little hearts desire. We may have to look around a little to find our "god", but we know we will eventually find him, because in a consumer culture, it’s only natural that God becomes just another "personal preference," just one more technique for getting what we want.

But there are times… times when you’re waiting for the biopsy report to come back and the doctor has already prepared you for the worst; or between 3 a.m. and sunrise, when you’ve just been told, in so many words, that you have failed a friend and you’re wondering what you could’ve done differently; times when our neat little world begins to develop a crack, when there is a hint that we just might not be as independent and competent at managing life as we thought we were. Can the god you created in your own image help you get through those times?

Our spiritual need is greater than the need for training wheels, or the need for a little nudge of conscience now and then, better therapy, or a more positive outlook on life. We need a God who will point us in the right direction and kick us in the butt to get us moving, if that’s what it takes. We need to know that the God who created the universe and everything in it by simply speaking words is there for us. We need a God who not only cares, but one who is capable of helping. Like the God in Mark’s gospel.

One day, as John the Baptist conducted another marathon baptism in the River Jordan, a young Galilean came to be baptized. And the writer of Mark’s gospel says that as this man named Jesus came up out of the water, "He saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending…" Now, unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark doesn’t say that EVERYBODY saw that. Mark doesn’t even bother to tell us whether or not John the Baptist saw it. But he does say that Jesus saw the heavens torn apart and heard the voice of God. It was a private event, a personal epiphany, a secret message – "I am so proud of you, Son!" Now, I grant you that this is a subtle point in the story, but the subtlety IS the point. Because that’s where you’re going to find God in your own story. This is an epiphany, a revelation. It’s God speaking. So it means that when God speaks it will most likely be a private conversation.

At this point in Mark’s story we’re not exactly sure what all this means. We’ll have to wait to discover all the implications of this powerful moment in the life of Jesus. But we do know this: God has power – awesome, earth-shaking, heaven-ripping power! And it’s important for us to know that. Because Mark knows that when we’re at the end of our rope, when the chips are down, when we’re waiting for the phone call from the doctor’s office, when we’re trying to find relevance in our lives, anyone less than the Son of God cannot offer us anything we don’t already have. We need the love of God. And we never outgrow that need, as the young stranger in the church parking lot would later come to realize.

I don’t know if it was something I said that day or just blatant curiosity that compelled him to come back to church. I only know that he came. Not every Sunday, not at first, but with ever-increasing regularity, he was there. I don’t know when the epiphany, the awakening to his need for God, occurred. But I know he came to that realization. When he came forward that Sunday to rededicate his life to God’s service, he smiled through tears and asked, "Preacher, would you help me put the training wheels back on?"

The last report I had, he was serving as an elder at that church where he grew up and outgrew the need for God and all that religious stuff. He had just completed a two-year term as Chairman of the Board and was looking forward to chairing – of all things – the Evangelism Committee. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?

How about you? Are your training wheels firmly in place today? Or did you take them off, thinking you didn’t need God any more? Have you had any epiphanies lately?

Rev. Johnny Dean: Copyright © 1999 Sermon Illustrations. All rights reserved. Permission is here by granted for use either partially or fully in oral presentations or in written form for same purpose.