Eddie Murphy and the Spiritual Life

Remember the movie Coming to America? Eddie Murphy starred as an African king who has come undercover to America to find a wife who would fall in love, not with a king, but with a regular guy. In typical romantic comedy fashion, after a misunderstanding that nearly kills the relationship, Eddie lands his girl.

The connection to be made with the spiritual life is from the father of the love interest. He owns a fast food joint called McDowell's. As the name suggests, it bears a striking resemblance to a multinational hamburger chain. Throughout the movie, Mr. McDowell denies that he is ripping off McDonald's (their Big Mac has seeds, ain't no seeds on the bun of a Big Mick).

Outside the watchful eyes of others, within his own office, Mr. McDowell pours over the McDonald's corporate manual. He wants to do everything by the book. Success is to be found in imitating the big boy's playbook to the letter.

That is what we do in our spiritual lives. We want rules to obey. Steps to follow to get to a clearly attainable goal. A way to know if we are doing things right - and by right we mean by comparing ourselves to how others are following the rules.

It's religion. Masking the false self. Breeding shame. Ultimately rule following and comparison ends in death. Self-effort drives us away from God.

Yet we want this in our marriages. Give me the corporate manual so that I can do the things that will get me the things that I want. Then I'll be happy and satisfied.

And in parenting we want a user manual to give us tactics to practice on our kids so we will get predictable results. Kids that behave the way we want them to.

Some start churches, ministries, or programs with the same one size fits all manual. Ignoring culture and context, we edit out God and want best practices that will make people fall in love with what we are doing.

Worst of all, that is how we treat Christ. The Bible is a user manual with the rules for us to follow so we can act just like Jesus. A worthy desire, but one that won't be realized until heaven or His return, whichever comes first.

Instruction manual spirituality ignores our world's broken condition. It ignores the war of the two selves. Ultimately, it ignores the need for Jesus by proposing that we can reform our own behavior and achieve our own perfection.

My aim, spiritually speaking, is not to be McDowell's, but to be McDonald's. Which require me to make space for Christ, the Author and Perfecter of my faith.