What my Daughter’s Doll Taught Me About Wealth Preachers.

Image: Mercedes’s doll, Customer, often photobombs as seen below.

As a Dad you often have more insight than your children, you can reply “of course” to that!

So when I bring home a pack of potato crisps from the supermarket, hide them in the rare part of the bag and head home, I expect, as always, to squat by the doorway and see my daughter run towards me because she missed me, and the reverse is often true.

The last thing I expect is her craving for what’s in my bag more than my hug.

But that’s for potato crisps, now enter “customer” – my daughter Mercedes’s favorite doll.

When I recently took a day off and decided to spend some time with my daughter, a similar thing happened. We spent almost an hour taking care of guess who—this baby doll nicknamed “customer. ”

Of course, I delighted in the play, not because feeding plastic dolls is my calling, but because loving my daughter in meaningful ways is.

But Mercedes wanted none of it, or shall we say she understood none of my day-off motivations?

Her focus was the doll, she wanted her washed, cleaned, fed, dressed up in my vests, and what not.

Now, for any right-thinking parent, this behavior borders on silliness, folly, childishness.

Because when you decide to spend the day with your daughter, you want her attention, you want to carry her, you want to go for walks, in other words, you want to be with her, not necessarily her dolls.

But children rarely get this, God’s children especially.

The one who made us all in his image desires to spend himself on us, but alas, we are often looking at other goldmines, instead.

His glory in the word and the world is often ours to behold, problem is we often behold in reverse order —world first, word second.

Paul writing to Roman believers called this “exchanging the glory of an immortal God for created things.”(Rm 1:23) We are ensnared with God’s gifts more than their giver, this is the chief crime of the world.

Mercedes, (left) chats up her dear doll, “customer” (right)

CS Lewis ends the description of this chaos with the words “for they are not the thing itself. “

This is the chief sin of the church, we lost our sense of wonder long time ago, as soon as we departed from his revealed will in the word and turned to fantasies and ambition in the world. Ichabod, the glory departed!

Like my dear daughter, we are clueless that our father in heaven has much more insight than we do, but instead of submitting to his revealed will in the scriptures, we’d rather take our itching ears to the promises of self-styled prophets and motivational pseudo-pastors whose only status is equivalent to “customer” – my daughter’s doll.

I use this metaphor because it strikes me how a daughter can settle for hours with a doll her dad bought her in exchange for her dad who took a day off to, well, love her.

And more importantly, I use this metaphor because it strikes me how many Christians settle for the poverty of mere earthly health and wealth declarations in exchange to knowing the God of the Bible — Everlasting. Eternal. Bread of life. living water.

Now, I love dolls, question is, should they replace intentions to enjoy time with my daughter?

How we answer the above applies to whether health, wealth and gold rings can replace Immanuel, the presence of an eternal God who has called us to himself in Jesus Christ.

And if you want answers, Jesus says No, he is the way truth and life, he actually called someone a “fool” for thinking he could build a huge barn and keep his earthly food forever. (Luke 12:20)

Paul emphatically says No too, having once been naked, shipwrecked at sea, hungry, in constant danger (2 (Cor:11:16) – , he learned the secret to contentment namely — Christ, whether with less or much, in fact, his disciple Timothy battled abdominal pains(1 Tim 5:23) towards the same delight.

But what a fruitful and superior life those three (Jesus, Paul, Timothy) lived, they certainly knew what we often don’t, that the giver is greater than the gift — always, always!