Accept No Substitutes (Friday Devotional)

“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.”

- Colossians 2:8-10

I have wracked my memory for details of the first time I saw it. I have looked everywhere I can imagine, but it somehow still evades me. It is my white whale, so elusive that I sometimes question whether it’s even real. My quest for it seems endless, the search a Sisyphean task. What is this Holy Grail I seek? A garlic parmesan chicken wing recipe.

I should explain. While I have virtually no cooking talent, I do have one specialty in the kitchen that I occasionally use to wow friends and family, and that’s homemade buffalo wings. I’ve been making them since high school and, at the risk of bragging, the reviews have been universally positive. The one complaint from my family early on was that there wasn’t enough variety—my dad and I would only make two kinds of wings, buffalo and teriyaki. So one night, aiming to please, I got online and found a random garlic parmesan wing recipe that looked good and we added those to the mix.

If Wing Stop’s CEO had come to our house that night, he might have written his resignation letter on the spot; the wings were that good. The new flavor was a hit, and I was commanded by the rest of the family to make it a staple from then on. Proud of nailing it on the first try, I promised to save the recipe.

But I didn’t keep my promise. The next time I made wings, I went online looking for that recipe, but nothing Google turned up looked quite right. I could picture what the webpage’s layout looked like, could remember certain ingredients it called for, but for the life of me I couldn’t find the recipe. After over an hour searching in vain, I finally settled for another recipe that looked similar. The results were…fine. But to this day, every time I make wings I start the cooking process on Google, hoping that maybe this time I’ll find that magical recipe.

Sometimes alternatives just don’t measure up to the real thing. In our world, you don’t have to look far for an alternative to the life that Christ offers—you can seek fulfillment through your career, peace through financial security, and truth through self-help, to name a few. There are a host of different avenues that promise to make you happier than you’ve ever been, healthier than you’ve ever been, even more ‘spiritual’ than you’ve ever been.

But ultimately, these alternatives reveal themselves to be what Colossians 2:8 calls “empty deceit.” They may satisfy in the moment, but they do not measure up to the fullness that comes only through Christ, because eventually they reveal themselves to be little more than cheap substitutes. Only Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; only he can offer the life God intends and the salvation God promises.

It is easy to become deceived and led astray by this world’s many alternatives to Christ. In the face of these distractions, may you devote yourself to the one in whom the fullness of God dwells, seeking to come to fullness in him—because there are sometimes when you can accept no substitutes.