There’s a famous experiment in animal behavior called imprinting. When ducklings hatch,
they instinctively attach to the first moving object they see. Normally, that’s their mother. But
in a lab, researchers placed a red balloon near the nest—and the ducklings followed it instead.
To them, the balloon was mom.
That image is both funny and a little unsettling. Because humans do something
similar—especially when it comes to religion.
Most of us inherit our beliefs long before we examine them. We grow up in a certain
tradition, and what we see first—how church is done, what worship looks like, what words
mean—feels natural, “biblical,” even sacred. It imprints on us. And over time, we stop
questioning it. It’s just “how things are.”
But Scripture calls us to more than blind inheritance. It calls us to test everything by the Word
of God—not by what we saw first.
Take worship, for example. When we hear that word, we usually think of a church service.
But in the New Testament, worship isn’t confined to the assembly. In fact, “worship” is never
even used to describe the Christian gathering. Instead, worship is a posture of life—what Paul
calls offering your body as a “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1). Worship isn’t just what we do
on Sundays. It’s who we are all week.
The danger is this: when we shrink worship down to a building and a time slot, we start
making moral excuses. We say things in private we’d never say “at church.” We watch things
we’d never watch during “worship.” But if all of life is the altar, there’s no such thing as “off
the clock.”
So—are you following Scripture? Or just the first balloon you saw?
Let’s be people who don’t just inherit tradition—but pursue truth. Who read the Bible with
open eyes and open hearts.
Maranatha,
Jordy
