settling for artificial

I really like French Toast. It's amazing to me that you can dip a piece of plain bread in an egg and milk mixture, cook it, and get a golden brown delight. Sprinkle on some cinnamon, spread on some butter, and pour on some syrup and you have yourself a great way to start the day.
My topping of choice is syrup (is topping the right word?), unless I can get my hands on some homemade strawberry jam. I grew up on the artificial stuff. We rarely had pure maple syrup. Maybe it was too expensive or just not available. Either way, we had some generic knock-off of Aunt Jemima at our disposal, and we never complained.
As I kid, I remember helping a man in our church haul partially frozen gallons of sap from the tapped trees and fill up a couple of 55 gallon drums. We had so much fun running from tree to tree carrying the precious juice back to the wagon. As a reward, we were given some of the syrup.
So when we sat down to eat our French Toast, we tasted some of our hard earned maple syrup. I didn't care for it. I preferred the artificial stuff.
Sadly, this is true of Christianity. So often, we have consumed the artificial, the fake, the unauthentic for so long, that we have lost our appetite for real Christianity.
This is true of worship, prayer, our interactions with other believers, and our witness to nonbelievers. We are afraid to be real. We are hesitant to be transparent. We are willing to settle for some generic, artificial brand of Christianity when we could be enjoying the richness of true Christianity.
Maybe this is why so many people reject Jesus and His people. They are tired of being sold a generic knock-off.