The Devil and the Parson

There are five personal devils the modern preacher must fight: indolence, snobbery, emotional instability, sycophancy, familiarity. “Get thee behind me, Satan” has its present-day counterpart. Many a minister has felt that the devil has not only his street number but a key to his parsonage as well. The temptations themselves are not new, of course, but the clergy man’s position and responsibilities make him susceptible in ways often quite unfamiliar to the layman. Awareness of these major temptations may provide laymen with greater understanding of, even sympathy for, their pastor. Let us look at them.

1. Indolence. The lazy preacher is not very common. There is something about a minister’s high calling which keeps him quickened and motivated. Many pastors, indeed, do not know the word “restraint,” and provide poor risks for insurance companies. A high sense of urgency, inner compulsions which laymen seldom know, and a spirit of dedication drive the average pastor on. Every minister knows, however, that without a time clock to punch and without boss and counselors to exact from him his total capacity, he can become lazy.

The slothful minister becomes a master of alibi and evasion. Under the guise of, “Oh, I pride myself on being an administrator,” he likes to set up his program so that the other fellow does the legwork. Not willing to work too hard, he dodges responsibilities rightfully his with the protest, “Why, my program is overloaded right now.” He may even cry, “Hasn’t a preacher a right to be human?”—then putter around the house while others are sweating out the day.

2. Snobbery. Instead of being a man of prayer, he may be a prima donna. Snobbery is the second devil a preacher must fight with all his might. Being much in the public eye, he may receive too much adulation. Many preachers have become vain and conceited, and were it not for the humanizing influence of their wives, they would forget from whence they came, and where they are heading.

A pastor’s wife, fed up with her husband’s temperamental nature, once exclaimed, “I tell you, you preachers can be a spoiled lot!” Because their position grants immunity from certain responsibilities and allows privileges often denied others, preachers may come to present an unlovely front. They may sniff at the opinions of others, hold infringements of the niceties of life up to undue scorn, and regard themselves as superior to those who do not fit into their personal pattern of thought and action.

It is refreshing to see a spirit of humility and gentleness in a man so set aside by life. And it may be said to the credit of most of the brethren that they are the soul of unselfishness and selflessness. They have long since learned to prefer others to themselves. Of each of these it may be said, “Here was a man sent from God.”

3. Emotional instability. In a recent lead article in a pastoral journal this modern problem was spotlighted by the author’s insistence that “there are thousands of disabled ministers.” Here again, the circumstances in which the preacher is compelled to live are accountable for so much of the difficulty. Here too is a devil which ministers—and priests and rabbis—must fight almost constantly. With no shoulder to cry on, with few to understand, with pressures which only fellow pastors can know, the present-day minister must stand a lot of emotional gaff.

Unfortunately, unsympathetic and unimaginative laymen, leaders of his church, sometimes add fuel to the flames. They literally “raise the devil” with him. Although his leaders may be inexperienced, untrained, hard-headed, and ambitious, the pastor must bear the brunt of their impossible demands. Preachers used to be about the best health risks in the professional world; not so anymore. They have to fight against hypertension and its consequences with every known means. How many have cried out, “My nerves are my devil!” Their families know how truly they speak.

4. Sycophancy. “Licking the boots of others” is one of the modern devils a preacher must fight. So often, the man must seek and—he hopes—find security and favor by flattering people of means, position, and influence. Something within him cries, “Oh, God, if I could play the man!” His fears and justifiable anxieties eventually may drive him to stoop to conquer—and how low he must stoop! Servility and flattery are paths which lead to the altar with the golden calf.

The servile pastor hides this sycophancy under the guise of a superior expression or pose—only to know that he is doing something beneath his manhood. The devil in this army—as in others—tempts him to fawn at the one above him, and boot the one beneath him. While he is feeling high and mighty, he rides the pack. When novelty wanes and familiarity begins to breed contempt, he yields. And here again, he does so under the personal justification of, “There are those whom one must respect, aren’t there?” “There are those who do not cause men to respect them.” How far one may stray from his Master in this regard! The minister at this stage reads the story of the temptation of Christ with profound humility.

5. Familiarity. By the very nature of the ministry, the preacher is confronted with yet another devil: a too free and intimate behavior. Familiar with divine things, the preacher may say with Lord Lytton, “The devil, my friend, is a woman.” Drawn to close family relationships, which often include the tenderest of friendships, the minister may find the line of demarcation between propriety and unprofessional behavior growing dim. And then, as Emerson put it, “Alas for the unhappy man that is called to the pulpit and not given the bread of life.” It is hard to be a living sermon of the truth one teaches. As with Uzzah and the Ark, there is danger in treating sacred things with careless hands and thoughts.

Be this said, however, to the glory of hosts of men of the cloth: they are honest and pure in a sincere cause, and this is the high mark of their calling.

The miracle of the ministry is this: how many escape the encroachments and the dangers of devils which are distinctively those of the preacher! But nonetheless those devils are there as big as a woodchuck, and most preachers know it. Longfellow once said, “It is by the vicar’s skirts that the devils themselves climb into the belfry.” Well, a new breed of men, with virtues and awareness, together with a sincere dedication, are by their very lives declaring, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Belfries are for the birds, anyhow.—F. B. McAllister, retired Baptist pastor, Cincinnati, Ohio.

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