Alert readers will notice a change on this page. The editors have given it a new name, and Paul Robbins and I are being joined by Terry Muck as an alternating columnist.
During the past several years, Terry and managing editor Marshall Shelley have built an outstanding editorial team. In the past year, Marshall has taken more hands-on leadership under Terry’s capable direction. His newest assignment-beginning next issue-will be writing the front page. Terry, Paul, and I will alternate on this page.
Speaking of Marshall Shelley, not long ago we were in the locker room at the “Y” after battling out a tough game of racquetball. As we leaned against the lockers trying to cool down, still in our damp playing clothes, I said jokingly, “What I need is a good book on how to reduce my sweat time. It takes me twenty minutes to stop sweating.”
“Yeah,” Marshall said, “where’s the help when you really need it?”
“I don’t have time to sweat twenty minutes!” I bantered. “You can get a success book on everything else. How about Thirty Days to Dryness? Or better yet, The One-Minute Sweat: When You Don’t Have Time for the Drips.”
This burlesque of success books led to talk about the commercials that show busy men and women saying, “I haven’t got time for the pain.” Every time I hear that phrase, I wince. It conveys so much of our culture’s message.
Feel pain? Take a pill.
Feel down? Attend a seminar.
Feel guilty? Here’s a talk show to convince you there’s no reason for guilt; you just have “different values.”
To every problem, says TV, there’s a solution. Dull all pain. Avoid all distress. Yet we all know life isn’t problem/solution.
Life is painful.
No one can avoid grief, disillusionment, and failure. Our culture puts so many foolish expectations into our brains, it’s no wonder people can’t cope. An American missionary to Lebanon said to me, a few years before Beirut became a battlefield, that he had begun to see America in some ways as an “adolescent culture.” Despite Vietnam, Iran, and terrorists, our media and religion too often skim along the surface of life.
My wife, Jeanette, and I currently care for two foster babies. Someone told Jeanette recently that so many of the people whose children are wards of the court take all their cues about how to respond in domestic situations from television. Those are their only role models. Americans are media creatures. The unquestioned assumptions of many in our congregations are in flat contradiction to both Christian values and life’s reality. As we help them apply biblical values, we may need to work at realigning their expectations, especially that “pain has no place in my life.”
We can easily find ourselves contributing to the superficial view by projecting a question/answer, problem/solution grid rather than images of the Christian pilgrim traveling through very rough country under the grace of God.
I was reminded recently how these expectations also concern the pastor. Here are thoughts from good friend and CTi board member Steve Brown, pastor of Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church. It appeared in his Key Life publication.
“After a week of meetings in Pittsburgh, a man came up to me. A former missionary and member of the church for over thirty years, he said something I still haven’t been able to classify as either a compliment or something otherwise. He said, ‘Steve, I’ve really appreciated what you’ve said this week. All my life I’ve heard pastors say that they were sinners. You’re the first one I ever really believed.’
“Though I still chuckle about that remark, I acknowledge with complete sincerity his observation. You see, I’m not a pastor because I’m good or have abilities or because I’m talented. I’m where I’m at because God put me here. And sometimes I’ll be soft, and sometimes I’ll be hard, but you remember I’m just like you. I’m a leader, anointed of God to teach his Word. God must remind me over and over that even when people call me Reverend, I’m not.
“In every congregation, God sets aside brothers and sisters who are called to lead. But the problem is that sometimes we get the idea we are God’s gift to the world, and when that happens, the delicate balance between gifted leadership and ecclesiastical elitism gets shattered. There is no room in the body of Christ for elitism.
“There are no super-Christians in the body of Christ. All of us are ‘just one among equals.’ The importance of being honest and acknowledging that truth cannot be overstated.
“When a Christian gets honest, something exciting happens. We get to the point where God can use us. D. L. Moody once said, ‘I’ve had more trouble with D. L. Moody than any other man I’ve ever known.’ Thomas … Kempis said, ‘Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish yourself to be.’
“Let me tell you a prayer that God always answers. ‘Lord, show me myself.’ Don’t pray it unless you mean it, because he will, and you won’t like what you see. But he’ll make you different.
“Super-Christians? They don’t exist. There are only sinners saved by the blood of the Lamb. Remember that the next time you find yourself enjoying compliments so much they take on the sound of a flapping cape.”
Thanks, Steve, for insights we can identify with. Frankly, the longer I live, the more preposterous becomes any suggestion of donning Superman’s cape. Moody and … Kempis are painfully accurate-but therein enters the grace of God.
Harold L. Myra is president of Christianity Today, Inc.
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