• From my journal: I like the word “conflicted.” It describes my feelings when I see and appreciate both sides of a complex issue and find myself disinclined to assert an opinion.
I’m conflicted, for example, about President Bush’s proposed tax cut, conflicted about some forms of worship, conflicted about the Atkins diet. On even days, I can argue “for,” on odd days “against.” I’m conflicted, you see!
I come from a Christian background where it seemed that one should never be (or admit being) conflicted on matters of doctrine or ethical persuasion or almost anything else for that matter. We were taught to “take a stand,” never to compromise. But sometimes that smelled like arrogance and bull-headedness to me.
I am an older man now, and I often see many sides to once-simple questions. The things about which I am sure certaintly have shrunk in number. “On Christ the solid rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand” speaks to me. All the rest? Well, I guess you could say that I am sometimes, but not always, conflicted.
When I am conflicted I become quieter, perhaps (who’s to say?) a bit more humbled. It means that I listen before I speak, consult before I act. Being conflicted means I pray and meditate more, search the Scriptures, read more broadly. Why did I have to reach 60-plus to get this way?
The great reformations always began when someone was conflicted. Luther, Wesley, and William Carey come to mind. Because they were conflicted and challenged pat answers, we are more enlightened. I wonder how many possible reformations we have short-circuited in our time because we rejected someone who, because they were conflicted, wanted to explore a worthy question?
Fortunately, I guess I’m now at an age and station of life where I can admit to being occasionally conflicted. I don’t raise money; don’t need to worry about being a liability to an organization; don’t have a rigid theological system to defend. Of course, someone might write and propose that my boss at Leadership relieve me of my privilege of writing this piece each month. Knowing this, I’m conflicted about whether I should have raised this subject. But lots of people are calling for greater honesty among followers of the Lord these days. And honesty begins when one can admit to being conflicted and feel safe.
(P.S. For a directory of things about which I feel conflicted, send a self-addressed stamped BOX to … Just kidding!)
• From my file on “gutty” moments: William Tyndale to a high church theologian who had attempted to discourage him from translating the Bible from Latin to English: “If God spares my life, (before) many years I will take care that a ploughboy shall know more of the Scriptures than you do.”
• A book I’ve enjoyed: Michael Card has given us a wonderfully meditative book called Scribbling in the Sand. In it he offers a quote from Haydn: “Often when I was wrestling with obstacles of every kind, when my physical and mental strength alike were running low and it was hard for me to persevere in the path on which I had set my feet, a secret feeling within me whispered: ‘There are so few happy and contented people here below, sorrow and anxiety pursue them everywhere; perhaps your work may, some day, become a spring from which the careworn may draw a few moments’ rest and refreshment.”
My reaction: a good thought for those who prepare sermons.
• A solution (?) for stress: “Each working day I must enter a world of titles and pretensions and concealed motivations. Now I make sure that I visit another kind of world and every day if possible—one of nicknames and gentle ribbing that deflates pretension. And you know, since I started doing that, my days are altogether much more pleasant and ‘they’ don’t get to me half as much as they used to” (Ray Oldenburg in Great Good Place, a sociological study of bars and pubs).
Another kind of world, he says. Interesting phrase. I made it a sermon title, an ideal description of a church. But some listeners squirmed when I informed them that the phrase originally described a bar experience and not a congregational one.
• Travel stories: Last Thursday—It’s 4:00 a.m. I’m headed to the airport for an early flight. I stop at the doughnut shop. Eight or ten truck drivers are standing around. I ask, “Is this a line?” Someone says no, so I order a coffee and muffin. Several dollar bills lay on the counter, and I say loudly “Someone forgot their change.” A driver steps forward. I quip, “Thought you were buying my coffee.”
He says to me, “Why not?” And to the doughnut man: “I’m covering the man’s coffee.”
The doughnut man replies, “Nice! I’ll throw in his muffin.”
My breakfast is a gift from strangers, a serendipitous moment, and such a glad one that for the next several hours I find myself being cheerful and generous to every stranger I meet. SARS may be contagious, but so is kindheartedness.
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