Reproof

The police in Oregon are looking for a man who they say stole a car with a child in the back seat only to return the four-year-old and reprimand the mom about her parenting. Local authorities said the theft took place outside a grocery store when the mom left the car running with the child in the back seat.

The mother left the car unlocked and went inside to buy a gallon of milk and some meat. The thief happened to walk by and hopped in the car. He soon realized the four-year-old was in the back seat and pulled back into the parking lot, returning the child to the mother—but not without scolding her.

Police spokesman, Matt Henderson said, “He actually lectured the mother for leaving the child in the car and threatened to call the police on her. Obviously, we're thankful he brought the little one back.” The thief ordered the mom to take the child before driving off in the car.

An old joke. A letter to a neighbor reads:

Dear Frank. We've been neighbors for six tumultuous years. When you borrowed my tiller, you returned it in pieces. When I was sick, you blasted rap music. And when your dog went to the bathroom all over my lawn, you laughed. I could go on, but I'm certainly not one to hold grudges. So I am writing this letter to tell you that your house is on fire. Cordially, Bob

The Fox TV show Kitchen Nightmares features the host Gordon Ramsay, a world-class chef, who steps into restaurants that are—you guessed it—living nightmares. The restaurants are typically on the verge of closing and in desperate need of help. What's interesting is that sometimes the restaurants look appealing from the outside. Often, large amounts of time and money have been spent finding the right location and creating a welcoming atmosphere. But in every episode, the real problem is the same: the food is nasty.

One of the painfully entertaining parts of every show is how Gordon Ramsay tries over and over to get the restaurant workers to realize they are in an "Oh no! situation." The owners have typically already had a sudden awakening, because the business is in trouble, but what they need is some brutal honesty. And Chef Ramsay is brutal. He'll usually order about a half-dozen items off the menu and with great passion and clarity explain how horrible each one tastes. The restaurant owners are in denial about the quality of their food because they are distracted by everything else going on. They're managing food orders, overseeing wait staff, stepping out of the kitchen to shake hands with customers—basically anything but actually making good food. The show is half over before any of them get honest about reality.

The British ocean liner, the R.M.S. Lusitania, was struck by a torpedo from a German submarine on May 7, 1915. It appears that in an effort to minimize panic, the captain, William Thomas Turner, created a false sense of assurance. Shortly after the torpedo struck the liner, a fellow passenger, Charles Lauriat, heard a female passenger call out, "Captain, what do you wish us to do?" Author Erik Larson writes he replied, "Stay right where you are, Madam, she's all right."

"Where do you get your information?" she asked. "From the engine room, Madam," he said. But the engine room clearly had told him no such thing … Lauriat and the woman now headed back toward the stern, and as they walked they told other passengers what the captain had said. Second-class passenger Henry Needham may have encountered the pair, for he recalled that a passenger approaching from the direction of the bridge had shouted, "The Captain says the boat will not sink."

"The remark," Needham wrote, "was greeted with cheers and I noticed many people who had been endeavoring to get a place in the boats, turned away in apparent contentment."

Turner's words merely confirmed what the passengers and crew already believed, or wanted to believe: that no torpedo could cause the ship mortal damage.

Of the 1,959 passengers aboard the Lusitania, 1,198 perished.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Judgment; Hell; Warning—Jesus spoke about hell and judgment (as do other parts of Scripture) not to scare us, but to prepare us for what's really coming. (2) Honesty—This is also a good example of the need to speak the truth in love in Christian community.

"When I was young and started really making it as an actor, I came and talked to my mother and said, 'Mom, did you think this was going to happen? I'd be so big and I'll be able to take care of everybody and I can do this and I can do that.'"

Mama Washington reprimanded her son: "Oh, you did it all by yourself? I'll tell you what you can do by yourself: Go outside and get a mop and bucket and clean these windows—you can do that by yourself, superstar."

She said, "Boy, stop it right there, stop it right there, stop it right there!" She said, "If you only knew how many people been praying for you." How many prayer groups she put together, how many prayer talks she gave, how many times she splashed me with holy water to save my sorry behind.

At the height of her eating disorder, strangers on the streets of Nashville would stop Lauryn Lax to tell her to "Go eat a cheeseburger" or ask "Honey, are you eating?" But it was the acquaintances at the YMCA where she worked out that saved her. Lauren said it really hit home because "it's not my parents telling me what to do. It's not doctors. Its acquaintances … telling me it's a problem."

When Lax weighed herself that morning, she was only 79 pounds. She was frightened to see the low number and said a prayer that she would get better, but she still arrived at the YMCA ten minutes before it opened so she would get the Stairmaster she wanted.

"We saw a girl that was about to die," said Johnny Phipps, one of the gym-goers who organized the intervention. In the parking lot, a group of YMCA regulars who had been concerned about Lax for weeks, approached her and told her they were taking her to the hospital. One of those friends told Good Morning America. "When we saw Lauren's car pull in, we literally all converged on her, and she was like a deer in headlights."

Lax resisted at first, but agreed to go with them. Today, she calls them her "YMCA angels." When they got to the emergency room, however, doctors almost didn't keep her there, and Lax was ready to go home and get back to her old ways: 6-to 7-hour workouts and eating nothing but tiny helpings of steamed vegetables and frozen turkey burgers. "Very eerily, everything looked Ok on paper," Lax said. "My little angels were just so adamant. They knew that I was not well and really fought to keep me there."

During his training to become a hospital chaplain, a man was surprised to learn of a phenomenon in the medical community widely known as "Mutual Pretense." In many cases, mutual pretense is something that takes place after the period of treatment for a particular patient has run its course and it's become clear to everyone that it's not working and the patient will die. Despite the fact that this the dark reality is clearly known by all parties involved, the doctor, patient, and family of the patient will often deal with the fact by talk about anything other than the fact that the patient is going to die. They'll talk about what will happen once they get out of the hospital, what they are going to do when everything gets better, about sports, about family—anything but the truth of the impending death.

Mutual pretense is a kind of survival mechanism that allows everyone to continue talking to each other while not having to actually talk about what's going on—like the brute reality of an impending death.

Possible preaching idea: (1) Speaking the truth in love—Church is not a place we go to escape from truth; it's a place where we to go discuss the truth about our lives, even when it's painful. (2) Bible; God's Word—God's Word speaks the truth into our lives.

After interviewing business leaders at over 100 companies, the authors of a Harvard Business Review article concluded: "Smart leaders today … engage with employees in a way that resembles an ordinary person-to-person conversation." According to the authors, an essential part of "ordinary person-to-person conversation" involves listening well and getting honest feedback.

They use the following story as an example: James E. Rogers, the president and CEO at Duke Energy, instituted a series of what he called "listening sessions." In a series of three-hour meetings, he invited the people he led to raise any pressing issues. He also asked for their brutally honest feedback about his own leadership performance. The authors of the article wrote:

He asked employees at one session to grade him on a scale of A to F. The results, recorded anonymously, immediately appeared on a screen for all to see. The grades were generally good, but less than half of the employees were willing to give him an A. He took the feedback seriously and began to conduct the exercise regularly. He also began asking open-ended questions about his performance. Somewhat ironically, he found that "internal communication" was the area in which the highest number of participants believed he had room for improvement. Even as Rogers sought to get close to employees by way of [conversation], a fifth of his people were urging him to get closer still. True listening involves taking the bad with the good, absorbing criticism even when it is direct and personal—and even when those delivering it work for you.

In Mitch Albom's book Have a Little Faith, he recounts the following conversation with his elderly rabbi:

"When I was growing up in the Bronx," the Reb said, "everyone knew everyone. Our apartment building was like family. We watched out for one another. I remember once, as a boy, I was so hungry, and there was a fruit and a vegetable truck parked by our building. I tried to bump against it, so an apple would fall into my hands. That way it wouldn't feel like stealing. Suddenly, I heard a voice from above yelling at me in Yiddish, 'Albert, it is forbidden!' I jumped. I thought it was God."

Who was it? I asked. "A lady who lived upstairs." I laughed. Not quite God. "No. But, Mitch, we were part of each other's lives. If someone was about to slip, someone else could catch him."

In 1850, Abraham Lincoln's step-brother, John D. Johnston, wrote to him and asked, yet again, for a loan so he could settle some debts. On previous occasions Lincoln simply gave Johnston the money. But this time Lincoln responded with a "tough love" letter that included a helpful proposal.

Dear Johnston:

Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it best to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little you have said to me, "We can get along very well now"; but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again. Now, this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have done a good whole day's work in any one day…. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break the habit ….

You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is, that you shall go to work, "tooth and nail," for somebody who will give you money for it …. and, to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you, that for every dollar you will, between this and the first of May, get for your own labor … I will then give you one other dollar …. Now, if you will do this, you will be soon out of debt, and, what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But, if I should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as deep in as ever.

Affectionately your brother,

A. Lincoln

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Confrontation/Rebuke—Lincoln's letter provides a good example of "tough love"—the love that is willing to "speak the truth in love" so people can change and grow. (2) Money/Debt—This letter also provides a biblical perspective on avoiding debt by working hard and being responsible with money.

We could not bear to live in a world where wrong is taken lightly and where right and wrong finally make no difference. Spare me a gospel of easy love that makes of my life a thing without consequence. Atonement is not an accountant's trick. It is not a kindly overlooking; it is not a "not counting" of what must count if anything in heaven or on earth is to matter. God could not simply decide not to count without declaring that we do not count.

Everybody needs somebody who's willing to deflate their egos from time to time—even movie stars like Denzel Washington. Once Washington was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. Midway through their conversation, Washington noted the encouragement his mother had given him throughout his life. He also shared this story of his mother's reproof over his budding pride:

I walked in the house one day and—feeling full of myself, a movie star—I said to my mother, "Did you ever think this was all going to happen?" She was like, "Please. First of all, go wash the windows for me. You have no idea how many people have been praying for you when you were being a knucklehead."

If one man calls you a donkey, pay him no mind. If two men call you a donkey, get a saddle.

At times one hesitates to reprove or admonish evil-doers, either because one seeks a more favorable moment or fears his rebuke might make them worse, and further, discourage weak brethren from seeking to lead a good and holy life, or turn them aside from the faith. In such circumstances forbearance is not prompted by selfish considerations but by well advised charity.

What is reprehensible, however, is that while leading good lives themselves and abhorring those of wicked men, some, fearing to offend, shut their eyes to evil deeds instead of condemning them and pointing out their malice. To be sure, the motive behind their malice is that they may suffer no hurt in the possession of those temporal goods which virtuous and blameless men may lawfully enjoy; still there is more self-seeking here than becomes men who are mere sojourners in this world and who profess the hope of a home in heaven.

I find it impossible to avoid offending guilty men, for there is no way of avoiding it but by our silence or their patience; and silent we cannot be because of God's command, and patient they cannot be because of their guilt.