Pity Is Not An Insult (September 3, 2006)
The duties of charity and grace usually involve extending tokens of good will to those who are in need. But on occasion they also involve receiving such tokens from people who want to give them.
What sparked this thought was an article I read about all the hatred directed at Jerry Lewis by certain disability activists. For 40 years Lewis has conducted a Labor Day telethon to raise money for a cure for muscular dystrophy. His telethons have raised $1.35 billion. I think that most people with MD are grateful for his work. Utah Assistant Attorney General Steve Mikita, who has the disease, says, "He is worthy of a major, major pat on the back for a job well done." Sophie Mitzel, whose 7-year-old son Logan has a form of MD, says, "I don't know where we'd be without the tremendous help of Jerry Lewis."
But then there are the MD protesters who hate the fact that Lewis regards them as objects of pity. For about the last 15 years they have appeared at telethon locations across the country on Labor Day to register their offense. "Jerry Lewis has got to go," says Mike Ervin, founder of the mockingly titled "Jerry's Orphans." "The telethon gives a negative message about people with disabilities," says Laura Hershey, organizer of "Tune Jerry Out."
Can't they just say "Thank you"?
I think Lewis makes an excellent point when he says, "They want me to stop the telethon because I make them look pitiful. What is more pitiful than this?" Exactly! MD is a pitiable condition. But some people's pride makes their stomachs twist into knots of spiteful malice when they find themselves the objects of another's charity.
"Don't you dare pity me!" they say - as though pity lessened them, robbed them of dignity. It doesn't. Pity that is gently given and humbly received ennobles both the giver and the recipient.
The other day I heard about a relatively young man named Mike who, when he found out he had a serious disease, rounded up friends and told them about it and said, "I don't want anyone to pity me." Why not, Mike? You caught a bad break. Some people will need to pity you. Let them do that. Let them ache for you and offer their help. Your most courageous act now will not be to brush aside their charity, but to receive their grace with grace. Even Jesus was willing to receive - even asked for - the alert company of disciples on the night of his sorrow. (Matthew 26:36-40). But they were too tired to help.
Thank God for good souls like Jerry Lewis, who, at 80, is somehow not too tired to plow through another 22-hour telethon, motivated and energized by pity for the unfortunate. Pity is a good thing. A good thing to give, and a good thing to receive.
Sunday, September 3, 2006
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Kind Gestures From Simple Souls (August 27, 2006)
My son Peter works as a mentor for retarded kids at his school. (It is only partly a humanitarian gesture - he also does it to get out of gym.)
He told me yesterday that when he met the young black Down Syndrome girl that he would be working with, she looked at him and said, "You're sweaty." It was not an insult, just a statement of fact. He explained that he had had to run through the halls to get to class on time. She paused for a second, and then began furiously waving her hands in front of his face in order to create a fan to cool him down.
What a sweet act of grace on the part of this simple girl! Perceiving the discomfort of a boy she had just met, she waved him a sign language that said, "Let me make it better for you." In words my mother loved to quote from Mark 14:8, "She did what she could."
When my niece Rachel was two (yes, just two), she saw my mother weeping over the loss of her husband. Rachel ran to the couch where my mom lay and beat her tiny fists against the cushions, shouting, "Don't cry Nana! DON'T CRY!" Nana laughed through her tears, and enjoyed a moment's comic relief from sorrow. Just a year or so later, by which time Rachel understood that people weep when loved ones die, she went with her parents to the funeral of a man who had suddenly passed away. In the car she asked concerning the widow, "Did Judy cry?" "Yes," my sister answered, "Judy cried." When they got to the funeral parlor Rachel walked up to the woman, pulled a jelly bean out of her pocket and said, "Have a jelly bean, Judy." She did what she could.
Do what you can. It is a lesson I preach at myself when hitting walls of discouragement over problems I cannot solve, griefs I cannot alleviate, sicknesses I cannot cure, sinners I cannot set straight. "What's the use?" the devil whispers to me. "You can't fix this."
No, I probably can't - but that does not mean there won't be an opportunity somewhere to offer a "jelly bean” of grace. Thank God for simple souls and children who do what they can, heedless of the limits to what they can accomplish. When Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus with expensive perfume, it was, strictly speaking, a wasted effort. What exactly did it accomplish? I don’t know! I guess Jesus smelled really nice for a while. But that wasn't the point. Jesus said, "She did what she could," and "wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her" (Mark 14:9).
Do what you can, and though your deeds will not be recounted in an inspired Gospel or an uninspired Pastor’s Page, God will remember them. God delights to remember every cup of cold water that kindness ever poured.
My son Peter works as a mentor for retarded kids at his school. (It is only partly a humanitarian gesture - he also does it to get out of gym.)
He told me yesterday that when he met the young black Down Syndrome girl that he would be working with, she looked at him and said, "You're sweaty." It was not an insult, just a statement of fact. He explained that he had had to run through the halls to get to class on time. She paused for a second, and then began furiously waving her hands in front of his face in order to create a fan to cool him down.
What a sweet act of grace on the part of this simple girl! Perceiving the discomfort of a boy she had just met, she waved him a sign language that said, "Let me make it better for you." In words my mother loved to quote from Mark 14:8, "She did what she could."
When my niece Rachel was two (yes, just two), she saw my mother weeping over the loss of her husband. Rachel ran to the couch where my mom lay and beat her tiny fists against the cushions, shouting, "Don't cry Nana! DON'T CRY!" Nana laughed through her tears, and enjoyed a moment's comic relief from sorrow. Just a year or so later, by which time Rachel understood that people weep when loved ones die, she went with her parents to the funeral of a man who had suddenly passed away. In the car she asked concerning the widow, "Did Judy cry?" "Yes," my sister answered, "Judy cried." When they got to the funeral parlor Rachel walked up to the woman, pulled a jelly bean out of her pocket and said, "Have a jelly bean, Judy." She did what she could.
Do what you can. It is a lesson I preach at myself when hitting walls of discouragement over problems I cannot solve, griefs I cannot alleviate, sicknesses I cannot cure, sinners I cannot set straight. "What's the use?" the devil whispers to me. "You can't fix this."
No, I probably can't - but that does not mean there won't be an opportunity somewhere to offer a "jelly bean” of grace. Thank God for simple souls and children who do what they can, heedless of the limits to what they can accomplish. When Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus with expensive perfume, it was, strictly speaking, a wasted effort. What exactly did it accomplish? I don’t know! I guess Jesus smelled really nice for a while. But that wasn't the point. Jesus said, "She did what she could," and "wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her" (Mark 14:9).
Do what you can, and though your deeds will not be recounted in an inspired Gospel or an uninspired Pastor’s Page, God will remember them. God delights to remember every cup of cold water that kindness ever poured.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Drunkenness And “The Real You” (August 20, 2006)
You're only yourself when sober.
Within days of Mel Gibson spewing drunken anti-Semitic comments at a police officer, a thousand newspaper columnists invoked the Latin proverb, In vino veritas (In wine there is truth). Their point was that when you're drunk the "real you" comes out, uninhibited by surface formalities and pleasantries that normally cover your core. In this view, Mel Gibson is, at heart, a Nazi - and only his deceptive sobriety kept us from knowing that.
Well I think that is stupid.
Every last one of us will say and do and think abominable things when our brains are disordered by alcohol or dementia or sudden impact. Do those disorders unveil the "real us"? Of course not. My saintly mother lived in fear that if she got Alzheimer's she would say bad words. She never did, but if she had - if in advanced age she began saying for the first time a word she dreaded, the scatological word beginning with "sh" - then I would have been a cruel idiot to conclude, "So THAT was my real mom! All this time I thought she was discreet and modest and gentle, but NOOO. 'In senility veritas'."
Everybody should take into account the fact that our brains can be impaired as easily as our bodies. For all I know, if you got Mother Theresa good and senile and she would start saying, "Screw the poor. They make me want to puke."
When I was in high school a friend of mine collapsed with a brain aneurysm and almost died. As he recovered in the hospital and I visited him there, a mutual friend warned me, "Don't let him talk about girls." This most gentlemanly young man had been saying lewd things to the nurses. Thankfully he got better and the "real" Keith came back. For that matter, "real" men come back every morning when their alarm clocks ring - for in uninhibited dreams of the night, chaste men fornicate.
The inhibitions that we associate with wakefulness and sobriety and health are good and they are real. Even if it is true that they merely "cover a corrupt core," then it is the duty of every good man to thicken that cover, and keep his inner corruptions from emerging as outward disgraces. If you will permit the bawdy analogy, we all stink when we fart, but the "real us" is not the internal gas but the discipline we exercise not to release it in a crowded elevator.
The real scandal with Mel Gibson is that he got drunk in the first place. There is no excuse for that. The biblical rule for Christians is that we may drink, but not to the point of inebriation. Drunkenness opens wide the window to a thousand sins, and either makes us bad or reveals a badness we should have stifled. Be inhibited. Be yourself. Be sober.
You're only yourself when sober.
Within days of Mel Gibson spewing drunken anti-Semitic comments at a police officer, a thousand newspaper columnists invoked the Latin proverb, In vino veritas (In wine there is truth). Their point was that when you're drunk the "real you" comes out, uninhibited by surface formalities and pleasantries that normally cover your core. In this view, Mel Gibson is, at heart, a Nazi - and only his deceptive sobriety kept us from knowing that.
Well I think that is stupid.
Every last one of us will say and do and think abominable things when our brains are disordered by alcohol or dementia or sudden impact. Do those disorders unveil the "real us"? Of course not. My saintly mother lived in fear that if she got Alzheimer's she would say bad words. She never did, but if she had - if in advanced age she began saying for the first time a word she dreaded, the scatological word beginning with "sh" - then I would have been a cruel idiot to conclude, "So THAT was my real mom! All this time I thought she was discreet and modest and gentle, but NOOO. 'In senility veritas'."
Everybody should take into account the fact that our brains can be impaired as easily as our bodies. For all I know, if you got Mother Theresa good and senile and she would start saying, "Screw the poor. They make me want to puke."
When I was in high school a friend of mine collapsed with a brain aneurysm and almost died. As he recovered in the hospital and I visited him there, a mutual friend warned me, "Don't let him talk about girls." This most gentlemanly young man had been saying lewd things to the nurses. Thankfully he got better and the "real" Keith came back. For that matter, "real" men come back every morning when their alarm clocks ring - for in uninhibited dreams of the night, chaste men fornicate.
The inhibitions that we associate with wakefulness and sobriety and health are good and they are real. Even if it is true that they merely "cover a corrupt core," then it is the duty of every good man to thicken that cover, and keep his inner corruptions from emerging as outward disgraces. If you will permit the bawdy analogy, we all stink when we fart, but the "real us" is not the internal gas but the discipline we exercise not to release it in a crowded elevator.
The real scandal with Mel Gibson is that he got drunk in the first place. There is no excuse for that. The biblical rule for Christians is that we may drink, but not to the point of inebriation. Drunkenness opens wide the window to a thousand sins, and either makes us bad or reveals a badness we should have stifled. Be inhibited. Be yourself. Be sober.
Sunday, August 6, 2006
Charity That Does Not Enable Sin (August 6, 2006)
Give to the worthy poor.
A recent Chicago Tribune story carries the headline "Church tells Katrina mom it's time to go." St. Paul United Church of Christ in Palatine provided a 23-year-old woman and her three fatherless children with a nice home to live in for a year after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their house. They also provided her with a car, clothes, furniture, food, and thousands of dollars cash.
Now the year is up, and the church needs the house back for its intended use as a parsonage. But the woman doesn't want to go, and she has taken her case to the media. "I have three little kids," she says. "They don't deserve to be put out on their behinds."
She's right. The kids don't deserve to be put out on their behinds. They deserve to be adopted by loving parents and freed from the clutches of an irresponsible woman who fornicates, gets pregnant, expects others to shoulder the consequences, and responds to loving charity with a bitter "It's not enough - why are you being so mean to me?" Her expectation seems to be that the church will provide her with free everything forever. Poor kids. They need an adult for a mom. A dad would be nice too.
The church, despite its goodwill and sacrifice, is being made to look bad. It is not bad, of course. I applaud the good people of St. Paul UCC for their patience and kindness. They know what it is to do good and then get kicked in the teeth for it. An uncharitable church would never feel this pain.
Still, I believe there are biblical guidelines that can help good people avoid getting kicked in their charitable teeth - and also help them to alleviate suffering without enabling the kind of behavior that caused the suffering in the first place.
First, insist that the recipient of charity do whatever he can for himself. Israelite farmers were not commanded to bundle up food and deliver it to the poor. They were to leave the edges and corners of their fields unharvested so that the poor could go and pick up the grain themselves (Leviticus 19:9-10).
Second, take care to distinguish the more from the less needy. In 1 Timothy 5:3-16, St. Paul divides widows who should receive help from those who should not in part by gauging their relative need. Childless widows over 60 had it the worst, so the church needed to give them money. Younger widows had the resource of remarriage, and widows with grown children had the resource of relying on their offspring. The church was forbidden to help widows with capable sons because that would enable irresponsibility on the part of neglectful children.
Third (and oh how politically incorrect this is!), help the worthy poor. Paul told Timothy to give aid to aging, childless widows only if they had done good works and been faithful to their husbands (1 Timothy 5:9-10). Imagine that! The selfish, the fornicators, the lazy and the malicious would be turned away with a polite "No."
When a centurion's servant fell ill (Luke 7:1-5), Jewish elders begged Jesus to go help him, saying, "This man deserves to have you do this." Deserves! What a rare word that is becoming. It would be good to remember it, because character matters when it comes to determining whom to help. There are more needy people than you can count, and you cannot help them all. Try to help the deserving ones first.
Give to the worthy poor.
A recent Chicago Tribune story carries the headline "Church tells Katrina mom it's time to go." St. Paul United Church of Christ in Palatine provided a 23-year-old woman and her three fatherless children with a nice home to live in for a year after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their house. They also provided her with a car, clothes, furniture, food, and thousands of dollars cash.
Now the year is up, and the church needs the house back for its intended use as a parsonage. But the woman doesn't want to go, and she has taken her case to the media. "I have three little kids," she says. "They don't deserve to be put out on their behinds."
She's right. The kids don't deserve to be put out on their behinds. They deserve to be adopted by loving parents and freed from the clutches of an irresponsible woman who fornicates, gets pregnant, expects others to shoulder the consequences, and responds to loving charity with a bitter "It's not enough - why are you being so mean to me?" Her expectation seems to be that the church will provide her with free everything forever. Poor kids. They need an adult for a mom. A dad would be nice too.
The church, despite its goodwill and sacrifice, is being made to look bad. It is not bad, of course. I applaud the good people of St. Paul UCC for their patience and kindness. They know what it is to do good and then get kicked in the teeth for it. An uncharitable church would never feel this pain.
Still, I believe there are biblical guidelines that can help good people avoid getting kicked in their charitable teeth - and also help them to alleviate suffering without enabling the kind of behavior that caused the suffering in the first place.
First, insist that the recipient of charity do whatever he can for himself. Israelite farmers were not commanded to bundle up food and deliver it to the poor. They were to leave the edges and corners of their fields unharvested so that the poor could go and pick up the grain themselves (Leviticus 19:9-10).
Second, take care to distinguish the more from the less needy. In 1 Timothy 5:3-16, St. Paul divides widows who should receive help from those who should not in part by gauging their relative need. Childless widows over 60 had it the worst, so the church needed to give them money. Younger widows had the resource of remarriage, and widows with grown children had the resource of relying on their offspring. The church was forbidden to help widows with capable sons because that would enable irresponsibility on the part of neglectful children.
Third (and oh how politically incorrect this is!), help the worthy poor. Paul told Timothy to give aid to aging, childless widows only if they had done good works and been faithful to their husbands (1 Timothy 5:9-10). Imagine that! The selfish, the fornicators, the lazy and the malicious would be turned away with a polite "No."
When a centurion's servant fell ill (Luke 7:1-5), Jewish elders begged Jesus to go help him, saying, "This man deserves to have you do this." Deserves! What a rare word that is becoming. It would be good to remember it, because character matters when it comes to determining whom to help. There are more needy people than you can count, and you cannot help them all. Try to help the deserving ones first.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
God Bless The Building Manager (July 30, 2006)
Blessed are those who work behind the scenes.
A few years ago at my former church I came down from the pulpit one Sunday a bit discouraged because I could tell people just weren't with me that day. (It is not hard to tell when hardly anybody is paying attention.) Somebody reassured me later that it wasn't that the sermon was so dull, but that the temperature was so hot. It was high summer and the church had no air conditioning. I was relieved to hear that explanation, and bought it eagerly. Of course it wasn't my fault! Who can preach so compellingly as to overcome the stifling opposition of a sanctuarial hotbox?
Air conditioning matters. It matters spiritually. A veteran missionary friend in Colombia told me that when Wycliffe Bible Translators got AC in their offices at the mission compound in Loma Linda, everyone's productivity suddenly skyrocketed.
When Faith Bible Church’s AC went out on Sunday, I thought sadly, "This is going to kill Vacation Bible School this week." Our volunteers' hard work stood to drown in a sea of triple-digit heat.
But it didn't. The AC got fixed. It got fixed because one of our members took a day off work on Monday - with whatever consequences he'll have to bear for that - to spend more than 5 hours at the church to make sure the repairers could get the unit working again.
Thanks Lenny!
Blessed are those who work behind the scenes.
A few years ago at my former church I came down from the pulpit one Sunday a bit discouraged because I could tell people just weren't with me that day. (It is not hard to tell when hardly anybody is paying attention.) Somebody reassured me later that it wasn't that the sermon was so dull, but that the temperature was so hot. It was high summer and the church had no air conditioning. I was relieved to hear that explanation, and bought it eagerly. Of course it wasn't my fault! Who can preach so compellingly as to overcome the stifling opposition of a sanctuarial hotbox?
Air conditioning matters. It matters spiritually. A veteran missionary friend in Colombia told me that when Wycliffe Bible Translators got AC in their offices at the mission compound in Loma Linda, everyone's productivity suddenly skyrocketed.
When Faith Bible Church’s AC went out on Sunday, I thought sadly, "This is going to kill Vacation Bible School this week." Our volunteers' hard work stood to drown in a sea of triple-digit heat.
But it didn't. The AC got fixed. It got fixed because one of our members took a day off work on Monday - with whatever consequences he'll have to bear for that - to spend more than 5 hours at the church to make sure the repairers could get the unit working again.
Thanks Lenny!
Sunday, July 23, 2006
The Courageous Confronter (July 23, 2006)
A Christian author friend told me that he wants to title his next book, No Balls: What's Wrong With Church Leadership Today. The title is a shock, but no more so than a statement St. Paul made to the Galatians: "I wish that those who insist that you be circumcised would cut off their penises" (Galatians 5:12).
Shocks are needed to make strong points sometimes. Paul used colorful language because he was fed up with Judaizers; my author friend wants to write No Balls because he's fed up with clergy. Specifically, he has talked with countless pastors, elders and deacons about coming to his aid in a grievance he has against a fellow believer, but all save one have politely refused to get involved. (I know the details of his grievance, and it is airtight. It isn't a murky "he said/she said," but a spiritual war with Gabriel on one side and Beelzebub on the other.)
How is any sincere Christian supposed to obey Jesus' command to "take one or two others along" (Matthew 18:16) to rebuke an offender if all the "others" turn coward and squeak, "Pray hold me excused: I cannot come"?
I emailed my friend that I did know one pastor who, when he discovered that an old friend was dumping his wife for another woman, dropped everything and got on a plane so he could appear on the man's doorstep early the next morning and let him have it. Now there's a pastor who can look down (ahem) and say, "Yup. Still got 'em both." I'm sure the adulterer's wife appreciated his eagerness to confront the creep who was making her life a nightmare.
I've got two teenage boys, and I hope that as they grow up they will be men and not eunuchs. Like Job, I worry that they might sin. What if I die and am not around to hold them accountable? I have told them, just in case, that if (God forbid) either of them ever pulls a stunt like so-and-so, then the other must fly half way around the world if necessary to appear on his brother's doorstep at dawn to rake him over the coals of righteousness.
Who else might be willing to perform the manly duty of rebuke? If my friend is right, the sad answer is, "Not enough pastors these days."
A Christian author friend told me that he wants to title his next book, No Balls: What's Wrong With Church Leadership Today. The title is a shock, but no more so than a statement St. Paul made to the Galatians: "I wish that those who insist that you be circumcised would cut off their penises" (Galatians 5:12).
Shocks are needed to make strong points sometimes. Paul used colorful language because he was fed up with Judaizers; my author friend wants to write No Balls because he's fed up with clergy. Specifically, he has talked with countless pastors, elders and deacons about coming to his aid in a grievance he has against a fellow believer, but all save one have politely refused to get involved. (I know the details of his grievance, and it is airtight. It isn't a murky "he said/she said," but a spiritual war with Gabriel on one side and Beelzebub on the other.)
How is any sincere Christian supposed to obey Jesus' command to "take one or two others along" (Matthew 18:16) to rebuke an offender if all the "others" turn coward and squeak, "Pray hold me excused: I cannot come"?
I emailed my friend that I did know one pastor who, when he discovered that an old friend was dumping his wife for another woman, dropped everything and got on a plane so he could appear on the man's doorstep early the next morning and let him have it. Now there's a pastor who can look down (ahem) and say, "Yup. Still got 'em both." I'm sure the adulterer's wife appreciated his eagerness to confront the creep who was making her life a nightmare.
I've got two teenage boys, and I hope that as they grow up they will be men and not eunuchs. Like Job, I worry that they might sin. What if I die and am not around to hold them accountable? I have told them, just in case, that if (God forbid) either of them ever pulls a stunt like so-and-so, then the other must fly half way around the world if necessary to appear on his brother's doorstep at dawn to rake him over the coals of righteousness.
Who else might be willing to perform the manly duty of rebuke? If my friend is right, the sad answer is, "Not enough pastors these days."
Sunday, July 16, 2006
So You Received Jesus Into Your Heart? So Have Many Apostates (July 16, 2006)
Evil makes cynics of us.
I know it has made one of me in an area that can be nearly fatal to a preacher: conversion. I call people to faith in Christ. It is what I do, and I am convinced that I would be disobedient to do anything else.
So why don't I get all excited about "decisions for Christ"? Because experience keeps teaching me the fragile and untrustworthy nature of such decisions. I trust in Jesus, but I do not necessarily trust in the steadfastness of those who say they have received him.
Here's a short list of those who have eroded my faith in people' ability to persevere: Charles Templeton, evangelist colleague of Billy Graham, became an outspoken atheist. Roy Clements, once one of England's most respected evangelical ministers, is now living with a homosexual lover. The minister who conducted my wedding also left his wife and announced that he is gay. I know two Wycliffe missionaries - one of whom translated the New Testament into a Colombian indigenous language - who left their wives and the Lord. My Arhuaco Scripture co-translator (about whose faith I once wrote glowing tributes), walked away from Christ. My ex wife, who once dedicated her life to missionary service and who encouraged me to enter the pastoral ministry, is now a cold-blooded apostate.
And time would fail me to list all the people I know who once received Jesus but who now live such reprobate lives that no one would ever guess they were once people of faith.
I have been fooled so many times by so many people that I am forced to acknowledge the hard truth that I cannot tell who will persevere in the Lord and who will not. If Charles Templeton can fool Billy Graham, and Wycliffe missionaries can fool their colleagues in Colombia and Brazil, and Roy Clements can fool the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and my wife can fool me, then who can't be fooled by
whom?
That which I have learned about the heart's inconstancy is what keeps me from saying to any new convert, "You have just been saved eternally - welcome to the family of God!" These words of encouragement are actually a prophecy that is both arrogant and naïve. Only God knows who will persevere and who will not. I don't know anyone else with access to that foreknowledge.
That is why I preach perseverance so much more than I do conversion. I don't care any more how you started - I care how you end up. Just as St. James said, "You believe that there is one God? Great - even the demons believe that," so I might say, "You received Jesus into your heart? Great - so did Larry Flynt." (The publisher of Hustler magazine was briefly "born again" in the '70s.) The mere decision to follow Christ really puts you on no better spiritual footing than that of Judas Iscariot. He decided to follow Christ too - for a while.
Excuse my cynicism. Of course I know there are legitimate conversions, and I know that I must not let grief over false brothers spoil my joy over true ones. But just as we must take our sufferings and let them make us patient, so we must take our disappointments and let them make us wise. Here is wisdom: something is begun, but nothing settled, when a man says, "I have received Christ." From that point forward we must preach perseverance both to him and to ourselves until on our deathbeds we can say, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith." Then into God's hands we may commend our spirits.
Evil makes cynics of us.
I know it has made one of me in an area that can be nearly fatal to a preacher: conversion. I call people to faith in Christ. It is what I do, and I am convinced that I would be disobedient to do anything else.
So why don't I get all excited about "decisions for Christ"? Because experience keeps teaching me the fragile and untrustworthy nature of such decisions. I trust in Jesus, but I do not necessarily trust in the steadfastness of those who say they have received him.
Here's a short list of those who have eroded my faith in people' ability to persevere: Charles Templeton, evangelist colleague of Billy Graham, became an outspoken atheist. Roy Clements, once one of England's most respected evangelical ministers, is now living with a homosexual lover. The minister who conducted my wedding also left his wife and announced that he is gay. I know two Wycliffe missionaries - one of whom translated the New Testament into a Colombian indigenous language - who left their wives and the Lord. My Arhuaco Scripture co-translator (about whose faith I once wrote glowing tributes), walked away from Christ. My ex wife, who once dedicated her life to missionary service and who encouraged me to enter the pastoral ministry, is now a cold-blooded apostate.
And time would fail me to list all the people I know who once received Jesus but who now live such reprobate lives that no one would ever guess they were once people of faith.
I have been fooled so many times by so many people that I am forced to acknowledge the hard truth that I cannot tell who will persevere in the Lord and who will not. If Charles Templeton can fool Billy Graham, and Wycliffe missionaries can fool their colleagues in Colombia and Brazil, and Roy Clements can fool the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and my wife can fool me, then who can't be fooled by
whom?
That which I have learned about the heart's inconstancy is what keeps me from saying to any new convert, "You have just been saved eternally - welcome to the family of God!" These words of encouragement are actually a prophecy that is both arrogant and naïve. Only God knows who will persevere and who will not. I don't know anyone else with access to that foreknowledge.
That is why I preach perseverance so much more than I do conversion. I don't care any more how you started - I care how you end up. Just as St. James said, "You believe that there is one God? Great - even the demons believe that," so I might say, "You received Jesus into your heart? Great - so did Larry Flynt." (The publisher of Hustler magazine was briefly "born again" in the '70s.) The mere decision to follow Christ really puts you on no better spiritual footing than that of Judas Iscariot. He decided to follow Christ too - for a while.
Excuse my cynicism. Of course I know there are legitimate conversions, and I know that I must not let grief over false brothers spoil my joy over true ones. But just as we must take our sufferings and let them make us patient, so we must take our disappointments and let them make us wise. Here is wisdom: something is begun, but nothing settled, when a man says, "I have received Christ." From that point forward we must preach perseverance both to him and to ourselves until on our deathbeds we can say, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith." Then into God's hands we may commend our spirits.
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