Courage

Have you ever ridden a roller coaster? Of course you have. Everyone has. What was it like?

It seems to me that there are two kinds of people when it comes to roller coasters.

The first kind of person - and this was me as a kid - is overwhelmed with fear. They close their eyes, they wrap their arms around the bar, they clench their teeth, they squeeze their legs together and they press their feet into the floor of the car, hoping that it'll all be over soon. They don't like the feeling of having their stomach fly up into their throat, but they are afraid to admit this to their friends and afraid of being left out. It's fun hanging out at the theme park all day with your friends, and all you have to do to be accepted is endure the occasional minute and a half of pure, nightmarish torture. But hey, if you close your eyes and curl up in the fetal position, it's not so bad, and you'll survive. Then you will be accepted by the other cool kids, with whom now (they think) you have several shared experiences.

The second kind of person - which is apparently everyone ELSE in the entire world other than me - rides roller coasters much differently. They don't grip the bar, they throw their hands in the air. They don't close their eyes, they fling them open. They don't clench their teeth, they throw their heads back, open their mouths wide and let out a primal scream.

The first person survives. The second person thrives. The first person passively endures. The second person actively enjoys. The first is tortured, the second is thrilled. The first clings to security, the second embraces uncertainty.

But both are afraid. The first person is obviously afraid, but the second one is afraid too. That's why they're screaming - but they're screaming with delight as well as fear (or so I'm told). This is an important point. It's not the case that the second person lacks fear.

Courage is NOT the absence of fear. If you are not afraid, you have no opportunity to have courage because courage requires fear.

This is because courage is, fundamentally, a certain kind of RESPONSE to fear.

Courage is not the absence of fear, it is a response to fear.

In order to exhibit courage, you must first be afraid.

Often times, when we are afraid, we think we are cowardly. To be cowardly is to be afraid, right? In the church, our pious-sounding, proof-texting platitudes play into this. We quote the Lord's words to Joshua, "Be strong and courageous," and we say, "God has not given us a spirit of fear", so we think being afraid is sinful. This means that as soon as we feel fear, we are instantly overwhelmed with guilt, which only makes us embrace fear ever more tightly, which makes us feel more guilty, and the cycle feeds on itself until we're curled up on the floor in the fetal position.

So what exactly is the difference between the first person and the second person? It's not that one has fear and one doesn't. 

It's their response to fear. That is the difference.

The first person hides from fear. They are overwhelmed by it. Their fear has mastered them. They are terrified of their fear. Thus fear becomes exponentially greater. This poor soul responds to fear very much like an abused dog, hiding and whimpering in the corner.

The second person faces their fear. They stand up to their fear. They are like the child on the playground who refuses to give the bully their lunch money, even if it means getting a bloody nose. They are afraid, but their fear has not mastered them. And that's not because their fear is any less, but because they simply refuse to accept its mastery over them.

We can call this refusal defiance. They defy their fear.

This is what courage actually is. It is defying your fear. It is refusing to give in to it. It is a choice, an act of will.

But there is one more key aspect of courage that we must pursue, and we're going to need the Lord of the Rings to help us investigate it.

If you look up courage on Wikipedia, you'll eventually get to a part about pagan notions of courage, and I found that I was drawn toward Tolkien's description of Norse courage: 

"J.R.R. Tolkien identified in his 1936 lecture 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics' a 'Northern theory of courage'—the heroic or 'virtuous pagan' insistence on doing the right thing even in the face of certain defeat".

Something about that notion appeals to me. Perhaps an illustration of this idea is the 300 Spartans, who stood against the army of Persia, though they were doomed to die. Or we can think of the Lord of the Rings movies, when King Theoden gives a speech to his men before the armies of orcs and calls upon them to "Ride now! Ride to ruin and the world's ending!" and then he screams, "DEATH!" and all the Rohirrim echo him. It's an amazing moment that, if it doesn't affect you, there's something wrong with you.

And it is so moving that we are tempted to say, "There, now THAT is courage!"

Is it?

When God commands Joshua to "Be strong and courageous," is this what God calls him to? "Ride to ruin and the world's ending"?

Let's cut to the chase. There is a bright, shining example of courage that I think is very different from that of the King of the Rohirrim, or of the Spartans, moving as these examples are.

Once upon a time, the King of all the universe took on flesh in order to go to the cross for our sins. That is the greatest act of courage there ever was. Look at what he left behind! Look at how much he suffered!

Would you voluntarily become a grasshopper so your two boys (ages 5 and 6) could rip your legs and antennae off and leave you to be consumed alive by hungry ants? That's kind of like what Jesus did for us.

Now - it is one thing to go into battle, though you are outnumbered, and engage the enemy, risking your life. But it is quite another to be God, who created all things, and knows the future because he MAKES the future, to take on flesh, to willingly go to the cross and suffer and die, KNOWING EXACTLY how horrible it would be ahead of time. Jesus knew just exactly how awful the tortures of the cross would be, and he faced it.

Oh, you say, but he wasn't afraid. He knew he'd be raised from the dead. He went to the cross "for the joy set before him," right? 

If he wasn't afraid, then why was he sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane? That was FEAR. That was ANXIETY. He asked his Father to take that cup away from him. He asked to be excused from the assignment. But he knew there was no other way, and knew his Father would not take that cup from him. And he knew just how bad it would be. Wouldn't you have been afraid? Only a FOOL wouldn't have been, and Jesus was certainly no fool.

So he, knowing exactly how much pain it would bring him, was cut off entirely from his Father, abandoned by his disciples, tortured by his creatures, and put to death by his people, the very people he'd come to save.

That is courage. 

Now, you might be tempted to say that it's just the same as the courage of the 300 Spartans or the countless Rohirrim, riding into battle, doomed to die. But it's not. There's a very important difference.

"For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption."

The pagan unbeliever who faces their fear of death does exhibit courage in some measure, but it is an empty, baseless courage for courage's sake. Such men fight for their own glory and die vainly.

Jesus did not face a certain, painful and shameful death this way. Instead, he trusted his Father, that he would not abandon him to the grave, that he would not leave him to be consumed by death forever.

Now there is a very important distinction that is theologically necessary to make here. Jesus trusted his Father, but not for grace or mercy. Jesus earned the right to be raised from the dead by his righteousness. Death had no claim over him, once he had been baptized into death to pay the price for the sins of his people. Once that happened, he had a right to life that he had justly earned by his own righteousness, by his own merit. Jesus earned eternal life for himself by being sinless and perfectly righteous his whole life. He earned what Adam failed to earn.

So when I say that Jesus trusted his Father, do not take the silly route that many have taken in recent years and draw the conclusion that Jesus was therefore justified by faith. That's nonsense. There's a gigantic difference between us and Christ. We're sinners. He's not. It's that simple. He trusts in his Father's just response to his righteousness. He knew God would respond with raising him from the dead.

We too trust in God to raise us from the dead, even though we're sinners and should die eternally. Death has a claim on us sinners. But because Jesus was baptized into death for us, on our behalf - therefore we can be raised from the dead. Therefore we can be given eternal life, based not on OUR merits, but on the merits of Christ, which merits are granted us according to the terms of the eternal covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son, according to which the Father says of the Son, "You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizadek."

So.

Jesus rides the roller coaster like the second person. He stands up and leaves the Garden of Gethsemane, where he anxiously sweat drops of blood, and walks out to face his false accusers. He faced the men who would torment him. He loved the men who abandoned him. And he trusted in his Father to raise him from the dead.

You see, the second person trusts that the bar will do its job. They're afraid, yes, but they also know that the bar will keep them from falling. That knowledge is their weapon against their fear, and THAT is how they stand up to it and defy it to its face.

Jesus' weapon was knowing his own and his Father's character. He knew he had been perfectly faithful. He knew his Father would reciprocate. He trusted his Father. Jesus truly said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." And boy he owned that, and he proved that he owned it. He took the words of Scripture and owned them for his own because they are his. He IS the word incarnate.

And HE is our bar. Well, he and the Father and the Spirit, all three, working on our behalf. We trust the Spirit's testimony who promises that the Word of God is true, that his promises are real. We trust Christ's merit by which he earned eternal life for us. And we trust that the Father will be true to his Word and give us eternal life based on the righteousness of Christ, and not condemn us for all eternity based on our sin. This is our bar. The triune God in whom we trust. This is the foundation of our courage.

We can face our guilty fears because we trust that our sins are forgiven in Christ.

We can face our fears of death because we trust in God to save us by grace through faith in Christ.

We can face our fears of job loss because we trust that the Lord will make good on his promises to take care of us and our children.

We can face the fears of our children abandoning the faith because we know the Lord knows what he's doing.

We can face our fear of pain, of torments of all kinds, of hard work, of missing out, or any other fear that plagues us a thousand times a day, whether reasonable or completely irrational - all of it - we can face ALL of it because we trust in God.

Courage is the defiance of fear based on trust.

When I walked away from the ministry at last, in my own small way, I too owned those words: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him."

Yes, walking away from the ministry definitely felt like riding to ruin and the world's ending.

But it wasn't.

I am still here.

And the church will survive without me in the pulpit.

And I'm certain my family and I are better off in myriad ways.

And you know, I still haven't quoted what the Lord ACTUALLY said to Joshua. He didn't just command him to be strong and courageous. He said:

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)

Why can you face your fear? Why can you exhibit courage? BECAUSE something is true: the Lord, who is YOUR God, is with you wherever you go. HE has commanded you, HE has directed your steps.

Courage takes practice. It takes cultivating. It is a worthy pursuit. Find ways to exhibit courage today.

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Have you left the ministry? Would you like to tell your story anonymously on this blog? Email us at new2pew@gmail.com. We're always looking for more stories.

Abandoning the Ministry, Clinging to Death

It began in seminary. Alcohol, well, tobacco too, became what comforted me in times of extreme stress - which were common in seminary, what with the papers, the readings, the language exams - all of which I felt were unjustifiably difficult and overwhelming, seemingly on purpose.

I got to a point where I smoked cigars and inhaled them. Actually, I chain smoked them literally all day long on my back porch with my laptop as I studied. The stress just kept building though, and I eventually found myself sipping scotch just to stay calm enough to concentrate.

Why did these things seem to comfort me, to soothe the savage beast?

I figured it out with tobacco first. I loved the feel of the smoke going into my lungs. Precisely because it was intoxicating, poisonous, ruinous - not to mention painful. I liked it if it kind of hurt. If it burned. If it made me feel like I was choking. Bizarre, right?

Why did that comfort me in times of stress?

After giving it much thought and doing much soul searching, I eventually figured it out, and I was so horrified that I quit smoking and haven't touched the stuff in over 4 years.

It wasn't that I liked it DESPITE the fact that it was deadly. I realized that I liked it BECAUSE it was deadly.

So what on earth does that mean? It means I liked it because it tended toward death. I liked it because it was like inhaling Death itself into my lungs.

This was my idolatry - I worshiped Death. Death was what I served as a slave. It was my master, and I was its slave. Therefore, Death was my false god that I spent so much of my time worshiping, adoring. And the more frustrated I got with my studies in seminary, I was comforted by the approval and acceptance of my false god, since I felt I was not getting it from the one true God.

Of course, this was because I had made my own secret bargain with God - one which he never agreed to, but that didn't stop me from holding him to it. You see, I figured that if I did what I needed to do in order to become a minister, then he would be obligated to make me a minister. And boy, as seminary got harder and harder and harder I got ever more resentful and bitter towards him for it. He was so mean and cruel to put me through such hoops.

And ultimately, I wanted to be a minister because I wanted THAT to be how I earned God's approval. Like Peter jumping out of the boat and swimming to shore to impress Jesus with how much he's willing to sacrifice to please him. And Jesus just sort of ignores it. And then Peter pouts till Jesus finally says, would you just feed my sheep already?

Anyway, I was pouting and petulant and resentful toward God because I had placed conditions and restrictions on our relationship that I had no right to put there. And it didn't work out so well in the end.

And as I pouted, I, like an unfaithful wife, took comfort in the arms of a lover. In this case, Death.

And yet, though I learned the lesson once with tobacco, I still embraced alcohol. So it should have come as no surprise that when my internship went horribly wrong, I turned to booze for comfort instead of the Lord. And I apparently needed a LOT of comforting.

It has taken a lot for me to finally see that the same thing was taking place with booze, only in a much more horrifying way.

It got to a point where every night I would drink until one of two things happened: either I ran out of booze or I passed out. Usually both.

Why?

Because I was embracing Death still? Sort of, yes. But more...intimately. I was, literally every night, indulging suicidal desires.

No, I didn't kill myself, nor did I ever try to. But I indulged those desires, even if only a little bit, like a man whose mouse clicks lead him into the murkier regions of the internet once in a while. He's not having an affair with a woman or seeing a prostitute, but he's just indulging his lust...just a little bit. So my drinking was the indulging of a lust of a very different sort...though just a little bit.

This eventually had a catastrophic impact on my health which reached a climax during which I very nearly died. That's perhaps a bit dramatic, but 50 years or so ago I sure would have died.

And that's when I realized that I had deceived myself into indulging these desires without even allowing myself to be fully aware I was doing it, and that I had further deceived myself into thinking that my indulgence was harmless, that I wasn't ACTUALLY killing myself. But it turns out I actually WAS killing myself. Just very...very...slowly. And it was my wicked heart that understood this deep down...and was perversely comforted in it.

How twisted and disgusting a sinner am I? I perversely assumed that because God wasn't fulfilling his end of a bargain that I had completely made up and imposed upon him without his consent, that therefore God had rejected me and didn't really love me because I hadn't REALLY proven myself to him and earned his love yet. How twisted! How perverse! 

There is the spirit of antichrist that lurks in my heart, preaching against the gospel of Jesus Christ, denying the truth that we are justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. And to support my delusions, I clung even MORE tightly to Death, my false god and the idol of my heart.

And as I laid there in the hospital, having nearly died and recovering, all of this reality came flooding into my awareness, and by the grace of God the self deception was melted away and the fog of my mind cleared at last.

And I found that I did not want another drop of alcohol. Ever.

And of course, as soon as you admit something like that, everyone says, "Oh, good for you, you're an alcoholic and you recognize that and you're ready to go to AA."

Not wanting to be arrogant and wise in my own eyes I thought, ok, I'll go and see what this is all about.

So I went to AA. I'm glad I went, but I'll never go back. You see, everyone there seemed to be stuck on the fact that they used to drink themselves silly constantly, and they'd get all teary-eyed about the fact that it was their 5 year anniversary of being sober or some such thing. This didn't make sense to me.

They also seemed stuck on the idea that the problem wasn't some sinful tendency within them, but the problem was some disease called alcoholism, which apparently you get at random like any other genetic defect, and of course it's totally not your fault. The problem was the disease, it's not your fault, and instead of drinking every day, you should participate in the program every day.

And it struck me that AA is actually a cult. So they were offering me a new false god to worship in place of my old one. It even had some trappings of Christianity.

I didn't go back. I was interested in discovering WHY I drank, WHY it comforted me in times of stress. And I wanted to get to the root of that sin and YANK IT OUT by the grace of God!

And you know, I've found that when you get to the root of your sin and expose it and confess it, it seems to lose its power. Funny how that works isn't it? It's almost like sin's power lies in its deceitfulness, but once it's exposed, it is revealed for the ugly thing it is and you don't desire it anymore. It's like flirting with what you think is a beautiful young woman online, only to find out it's some 50 year old fat man pretending to be a woman, who thinks it's fun to fool people.

What on earth would make me want to cling to DEATH as a lover, rather than Jesus Christ, the God who created all things and then left his throne, who took my sin upon himself and died on the cross, who rose again because Death no longer had any power over him, and who ascended into heaven and stepped into the age to come - all so that he could enter into covenant with and be united to his church, his bride, his people, among whom I am privileged to be counted.

Paul makes a similar argument in Romans 1. What explains me preferring Death to Jesus? Why would I choose this awful substitute over what I was created for? Why would I abandon natural relations for unnatural ones?

The answer is the same as Paul implies in Romans 1. It's sin. What other explanation could there be? I chose to embrace Death, not because Death is lovely, but because Death was the opposite of what I have been called by God TO embrace. As soon as God says to embrace life and live forever, the sinful nature screams that that's obviously the last thing I'd EVER want to do.

Have you weaved a similar web of self deception around yourself?

Yes, you have.

It's just a question of how deep the rabbit hole goes.

So what room is there for my self righteous condemnation of those who "destroyed" my life? It is excluded.

I have said for a very long time that a pastor under whom I served as an intern destroyed my life, my career in the ministry, etc. In some ways that's true.

But in far more important ways it's a lie - in my case at least. In my case it's a lie because the truth is: I DESTROYED MY LIFE. And I destroyed it only because God wants me to LIVE it. So I concocted some elaborate lie and pretended I hadn't, so that I could justify my resentment toward God and destroy my life in protest to his cruelty.

I am a worm, and not a man.

But when God looks upon this wicked fool, he sees only the righteousness of his Son and none of my sin. I will live for this God.

And if he asks me to abandon the ministry, then I do so willingly, and stand ready to do whatever else he desires because HE is my God.

Hear O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone. He is the sum total of my pantheon, and I will worship no other.

Abandoned

Abandoned.

Maybe you abandoned the ministry, or maybe the ministry abandoned you. Either way, it's very likely that your friends, even the ministers you thought were your friends, have abandoned you.

"Oh, I'm sorry...I'm just SO busy these days. Things at the church are CRAZY! But things are good! Praise God! And hey, I'm sorry for what happened to you. I'll pray for you. I gotta go! Let's get together soon, ok?"

"Ummm...ok...but..." Dial tone. "But my church is holding the vote next week..."

"Ok...but..." Dial tone. "But they voted me out..."

As I languished in a particularly horrible internship that would eventually push me out of the ministry forever, my wife - MY WIFE - reached out to several ministers we thought were friends, begging them, pleading with them on multiple occasions - she emailed several times, called them, called their wives, anything she could think of - PLEASE, PLEASE call my husband. PLEASE help him! He's dying inside! He's losing his career before it even starts! He's SO depressed and I can't help him! Please!

The silence was deafening.

I was just as sure as sure can be that this was a completely unique experience. Only MY lousy friends, only THESE particular pastors could be so cruel, and God was punishing ME for daring to pursue the ministry out of selfish ambition (even though Paul said he didn't mind if the gospel was preached out of selfish ambition, so long as it's preached).

And of course, when we suffer and everyone abandons us, that's what we're tempted to believe, right? We're SURE that this is a horrible thing that has only happened to us.

And we are tempted to think that way because when someone in our church is sick, say they have some form of cancer that involves a battle that takes years to fight, then our perception is that the entire church rallies around them, bringing the family meals, praying for them at every single church gathering. It feels like we're ALWAYS hearing about that poor family and all they're going through. And if we're honest with ourselves, we tend to get a little sick of hearing about it.

Now stop and think about that. Everyone gets a little tired of hearing about it. Why? Because that's all they're doing. Hearing about it.

Next time someone in your church is dying, go and visit them in the hospital, and ask them how many visitors they've had. What they tell you will be very sad, especially as their stay in the hospital gets longer.

I once visited someone who had been sick for YEARS. Their spouse and children were SO sad! But they had grown almost numb to it after so long.Teenage children whose parent had been bed ridden their ENTIRE LIVES. Imagine!

Do you think they had a lot of friends? An active social life?

Have you ever visited someone in a nursing home? Most people have once or twice.

Did you enjoy the experience? How did it smell? Remember the poor suffering souls, dangling over the precipice of death, their lives hanging by a thread, literally just sitting around waiting to die. Did you make eye contact with them? Did you stop and talk to them all? Maybe you knelt down and looked them in the eye and asked them if you could pray for them? Maybe you held their hand and vowed to return daily after work, just to comfort them a little in their misery?

Neither did I. Nor does anyone else.

Would you like to work in a nursing home? It takes someone with rare gifts to do that kind of work. And of those, I imagine very few of them actually enjoy the work.

The truth is, the last thing you want to do in the world is go visit someone in a nursing home. Why?

It's because of the suffering. It's sad. It's depressing. You just want to get away from it. You have that reaction instinctively. It's just as natural as pulling your hand away from something hot that has just burned you. Touching it causes you pain. Being in a nursing home causes you pain. You want to just get away.

It's NOT just interns who are going through a horrible time in their internship who are abandoned. It's not just the minister whose congregation is crucifying him unjustly, or whose wife is leaving him or who is being put on trial for a crime he didn't commit.

It's also ANYONE who is suffering. Your minister friends don't want to be around you for the same reason you don't want to be in a nursing home.

Now, that's not an excuse - it's just a reason.

Maybe you can forgive your friends though when you realize the very same sinful tendencies lurk in every heart. Prove me wrong if you still feel defiant and go to the local nursing home. Even if you DO go once, you probably won't go back.

It's a good thing funerals only happen once, because no one would come back the second time.

But what is it about nursing homes that make us so uncomfortable? I could be wrong, but I think it's because it makes us feel vulnerable, like maybe some day we too will suffer such a fate. We don't want to be around death because we like to forget that one day we too will die. Or maybe that we too might get cancer or get sick or have to go through some awful, painful procedure for one reason or another.

If that's even remotely correct, or even if there's just a nugget of truth in it, then should it be any surprise that a minister wouldn't want to hang out with a minister whose congregation just voted him out of office, or whose presbytery just forced him to abandon the ministry?

They can't be around you any more than you want to be around the barely alive in a nursing home. They want to pretend like their job is secure. They want to believe that their congregation loves them and would never turn on them. Just like you once did, and turned your eyes away from the many signs that in retrospect were painfully obvious, but to which at the time you were blissfully - willfully - oblivious.

So yes, be angry, but only just. Remember that you would react the same way. Heck, maybe you knew someone who was once crushed and you stayed away from him. It's ok to be hurt, but don't add self righteousness to it, because you are no better.

And I'm not saying this from some ivory tower, just studying the theory. It happened to ME. This is MY thought process about MY experiences. I was abandoned. By ministers! Men I thought were my CLOSE friends! But gradually our conversations grew less and less frequent, till eventually they stopped returning my calls, even my wife's impassioned pleas.

This is how I've learned to forgive them.

But as my counselor recently explained, forgiveness doesn't necessarily entail giving trust back right away.

I've forgiven those men, but I no longer have a relationship with them, because I cannot trust them. Sadly, they have proven to me in ways I cannot forget that they are not worthy of trust. Those scars remain.

At any rate, they're too ashamed to return my phone calls at this point anyway.

Instead, I look forward to the day when we will at last be reconciled in glory.

In glory, when we're at last free from sin, I will see these men again, and they will apologize for abandoning me, and I will apologize for hating them for it, and we will be truly reconciled, and it will be forever.

And that's where our hope is right? Isn't that what I used to passionately insist upon in the pulpit, that we should abandon hope in this world and place it in the age to come?

Abandoned.

And so we come full circle. Let's abandon hope in this world, and instead live our lives with the age to come in mind, storing up treasure in heaven rather than here on earth.

Preaching to Satisfy Your Ego

Simplicity. Clarity. Brevity.

These are the very top virtues for any sermon.

Of course, you have to be true to the text you're preaching. That's absolutely important. But assuming you understand the text at all, then your sermon needs to aim at: simplicity, clarity and brevity.

If you are not aiming at those virtues, you are doing your congregation an incredible disservice. And why are you doing it? To satisfy your ego.

Yes, that's right. I'm posting anonymously and I'm about to say something that many ministers will consider an unfair, unjust judgment that lacks all the facts.

But I'm doing it anyway because I've been in that pulpit. I know what tempts ministers and their egos.

If you are not aiming at simplicity, clarity and brevity as your top three goals after doing justice to the text, it is because your ego has gotten in the way.

Why do I say this? It's quite simple really. Suppose that your number one concern after doing justice to the text was your listeners. Suppose that you were most interested in their best interests. What would that look like?

It looks like this: simplicity, clarity, brevity. When your biggest concern is being understood by your hearers, what isn't your biggest concern?

Impressing your audience.

Now stop and think about that for a minute. If you are concerned about impressing your audience, what will you necessarily NOT care about? You won't care about whether or not they actually understand what you're saying. You won't care if they get it. They don't need to get it to be impressed.

In fact, it's usually helpful if they don't get it, if you want them to be impressed. After all, all they really need to know is how smart you are, or how well read you are, or how good a job you do of crafting an excellent sermon. And if they come away saying, "Man, he knows so much! I'll never know as much as him!" then they're impressed with you, even though they didn't understand.

Who, you ask, are these crazy ministers who care more about impressing their audience than communicating with them? Well, frankly, most of them.

Oh, now I've got you agitated I suppose. But it's true. They want you to think they're brilliant.

You don't believe me do you? Ok, I'll prove it. This Sunday, after the service, when you're shaking your pastor's hand, tell him, "Hey, thanks for that sermon, it was really simple and easy to understand!"

What kind of reaction do you think you'll get?

Then the next Sunday, shake his hand and say, "Wow, pastor. Just WOW! That was absolutely brilliant! You're so well read! Pure genius! Just the way you have with words is astounding!"

I bet you'll get a much more positive and lively reaction. You may even have to excuse yourself from the conversation.

Look, Pastors are sinners just like the rest of us. We can forgive them for it, right?

But they are tempted with a desire to impress their audience. And this leads to all kinds of foolishness that would have no place for those seeking to communicate with simplicity, clarity and brevity.

I have actually heard people speak glowingly of a minister, "I never had any idea what he was saying till the last 2-3 minutes of his sermons, when it would all come together." And there are many ministers who foolishly and recklessly seek to mimic that style of preaching.

Really?

Most ministers aren't quite that far gone, but just about any minister can be tempted to use jargon from time to time. Or maybe they drop some names of some famous authors or ministers and quote them. At length. And no one has any idea what they said, because it's a translation of a Latin text written several hundred years ago. But boy, that minister did his homework, didn't he? We won't doubt his credibility will we? Never mind that we have no idea what he actually said.

But what if ministers sought to impress their hearers with the text instead?

What if their number one goal was for you to understand what this text was saying, even if you were only a child? What then?

You know, we Protestants are very quick to say that the Roman Church was crazy to conduct services in Latin for so long after Latin became a dead language. Why do we think that's so crazy? Because no one knew what they were saying, and therefore what was said was of no value.

Isn't that Paul's criticism of the Corinthian church in 1Cor 14? Verse 9 says, "So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air."

Ministers - I wish you would actually stop and THINK about that. If no one knows what you're saying, it's of no value to the people you're speaking to. You're speaking into the air. It doesn't matter if you're babbling in some nonsense baby talk and claiming it's the language of angels, or if you're speaking in Latin to people who don't speak Latin, or if you're just arrogantly using big words and complex sermon structures because you have a fancy seminary degree and you want everyone to know it.

A lot of ministers like to say, "My sermon this morning has 3 points, and they are..." and then they proceed to list them. This is ridiculously helpful for people taking notes.

And yet, one minister once said to me that he never does that, and he never does it very deliberately because it insults the audience's intelligence. It's not that he had 3 points and just failed to disclose them, it's that he was against having points at all. His sermons were like one gigantic run on sentence.

My eyes were opened when I invited a friend to church one Sunday, and he actually came. And the sermon text was some passage from the Old Testament that was 3 chapters of genealogies. Yes, 3 chapters.

My poor friend walked out absolutely bewildered. He had no idea what had just been said and learned NOTHING. He certainly wasn't about to abandon hope in anything and everything but Christ.

What a shame.

Yes, I know. The genealogies are Scripture too. I get it. But seriously, muster a bit of courage. If you can't preach an intelligible sermon on some passage of Scripture - SKIP IT!

Oh, but my conscience won't let me do that! That'd be like saying that this passage isn't Scripture!

No, it's not like saying that at all. It's admitting that you can't preach a coherent sermon on that passage, and you're sparing your flock the pain of having to endure an incoherent sermon.

And seriously, WHERE is the principle of lectio continua found in Scripture? Or do we not believe in Sola Scriptura anymore?

For those of you who don't know the jargon, what I just said is that the principle of lectio continua - which just means preaching through a book of the bible, chapter by chapter, one passage at a time until you finish the book and move on to the next one - is not found in the Bible anywhere. Nowhere does God command that in Scripture. However wise the principle might be, it's nowhere to be found in Scripture. And Sola Scriptura is a Latin phrase that just means Scripture alone. The point is that the Bible alone gets to tell us what to do, not some stupid principle that men made up, no matter how wise.

So for Christ's sake, and the sake of your hearers, SKIP that passage you can't preach. Maybe no one can preach some of those genealogies. Then maybe no one should preach them.

Or is it better to speak into the air and waste an opportunity to drive the point of the gospel a little deeper into someone's thick skull this week? Or actually communicate to those visitors who aren't sure if they should be there?

Because if you're trying to impress your audience with what you know, with your mastery of the Old Testament canon, with your familiarity with the famous authors of the church, your knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, or the subtle nuances of how to craft the perfect sermon according to the coolest theory you've ever heard - then you aren't preaching the text anymore at all.

You're only preaching yourself.

You're not saying, "Hey, look at Jesus!"

You're saying, "Hey, look at me!"

I know how strong the temptation is. I have felt it. You want them to listen to you. You have to establish your credibility. They have to accept what you're saying. They shouldn't question you. They need to just do what you tell them...right?

No.

No, you don't need them to listen to you.

They need to fall in love with Jesus.

You need to decrease, he needs to increase. You need to DISAPPEAR in the pulpit.

Preach the WORD.

As long as you're preaching the Word, what you're saying has all the credibility your sermon needs. It's the Word of GOD.

It has been proven by Christ's resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven. It has been proven by the apostolic authority bestowed on the men of his choosing. It has been proven by signs and miracles of all kinds performed at the time when the foundations of the church were laid.

The Bible's credibility has been MORE than established.

I have news for you, preachers. You HAVE no credibility in the pulpit except that which you BORROW from the text! No one gathers to hear YOU on Sunday morning. They gather to hear from GOD.

To the extent that simplicity, clarity, and brevity are NOT your goal in the pulpit is the extent to which your preaching is simply to feed your ego. To that extent, you are not preaching the Word of God but only preaching yourself. To that extent, you put up your own ego as an obstacle between your flock and Christ Jesus, their only hope for salvation. You are risking peoples' eternal salvation for the sake of your EGO.

I don't envy ministers on judgment day. 

This is one of the reasons why I no longer envy them for today. I know that temptation. I am glad I no longer have to face it, at least not with such high stakes.

If you think that temptation didn't have a strong pull on me, just look at how long all my posts are on this blog! Terrible! Sorry readers!

What is Wisdom Worth?

As a child, I struggled - as we all do - to be assured of approval. I was desperate for it. Whose approval did I want?

Well, of course, as is the case with any child, I wanted my parents' approval. But I also wanted the approval of teachers at school, Sunday School teachers at church, and perhaps more than all of this - my peers.

Yes, I was a little people pleaser growing up. Not because I wanted everyone to be pleased with me for its own sake necessarily. It wasn't really praise I was after. Mostly I wanted to avoid getting in trouble with anyone in authority, and wanted to avoid being looked down upon or teased by my peers. I was ruled by fear - the fear of the consequences of a lack of approval.

My desire for approval, however, was a red herring. Have you ever heard of where the term "red herring" comes from? Well, ok, first and foremost, it's one of those secret terms that only well educated people are familiar with, so they use them as much as possible in order to impress their audience with their erudition. The word erudition is another such word. It just means you want to impress the audience with how smart you are or how well read and well educated you are. To be all those things is to be erudite. See? Now you too can be in the club, and can dumbfound your audience with how stupid they are in comparison to yourself...

Yes, I'm talking to you, preachers.

But I got off topic. I was talking about red herrings. Actually, I just succumbed to a bit of a red herring myself. A red herring is simply a distraction. The term comes from when people would train hunting dogs or blood hounds or whatever to track by scent. They'd give the dog a scent to track, and then they would use red herrings (a particularly pungent kind of fish) in an attempt to distract the dog from the scent they were tracking. This taught the dog to be disciplined and focused on the task at hand.

So my desire for approval from literally everyone (anyone) was just a red herring - it was a distraction. Whose approval did I actually want? God's of course.

When I had no choice but to walk away from the ministry, THIS was the most painful aspect of it. I was just absolutely sure that I did not have God's approval anymore, if I had ever had it at all.

This is the most difficult part of abandoning the ministry, and it is especially difficult if it comes in the context of also being rejected by the church.

At any rate, back to childhood. I can remember being so desperate for approval (or rather, some assurance of approval that might penetrate my thick skull) that I grew quite frustrated with my entire life situation. I remember quite vividly crying myself to sleep growing up, often accompanied by pillow-muffled screams.

Now, you may think that's a little unusual. But then again, maybe you don't. Or maybe you do, despite the fact that you can probably relate to it. But the truth is, I was THAT kid growing up. You know, the one no one wanted on their team (I sure hope teachers have figured out by now that letting kids pick teams is just an awful thing to do), the one the other kids always made fun of. Kids can be cruel.

So you'll understand why the story of Solomon appealed to me so strongly.

You see, one Sunday, I went to church, and heard the story of how Solomon became king of Israel. When Samuel anointed Solomon as king, he told him on behalf of the Lord that he could ask for anything - ANYTHING - he wanted, and it would be granted.

Well, Solomon apparently gave the best answer one could give when presented with such an opportunity. He asked for wisdom. I didn't remember the details. I only remembered what he asked for and how the Lord responded. The Lord, I was told, was PLEASED. So pleased, in fact, that he bestowed great wealth on him and wisdom and he became Israel's greatest king.

Of course, as a kid, the riches was totally lost on me, and I certainly couldn't understand why anyone would want 1,000 wives (what's a concubine?). However, I did figure out that Solomon asked for wisdom and it pleased the Lord.

To me, this was a magic formula. To me, it was as simple as putting two quarters in a soda machine (remember that?) and getting a can of Coke. The request for wisdom was two quarters and the Lord's pleasure with me was my can of Coke which I desperately wanted.

So every day from that day on - well into high school I think - I prayed for wisdom when saying my bedtime prayers and thought of Solomon.

Now, you might say that my theology was all screwed up. It was. You might also say that I was trying to manipulate God into approving of me. I was. But I was also just a kid. As tainted with sin as that prayer was, it wasn't ONLY sinful. After all, I just wanted God to be PLEASED with me. He himself told me in his Word that it's good to ask for wisdom, and I believed it and asked him for it myself. So it wasn't all bad, nor was it all good. But that's pretty much all I can say about the prayers I said this morning.

For example, I recently helped a friend get a job. He thanked me profusely. He assumed that I had gone out of my way to help him simply because I was being kind to him. After all, he needed a job and I was able to help and I gave it to him. And when he thanked me, I looked at him with a smile and said, "Are you kidding? I didn't do it for you. I did it to feed my ego." Of course, I was joking. But the best jokes have an element of truth to them, and this was no exception (and yes, we both laughed - it's all about the timing). The truth is, the help I provided him was not purely altruistic. In some sense it was about feeding my ego. When I was a child, I idolized the idea of the mafia don who bestowed favors on people all the time, who then owed him a favor in return, along with their loyalty and their love. This is one of those ways that I've just always been tempted.

However, it would be wrong of me to withhold that help from my friend, simply because my help would be tainted with sin. Sure, I took some pride in having helped someone. And knowing that in advance, maybe I could (should?) have refrained from helping him to avoid the temptation. But then he wouldn't have been helped and wouldn't have a job. So I did it, and yes, I did indulge in a little secret self congratulations. But the Lord used it anyway to provide my friend and brother in Christ a job that he really, REALLY needed.

In the same way, the Lord used my sin-tainted prayers as a child to bring about his purposes. He did answer those prayers. He did give me wisdom.

You know, when I was a child, I was pretty sure that Solomon was given wisdom in much the same way that Neo learned Kung Fu in the Matrix. If, for some reason you haven't seen the Matrix, please correct yourself as soon as possible. In it, Neo basically downloads knowledge like a computer. In 10 seconds, he learns Kung Fu. Anyway, it seemed very much to me that in the story of Solomon, he asked for wisdom and then was instantly wise. In Solomon's case, that may be how it happened.

For the rest of us, however, it's not. I had little idea what I was actually asking for. It turns out that the road to wisdom is paved with suffering. For example, see Heb 5:8, which says that Jesus learned obedience through suffering.

Now, I've often had quite a bit of trouble understanding that. How is it that the sinless Son of God had to LEARN obedience? Well, I don't think it really means that he had to learn HOW to obey, so much as he learned what it TAKES to obey. In suffering, Jesus learned specifically what it COSTS to obey.

In the same way, I think, wisdom has a price. You aren't born with it. You suffer and then become wise. Perhaps Solomon had a rough childhood. After all, his mom and dad had an adulterous affair, after which his mother got pregnant, which caused his father to have his mother's first husband killed so that their adultery wouldn't be called to account.

It may be the case that Solomon's brothers, and possibly even the people of Israel gave him a hard time about that. In fact, it's probably quite likely. The Jews thought that bloodlines were a very big deal. And everyone probably knew at the time what happened. We still know all about it 3,000 years later! I think Solomon probably had a rough time of it. Maybe he even screamed himself to sleep a time or two. Perhaps that's where his humility came from, as exhibited by his response to the prophet who anointed him king.

But whatever the case, I'm pretty sure wisdom is learned through painful experience. For instance, if you get an adjustable rate mortgage that you can just barely afford to make the payments on today, and the payments skyrocket tomorrow because the interest rates finally rose, so that you eventually have to foreclose on your house, chances are you will wisely avoid anything but a fixed rate mortgage going forward. Thus a tiny seed of wisdom is planted in someone's heart and nourished with suffering.

If you ever have a chance to go to visit someone in the hospital who has been battling some disease for a long time, please do so. You'll find that they're very wise. They care very little for the things of this world, and they look to the age to come. What a pleasure and joy it is to visit some sweet little old lady, barely alive in her hospital bed, who is nonetheless sweet to the nurses, kind to the other patients, worried about taking her pastor's time, grateful that he would come see her, etc. Wisdom. She knows from her suffering that what really matters is not this age, but the age to come. She's ok with suffering in the body for a time because she is looking forward to being raised from the dead.

And so it is with those who have been badly burned, spurned and abused by the people of God, the church. You see, they have been exposed to the ugliness that persists in every church of every denomination, no matter who the pastor is, no matter how godly the elders, how high the offerings are, how many people sit in the pews, etc. Every church everywhere is tainted. Every church everywhere is impure.

And every pastor, at any time, can find himself suddenly shepherding a flock of wolves, bursting and belching because they have eaten all the sheep and have turned their greedy eyes to their shepherd (or the shepherd's intern).

God promised to meet your needs. God promised you salvation in Christ. He did NOT promise that you could always be a pastor.

Oh, how I hoped in my own desires as if they were promises of God! I graduated seminary, I landed an internship, I endured the worst that that minister and elders could dish out during said internship, and I even endured the seemingly required year or so of unemployment while I waited for my first call. But that call never came. Was God being unfaithful to me? Was God being mean or cruel?

No.

At what time did God promise me in his Word that if I did all the things just mentioned that I would earn the right to be a minister?

Without realizing it, I had devised my own covenant of works and assumed that God had entered into that covenant with me. According to my covenant, I'd check all the boxes required to be a minister and if I checked all those boxes, I'd become a minister. That was God's responsibility to me. We each had our responsibilities in the equation. I did my part, he did his.

But that's not how it works, is it?

God promised us that if we would just worry about seeking his kingdom and his righteousness (whose righteousness - mine or God's?), then he would take care of the clothes on our back, the roof over our heads and the food in our bellies. It may be that he'll give you a job, or it may be that the deacons will help you.

God promised us that if we have faith in Jesus Christ, he will impute the righteousness of Christ to us and permanently unite us to his Son by his indwelling Spirit, who will be at work in us, conforming us to the image of his Son, growing us in righteousness and reforming the desires of our hearts. And he promised to do this completely by his grace, by his mercy, not for anything done in us, or by us, but simply because he chose us.

Oh, they say, but God is love! How can he choose only SOME? When I choose to marry my wife, am I being unloving to all the other women in the world? And at the same time, if I choose every woman in the world, what makes any of them special? As they say, when everyone is special, no one is.

But I digress. The point is, God promised us salvation from the condemnation earned by our sin, the condemnation of eternal death, and instead has promised us eternal life by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And he has promised to provide for our needs.

But he never promised I could be a minister. He never promised any former minister that that man could retire a minister. In fact, the Bible says in Jude that "certain men have crept in among" us, and that those men are up to no good. They're here to cause trouble, and trouble they will cause.

For you ministers out there who want to believe that your church will never turn on you, or that your ability to make the people in your church like and appreciate you is the source of your security, think again. Who killed Jesus? Who was screaming, crucify, crucify? It was not those outside the church. It was the church.

Who was it that threw Jeremiah into a sewer? Who persecuted Paul? Who murdered the prophets? On whose heads did Jesus place the guilt for all the prophets?

It has ALWAYS been the people of God who had the most hostility toward the prophets, toward those who speak to them on God's behalf.

We are always so concerned about the evil outside the church. Who cares? It's all small time compared to the evil WITHIN the church. The church contains the greatest evil that has ever been on earth. They are Satan's hidden sleeper agents, walking among us, pretending to be one of us. They're so good at it they have begun to believe their own lies.

And they are everywhere.

What price would you be willing to pay to gain wisdom?

God asks us all to pay different costs, but make no mistake, we will all suffer to gain wisdom. We have to. There's no other way to learn. You cannot learn that debt is dumb until you get deep into debt and have to work your butt off to get out of it. You cannot learn to be wary of office politics until you've been stabbed in the back.

God wants us to be wise. Christ is our wisdom, says the Scriptures. But he learned through suffering. We do too.

And God sure did answer those many prayers as a child.

He has answered those prayers many, many times over.

But there is one time when he answered that prayer the loudest, the clearest.

When I was left with no choice but to walk away from the ministry, that's when God answered the prayers of a child who once desperately asked God for wisdom, just because he only wanted to please his God.

And as I reflect back on all that anger, all those feelings of betrayal, how I felt so hurt and rejected by God - I have actually been taught something by that little boy I used to be once upon a time. That little boy was willing to do ANYTHING to please God.

Well, one day, God asked me to walk away from a career I had been carefully cultivating for about a decade. All that effort I put forth, all the sweat, tears, money, stress - not to mention the price my wife paid - all of it had to matter less to me than pleasing God. I had no choice.

My God asked me to lay it all aside and, like Abraham, to go to the land which he would show me later.

That's when God answered the desperate pleas of a little boy. Because when I said, over and over, "Please give me wisdom," I was really saying, "Please just let me glorify you."

It's a privilege to have walked this road. It really is. I have learned more than I could ever possibly articulate in something like a relatively incoherent blog post. I have gained some small measure of wisdom through what I have suffered.

And it was all worth it.

What is Wisdom Worth?

The price I paid was small. I would pay much more.

I am tempted to wish that God would ask less of you, but then, that would be to wish that God would give you a smaller measure of wisdom. And I wish you a large measure of his wisdom, and I hope he gives me much more.

And I know what it costs.