March 29, 2010
Mr. Fix-It
On one of the boards that I serve there is a vacancy, so the current members are reading resumes from folks who’d like to serve with us. It’s surprising how many applicants subtly, and some not so subtly, reveal a bias toward the group they want to join. They’ll highlight what they perceive to be flaws and then proceed to tell you how they can fix the organization once they are appointed to the position. We do something similar in the church when we tell others that we know what is best when it comes to music, the sermon, or serving. It doesn’t hurt for us to be reminded that, “…in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” (1 Cor 12:18 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Every church, organization, family, and government is made of individuals. Every individual falls short of the glory of God. Far short. So how can we think that any church, organization, family, or government is without flaw? Groups share the thinking, ambitions, and goals of their members. When new members join the group, or old members encounter basic philosophical changes, the group itself is challenged by change. It is both a strength and a weakness that any group strives to maintain its status quo. For the point of importance about change is not change itself. Nor is it necessarily improvement as perceived by any one or more individuals. The point of importance about change is discernable truth. That is why any change in a church, an organization, a family, or a government must first be carefully examined in the light of God’s Word. If the perceived change fails in that light, then effort to maintain status quo is a strength. If it is born out by the light, then resistance to change is a weakness.
-----All eyes are now cast upon who is doing the examination. The point of importance about the examination is not the examination itself. It is about the trustworthiness of the ones doing it. That a person’s failure to perceive God’s intended message in His Word may be caused by lack of understanding, lack of education, lack of moral character, or any number of other reasons matters less than the fact that there must be a basic trustworthiness in his ability to do it. Not everyone has the same ability. Some have more, some less, some hardly any at all.
-----So how do we know who to listen to? Or do we just not listen to anyone except who we’ve been listening to? Why is it that we have basically trusted them? For that matter, can we really trust ourselves to know any of this certainly? Well. My guess is because we must weaken our grasp upon expected perfection and be satisfied with mere improvement. When we expect perfection, we must expect to know everything. And you know how that goes! But when we anticipate improvement, we expect to learn. That makes room for humility. Humility is willing to look at things other than how it has looked at them before. And that lays the pathway for meekness, which is unwilling to either change from what it has found being true to the light, nor return to what it has found being false. Paul lists the evidences of the trustworthy character in I Timothy and Titus. And not just there alone. I Cor 14:37-38 is an example of another. Rom 12:9-21, Col 3:12-17, and Gal 5:22-26 are more examples. The more a person exhibits the characteristics of godly behavior in his day to day getting around in life, the more trustworthy are his insights.
-----But that is not to exclude God from the shaping of His church so the godly man can have his own way. Many folks may have some pretty broad plains of failure through which runs a stream of sparkling purity. Like a ribbon of oasis in the desert, they are trustworthy in the ways they follow God’s righteousness as well. If we all back off perfection a bit (yet not so far as to recede into the darkness of indiscretion) and give each other a chance to shine their bits of known truth, God will be able to piece His churches, organizations, families, and nations together as He needs them to be.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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