June 12, 2013
Acquisitions
At a writer’s conference I discussed a book idea with an acquisitions
editor of a Christian publishing house. Although my concept didn’t fit with
their current needs, the editor strongly encouraged me to submit to the
secular, rather than the Christian market. He reasoned that religious writing
meant to hold the church accountable did not have an audience. Curious, I
brought up Paul as an example. Paul did not mince words, putting both
individuals and churches on notice and exposing their sins – sexual immorality,
false idols, impurity, just to name a few. I was flabbergasted by the editor’s
response, “Yes, but Paul was in prison so
he could say whatever he wanted to say. He wouldn’t lose his job. Preachers
[today] won’t preach tough stuff, because
they would lose their jobs.” If in fact this editor knows what he is
talking about, our pulpit or ministry search committees need to take another
look at their acquisitions.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I am only comfortable with God using superlatives, unless the topic is limited to a definitely quantifiable and knowable amount. The entire population of man from the first to the last is neither quantifiable nor knowable to any of us. But knowing it completely isn’t a problem to God. And He says every one of them is false. I don’t know how preachers get off on feeling they are not false. I know most of them cognitively own up to the fact of their own falsehood, but I have met few who feel it or even search for its systems and affects in order to devise the best ways of overcoming its results.
-----Confession does not make falsehood go away. Repentance makes a specific falsehood go away. But it no more operates upon the general population of falsehoods than a chainsaw operates at once upon an entire forest. And the desire to not be false raises a call to the Lord for help, by whose mercy we are then seen through His righteousness. But the regarding of His righteousness as being ours does not clear the forest of trees, either. It merely sets up the process.
-----And the process of better dealing with each falsehood as it rolls through our moment becomes of paramount importance. Because that’s the way a chainsaw works. It takes down a tree at a time. That’s process. By the process of confessing, repenting, and calling upon the Lord concerning each falsehood consciously encountered we go changing into His likeness from one degree of glory to another, regardless of the fact there will always be more trees to fall until the day our death falls them all.
-----It is also enormously interesting that, as empathetic people, we reflect one another. This became an observed fact almost as early as psychology became a disciplined study. But even before it was registered into the textbooks of mankind, it was an understood principle; the principles of behavior and obedience from God’s Word are replete with connotations of it. So, a community of people, each sincerely and diligently overcoming their falsehoods a tree at a time, will itself also grow more and more into the likeness of the Lord, each generation shining brighter than the one before as ever more honest and truthful decisions are modeled within it, elevating normality from one level of glory to the next.
-----Apparently that hasn’t worked. We’ve had twenty centuries of generations for God’s Spirit to combine with our efforts for the growing of better and more godly social norms. Yet we still wallow in the same old pig sty normality. There are simply far too few people who enjoy making a perty godly. So the preachers - still men, still false - are hard pressed by the congregations’ pig sty reflections to behave accordingly in the pulpit.
-----In that same verse regarding man’s falsehood is the statement of God’s truthfulness. From early in the church, the tiny glimpse at worship service shown in I Corinthians 14:29-31 became ignored. Instead of a gathering of saints hearing many different voices gifted by the Spirit, the pulpit was given over to one.
-----God’s Word is correct in saying many sticks together are not easily broken, but one alone snaps quickly. Why should the lone stick not fear? How different might this world have been if each pulpit had not become possessed by one man like a soul by a demon. God’s Word is always the wiser. Yet even preachers abandon it.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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