Thesis 78- We must teach our children humility.
Scholars have debated for millennia what Paul’s thorn in his side was. While I can’t prove my theory, I’m confident I know the answer. I think it was kidney stones. When you consider what he called it and the fervency with which he prayed against it, the answer becomes clear. What is equally clear, though painful to admit, is why God chose to not take away that thorn. God said no so that Paul would remember his dependence on God.
Paul, when writing to the church at Corinth, noted that God had not called many who were wise, noble or strong (I Corinthians 1:26). I love how careful Paul is. He didn’t say “none” but “not many.” Surely Paul must have known how strong, how wise, how noble he was. Surely he must have understood how deeply the church depended on him. If he ever forgot, I’m sure the devil was there to remind him, “Look at you Paul. You really are something. Sure, you had that shameful life before your conversion. But now. I mean, come on. Writing more of the New Testament than anyone else. All those churches planted. Audiences with kings. Where would that ragtag band of losers be without you?”
The grace of God gave Paul the thorn in his side that Paul might be blessed with humility. And God, we know, gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). Paul moves from grace to grace. Which is just where we ought to be leading our children. As we raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4) we should expect them to bypass much of the folly that is common to the youth outside the kingdom. When they do, however, they are likely to fall into the folly that is common to all of us inside the kingdom, pride. They, like we, can very easily end up praying “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men.”
How then do we teach them humility? First, by modeling it. Parents should be the quickest and deepest to repent. As we acknowledge our weaknesses, our failures, the ugliness of sin that remains yet with us, we remind them that we are all in the same boat together. As we rejoice in the grace of God in Christ, throwing ourselves on His mercy, we receive grace and pass it along.
Second, we don’t hesitate to show them their own sin. Somehow we have got it in our heads that if we teach our children sound theology, if we equip them with the doctrines of grace, if they embrace the biblical notion of total depravity, we will have done our job. We miss, and thus they miss this important truth- believing that men are totally depraved is easy, taking no moral courage, no self-inspection. Believing I am a sinner is a whole different matter. Reciting TULIP, however true it is, will lead to pride. Singing, “…that saved a wretch like me” should have the opposite effect.
Our children need to know that we know that neither we nor they are the heroes of the story. We are instead the villains. Only through His grace, by His Spirit, because of His Son are we redeemed, rescued, remade and adopted. Our children need to not just understand the gospel, but to feel it, from head to toe.
There are some of us still around who remember the pre-internet world. There was a time when if you wanted your thoughts to reach an audience you had to find a publisher willing to help you out. That publisher had his own reputation to guard. In addition, he had his own money on the line. This provided a significant hedge against reckless writing. The internet has ground that hedge down to the roots. Now we are all our own publishers, and our financial investment is little more than a monthly internet bill.
In the old days we chose who we’d read in large part on the basis of how trustworthy we found the publisher to be. We knew both William F. Buckley and Jann Wenner were more trustworthy than whomever the imaginative fellow was down at the Weekly World News. The publisher listed his own name and the brick and mortar address of the office. The author listed his name as well. Now we have anonymous “publishers” publishing their anonymous writings, hiding their ip addresses through proxy servers. Now mysterious and arcane mathematical calculations determine what shows up first when we search out information. How now do we know whom to trust?
We trust those who confirm our biases. Credibility is now wrapped up in who hates the people we hate and who loves the people we love. Someone going after our friends online has an attack blog. Someone going after our enemies online has a discernment ministry.
Last week someone read something I wrote that they didn’t agree with. They replied with a link to an article about one of my scandals in my past. “This you?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “why do you ask?” On the same day I had another commenter falsely accuse, no, not accuse but convict me based on something he read on an anonymous attack blog. I’d like to think the first person was acting with integrity and wanted to check for himself. I suspect, however, that his true motive was to put me in a glass dog house.
In the first instance I can confess that yes, I was guilty. In the second it’s my word against the word of my anonymous accuser. How much weight should we give to an anonymous, or pseudo-nonymous accusation? None. Less than none. But we do, if they are going after those who already don’t care for. Oh, we might pride ourselves on how judicious we are. How many times have you heard, or worse, said something like this, “Well, if he’s guilty of even ten percent of what is written here, he’s a terrible, awful, good-for-nothing so and so.”? What we should be saying is “Well, if he’s innocent of even ten percent of what is written here, his accuser is a terrible, awful, good-for-nothing so and so.”
My counsel? Why don’t we try to not only stop speaking ill of others, but stop listening to those who speak ill of others? Why don’t we look at gossip, whether spread over the backyard fence of across the world wide web as the Bible does, a destructive, vile sin-
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless (Romans 1:29-31).
The internet didn’t create this problem. It is born out of our own hearts. Which means there is only one solution- repenting and believing His Word. That is counsel you can trust, because the Author is not just true, but Truth.
It has always been my counsel to those seeking to enter the ministry that they should go the boot camp route. They shouldn’t start as the youth guy, moving up to the associate guy and then take a shot as Pastor of 1st Pres. of Catfish, Mississippi. Instead they should cut to the chase and join the special forces- be a church planter. Their lips usually begin to sweat and quiver. They fear I’ve asked too much. Then I explain that this choice is the better one not because the challenges build muscle mass, but because it’s the easier route. Those who serve in existing churches must run the deadly gauntlet of How Things Have Always Been Done. They must maneuver their way around the suspicious elder with the deep pockets. And they can be certain that the Queen Bee gossip will befriend him only long enough to get gossip about him to pass along. He will forever be compared to dear Pastor Before You, despite the fact that they rode him out of town on a rail. All the church planter has to worry about is gathering enough people and money to survive. His only challenge is being chief cook and bottle washer for the malcontents who hated the church they came from. For the same reasons they will soon hate his church. Comparatively speaking, it’s small potatoes, if only because this calling comes with fewer sheep.
On the other hand, when you plant a church, there are advantages. There is no debate over praise choruses, Psalms only or hymns. You make that decision. You never have to lead your congregation “toward” weekly communion. You may have to fill the cups all by yourself, but you get to make the decision. You won’t have to close down the nursery or the youth department. All you have to do is never open either. In short, the church planter is given the unique opportunity to put his stamp on the church he is seeking to grow. He makes decisions that will set the direction of the church for years to come.
Which may be the greatest danger in following this route. I have heard it said that the late James Boice, who served for decades as the pastor of the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, spent his entire time their under the shadow of the former occupant of the pulpit. Dr. Boice’s own mother referred to 10th Presbyterian as “Dr. Barnhouse’s church.” All the freedom given to a church planter is the freedom to place one’s mark on a particular church, to shape it, and give it direction. And so the serpent sidles up and offers the most shocking of idols, the church itself. The danger is that pastors (and it can even happen to those who inherit churches rather than plant them) build up local churches not as houses of worship of the living God, but as monuments to themselves.
The Holy Spirit, while equipped with far greater power than the intrepid church planter, is nevertheless far less visible. The Word that is to be preached rests under the lip of the pulpit, but the words of the preacher flow forth from the pulpit. Your church may rest upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, but you’re the steeple, the clanging bell that lets the watching world know that you are there. That’s the temptation, and as absurd as it seems, it is a real one. It afflicted Nadab and Abihu who tried to upstage God with their own light show. It afflicted the children of Israel who found their identity not in the Lord, but in the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. Why should we be surprised if we succumb to the same temptation? Virtually every man, whatever his calling, hopes to make a name for himself. The pastor is not immune from this.
So how do we fight this battle? As always we tear down false idols best by bowing before the living God. The greater evil than the worship of the false is the failure to worship the true. It is a challenge to seek to build a monument to ones self when one is acutely aware of his own sin. Remember that the building, the institution exists because we are all in need of a savior, so that His name might be exalted. Remember as you gather, whichever side of the pulpit, that you gather in His name, and for His glory. Remember that every church survives the death of its founder. More important still remember that every church is only a church as long as it remembers the death of its Founder.
It is good and right and proper that we should honor the very gifts that God has given us. My own Father was a great and godly man who, by the grace of God, had tremendous impact on the church. While his gifts, his energy, his wisdom were all gifts from our Father above, we thank our Father above by noting those gifts. And God has blessed us with countless heroes of the faith, men we ought to imitate, even as they imitate Christ. What we ought not to do, on the other hand, is seek such honors for ourselves. What we ought not to do is to draw attention to ourselves, or the work of our hands. Those who labor faithfully build monuments to Christ. Those who labor for themselves labor in vain, for they but build white washed tombs that will hold their own dead bones.
One might think that the main stream media, after a long series of embarrassing gaffes and shameful reveals would be on its best behavior. A high ranking official at a well known cratering news network admits to using his network to ensure the election of President Biden. Our social media overlords create an intentional social media blackout on the President’s ties to his son Hunter’s misdeeds. Main stream media has shamed itself time and again. The silver lining in that dark cloud is this- precious few seem to notice or care. It is one thing to have your gaffes publicly exposed. It is another for the public to pay any attention.
What the main stream media is learning is that they can get away with anything. What might they be able to do with such a forgetful public? Publicly paint the President as paranoid and prejudiced when he suggests COVID might be traced to a lab in China and then, a year later, slowly leak out information that suggests he might have been right. You could publish pictures of the detention facilities put up on our border under the Obama administration and present them as proof that President Trump hates little children. And then, a year later, you could fail to report that President Biden won’t let any reporters near those facilities.
The envelope keeps getting pushed. The line in the sand continues to get crossed. The lies and the cover-ups get increasingly bold. Because it won’t cost a thing. Their target audience isn’t there for truth but for ammo in the culture wars. And their ideological opponents, conservatives, have nothing left to conserve. We will forget next election season. Mid-terms will come and all of this will be old news, fish wrapping. There will be fresh lies and new cover-ups.
Like Dr. Fauci, keeping a straight face under his mask as he continues to tell us to wear masks, liars lie. They know they’re lying. We know they’re lying. And we both know it’s not going to change. We both know that our knowing it won’t change won’t change anything. We conservatives will be told to hang our heads, to let the grown-ups back in charge, to play the game, to support the establishment, to go back to sleep and to forget.
Muhammad Ali, the loquacious lip of Louisville, once said, “It’s not bragging if it’s true.” In like manner, it’s neither paranoia nor cynicism if it’s true. This is not simply another conservative in curmudgeon mode for the day. This is instead the demons of the mass media dancing around the grave of our expectations of a modicum of honesty. This is why character matters, whether it be from journalists, reality TV stars in the White House or the rest of us looking in from the outside. Our calling is to remember, to not play the game, to cover our eyes in the face of the emperor’s invisible suit. How can you tell mainstream media mavens are lying? Their lips are moving, even under their masks.
One of the awkward parts of seeking to follow the regulative principle of worship, that Puritan notion that we are free in worship only to do what the Bible expressly commands, is determining what falls under the category of the “elements” of worship and what falls under the “circumstances.” Typically elements describe what- prayer, preaching, while circumstances describe how- indoors, on pews. But the lines are not so easily drawn. Is a kneeling bench for prayer an element or a circumstance?
Applied to this question we ought, of course, affirm that preaching to large numbers, calling for repentance, is perfectly wonderful. Peter, at Pentecost, could be described as preaching a crusade. The gospel was preached and 3000 saints were added to the fold. Why then would anyone have a concern about crusades in stadiums? The issue isn’t the preaching, or the stadium. What raises eyebrows are some of the associated “circumstances.”
Perhaps the center of the objection lies in the charge of manipulation. Some crusades have been known to “prime the pump.” Here people are coached to come forward who already believe, as a goad to those who are considering going forward. Sometimes the music, even the preaching is said to be manipulative, more intent on garnering the circumstance of coming forward than the element of trusting in Christ. Some even grumble that all this is in principle an attempt to manipulate the Holy Spirit.
We who are Reformed are experts at grumbling about the evangelistic methods of others, not quite so good at evangelism ourselves, sadly having to reach back Whitefield and Edwards as proof of our zeal for evangelism. Those two saints, however, haven’t won souls in quite some time. I fear this is often driven by jealousy for our reputations. Because non-Reformed people are succeeding and we are not, we tear down rather than build up. We are cynics.
To be sure there are things to be cynical about. There is the manipulation problem. There is some weak preaching. There is, perhaps worst of all, weak follow up. And sadly, long term, the numbers that are often touted don’t hold true. But, God is an expert at making straight lines out of crooked sticks. Who knows how many souls behold his glory even now because of the crusades of Billy Graham? Who knows how many hands Louis Palau will shake in eternity? We need to fight off the temptation of smug dismissal.
On the other hand, with humility and recognizing our own crookedness, there is nothing wrong with noting the crookedness of the sticks that are crooked. To challenge the propriety of this method or that isn’t to deny the glory of the souls saved or to deny that God is at work. Let the wood, hay and stubble be burned away, and let us strengthen the things that remain. Finally, we need also to be careful of seeing these events as the principle way in which the lost are brought in, to cover our own failure to seek the lost either by depending on such methods or despising them. I can’t imagine a worthy goal that is rightly served by error and manipulation. On the other hand I can’t imagine a circumstance where the gospel is faithfully preached that we should oppose.
