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young pastors, young fathers, sons
I know these guys. They are young pastors. Many of them are young fathers. And they are sons. It’s the latter that most impresses me. A son is not always an easy thing to be. Because the world is hard on fathers. Mine fought in the Big War, was shelled in the heaviest day of shelling in the Big War, survived injury, came home, went to college, went to work. They didn’t have a clue in those days about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Men muddled through. His father was gassed in the previous Big War. As I said, the world is hard on fathers, almost as hard as it is on mothers.
Which makes it hard on these sons. It makes it hard especially on their hearts. Some of them, not many, find themselves as pastors. They are gathering people, tending people. Lets go forward together people! people. In the process, they run into the limits of gathering, tending, and leading. Because it’s not easy, especially since people are more like cats than sheep these days. I’d like to hear Jesus tell a story about cats and how he gathers them, what it means to gather them. The sheep story was very good, but I’d like to hear his story about cats.
Then they become fathers, or they long to become fathers. And this touches the part of their hearts having to do with fathers, the son part. At which point, they start wrestling with that part of their hearts. Maybe they have a dream about their own father walking up the driveway, say. Or they wonder how they might get in touch with their own fathers, many of whom have lost touch after the divorce, the troubles, the family mess a long time ago.
It’s very burdensome, this feeling that it’s up to them. Why should it be up to a son?
But it is up to them. After sitting with this unfairness for months or years, they act.
They don’t act out of their goodness so much as out of their story. This story they have adopted as their own story, about a Father in search of his sons, or waiting for his sons, or out in the backyard appealing to his sons. Yet unlike that story, they have done nothing wrong. Or the wrongs they have done are overshadowed by bigger ones done to them.
Nevertheless, they act. They find an email address and send a message. They pick up the phone and make a move. What happens after that is beyond their control, like most things are. Which is not exactly the arena young men are most acclimated to.
They are powerful, these young men. They are strong, even though they feel as far as a man can feel from power and strength. Because know it or not, they are overcoming the evil one.
August 27th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Ken, you wrote, “We come to faith in Jesus and quite properly we attach ourselves to others who also have faith in Jesus… We get him and we get his friends, whether or not we like them at the time. Attaching ourselves to his friends, we sometimes – it’s inevitable, we’re just humans, after all – confuse their voice for his. We hear warnings from his friends, warnings about the dangers lurking in various movements and groupings and political parties and cultural institutions. This happens without our even being aware of it happening–it’s that powerful and pervasive. It embeds itself in our assumptions, this warning.”
I agree, and I would extend that “confusion” to many other things that our “friends of Jesus” have said to us on many other topics as well. As you have said before, “All truth is God’s truth.” So how do we “unconfuse” the voices of our Christian friends with God’s voice? Seriously, Ken, how do we do that, in general?
August 28th, 2008 at 3:27 am
Ex-Christian, You’ve asked this question before, I think, and I haven’t responded because the answer is elusive, or not easy. And of course, I only know you from these comments, so it’s not easy to know where to begin. But here’s a shot, if in the dark.
Begin with the assumption that Jesus is the treasure buried in the field of religion and that there is no person or group who has all the answers. We are all fellow pilgrims on a pilgrimage, which means we have not arrived. Begin with the assumption that we are all partly right and partly wrong. Everybody, that is. For working purposes assume that we’re wrong about say 15% of what we are convinced of, but we’re not sure which 15% that is. So that’s the playing field. When you meet people who don’t share that assumption, who aren’t humble about what they know and don’t know, give them an extra berth so to speak. Meaning, take their words with an extra grain of salt because they are not taking their own thoughts with an appropriate grain of their own salt. I hope this is making some sense.
So that’s just some things for starters. Now for the work. I would recommend you read a book by George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. (I’d link it but haven’t figured out how to do that in comments.) Most people don’t have an historical perspective on their own faith community, which is a real disadvantage. Makes it harder to separate the wheat from the chaff within that community. The 15% chaff I’m assuming is there. At least. History is a great teacher but most of us Americans think history goes back a few news cycles….:)
And then more work: read the gospel, say of Mark or Luke, asking yourself the question, “how did this issue play out in the life of Jesus? He had all this dynamic tension with his friends and family. He didn’t separate himself from friends and family, but he had plenty of frustrations with them, often because they were giving him bum advice on the question of God. Obviously, you’re not Jesus, but I don’t think that means you can’t learn from him on this most pressing questions. He’ll probably have better advice than me, but it’s work to engage it or rather him.
One other thing, now that you’ve got me thinking. John Wimber, one of my favorite 85 percenters, used to distinguish the man, from the message, from the methods. He should have included the woman, but it didn’t rhyhme with method and message. The man (anyone) can be gifted, correct about lots of things, etc. but that doesn’t mean we have unthinkingly adopt the man’s entire message or his methods. They are distinguishable. Someone can have a great message but be a lousy man. Someone can be a good man with a good message and have lousy methods.
You get the point. I know plenty of charismatics who seem not to have learned this distinction. They
go to some revival where a man is very gifted and wonderful God things are happening and because they are taken with the man or the God things, they automatically assume the message and the methods are to be swallowed uncritically.
I hope this hasn’t been more confusing than clarifying. I warned you this is hard.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I’d like to comment on the “parable of the cats” you mentioned a desire to hear from Jesus. You’ve mentioned this before, and it really resonated with me. You’ve talked about it in reference to the “centered set approach” as opposed to the “bounded set approach” where cats can be contained by luring them to the “center” with a bowl of milk (“Jesus is our center”), as opposed to sheep which are stupid and need to be kept together with boundaries and a shepherd’s crook.
I’ve always been a cat person, as opposed to a dog person and I think a lot can be said about a person’s personality depending on which they prefer.
Dog people admire dogs for their loyalty, servant attitude (they want to “please their master”), innocent (even ignorant) joy, and their humility and utter dependence on a “higher power” (their owner) for all their needs. I must agree that these are admirable traits and it would seem that these are the characteristics that God calls us to emulate (to come to Him “like a child”). In many ways dogs are a lot like sheep. This world-view is quite compatible to that of Calvinism (emphasis on the sovereignty of God), or politically socialist (we need all kinds of governmental control to protect the stupid masses).
But cats… cats are independent, self-sufficient (or at least like to believe that they are), irreverent, self-righteous, selfish, curious (as opposed to ignorantly blissful), able to choose to love (on their own terms – as opposed to the dog-like codependence sort of default love), and they are often likened to mischievous devils. This is quite a contrast to that of dogs or sheep, but in many ways seems more like the natural way of humanity… which of course is not always a good thing. Cats (or cat people) are more concerned about free will (not predestination), that love without choice is meaningless, and politically lean more towards libertarianism.
So are there any sayings of Jesus that help those of us that lean toward the “cat worldview”? Or must we relent to the idea that we must change our worldview and “become like a child”, completely dependent on God, dying to ourselves, and serving Him as a dog serves his master?
For some reason I think the answer is, again, not so clear-cut. Like any real discussion on free will and God’s sovereignty, and the meaning of love, instead of an either-or answer it turns out to be a paradoxical “both-and”. But this is always so unsatisfactory…
How does one really obtain satisfaction in the embrace of the many paradoxes in life (even if you’re not a Christian)?
Of course it is a humbling experience to do such a thing, admitting an inability to understand completely. Maybe it’s this act alone that brings us toward the required humble dependence of a child or dog under his parent/master, to “choose” to trust in God’s omniscience and sovereignty.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:09 am
My reply to Ken’s reply to me may be found here:
http://kenwilsononline.com/2008/09/06/dave-barry-is-a-prophet/
October 10th, 2008 at 7:22 am
i have no reference point to men and sons. You as a boomer and your son has no revelancey to me as an Xer. My dad was not there and still have feelings of abandoment. I have forgiven this man over and over, all I feel is sadness. That is the only feeling I have of fatherhood , sadness.
It has taken me over a few decades to get to a feeling of sadness, otherwise I would be old and bitter and angry and depressed.
Even the sadness has twisted me and made me feel emptiness for this life.