radio preacher
Yesterday I was in the car, and I had about a half-hour drive ahead of me. I set the radio to scan, as I usually do to see what was on. I found myself a short time later listening to a radio preacher. He was talking about forgiveness. I have no idea who he was, where he was from, and given the absent response to his jokes, I don’t even no if he was speaking to a live audience.
He was speaking about forgiveness. As I listened to him, he kept speaking about how easy it is mentally to say, “I forgive you”, but how difficult it is to live it out. His solution was simple. Pray about it and let it go. Then it will be the problem of the person who hurt you, and you will be fine. I was driving thinking, “Are you kidding me? You’re acting like this is a one time shot!” Then I started wondering who else was listening to this guy. I do live in Grand Rapids, the center of Christianity for the last one hundred years (the rest of the world does not know about the last part, so if you ever meet someone from Grand Rapids, just act like you know about our being the Center of Christianity). How many people were listening who had just found out about their spouse messing around, had just been cheated by a partner in business, been betrayed by a friend or experienced some other hurt dealt to them by another.
They may listen to this and think, “Wow this is great.” Pray, forget it and within a few hours feel that twinge of pain in their gut, and again be at the place where they want to kill the person who caused their pain. All of the sudden this person realizes, “Wait, I just prayed this prayer and now I feel like I did this morning …” What conclusions will they draw? The reality is the solution given is devoid of the humanness we find ourselves in … emotion, rationale, grief, etc.
I drove on wondering if anyone else is tired of all of these easy answers, that when put to the test continually fail. I wondered do these preachers really live this kind of enchanted life, where all of these things work? Then I thought, what is wrong with me? Maybe this is the reason people place ministers on a pedestal, because they seem to have the answers and they live them out with astonishing results. This may also be the reason that many hate the church and the leaders within, because they cannot deal with the answers that do not work and these answers have never produced astonishing results.
Preachers have in large part become a vehicle for escapism. They tickle our fancy and tell us about a world of make-believe that they live in and have seen, but the common person rarely gets there. Maybe this is why we have so many people whom only go to church, but are not following Jesus. We go to get our fill of another world. Everyone looks nice, everyone smiles, there is a man or woman who speaks about this place where things fall into place, and then we leave only to be confronted once again with the skeletons in our closet.
It has to stop. We have to be real. We have to tell people that we hurt. We have to tell people that we live in a world that is waiting for the restoration of all things. Don’t get me wrong, let’s not be all doom and gloom … but we need to recognize the difficulty of life. This is what will make us so grateful for pasture in the wilderness, the still waters and the rod and staff of our Good Shepherd.