Presby-Musings

Years ago, in the first church I served as a pastor, I had a church member who would send me emails a couple of times of year--emails that were filled with criticisms of everything we were doing wrong in the church, and what she would do to fix them.   The fact that her communications generally arrived around Christmas and Easter each year was not a coincidence. They were, in fact, the only times a year that she attended church.   When I would read her criticisms, my blood would reach the boiling point.  "Who does she think she is?" I would ask my wife.  "She shows up twice a year and knows everything about everything?  Not likely!"   And then I would quote some Scripture...sort of.   "Jesus taught us to make sure the plank of wood is out of our eye before we start trying to tell someone else they've got a speck of dust in theirs.   That woman has a whole lumber yard in her peepers!"   This is the verse I was attempting to quote...

I was reading today from a devotional book that included Psalm 69:1-6--a psalm that was obviously written by someone who was feeling a bit outnumbered and attacked by people who were out to get him.  "Those who hate me without reason," he laments, "outnumber the hairs of my head; many are my enemies without cause, those who seek to destroy me."   I've had more than my fair share of low moments when I felt like there were a bunch of people out to get me.  When you are being criticized or when someone is attacking you with gossip, slander or just a slow drip campaign of innuendo and half-truths it can feel overwhelming.   Someone will say to you, "I've heard 'people' talking about you and this is what they are saying..."  When you hear the word "people" you tend to think of more than one, and it's not too long before you multiply that number in your head and it starts to feel as though the people who hate you "with...

When Rob Bell released his book Love Wins , both he and his wife began to realize that their lives had fundamentally changed.  The firestorm of controversy that the book created, followed by the tidal wave of harsh criticism that was leveled at Rob both shocked and surprised them both. The Southern Baptist Convention essentially anathematized him. A flurry of books was produced to refute the "heresy" that Rob supposedly espoused in Love Wins.  John Piper, the renowned Baptist and scholar publicly renounced Bell with a dismissive tweet that simply said, "Farewell." Then there were the bloggers who took to the Internet and said the most vile, hate-filled and unChristian things possible.  And I am talking about the Christian  bloggers. And throughout all of this, Rob never responded publicly.  He didn't take to the internet.  He held no press conferences other than the press that he did to promote the book.  There was an extended edi...