THE CARROT ON THE STICK
I came out of Bible college angry and critical of a lot in evangelical churches – things I believed were misguided and not biblically-based that needed to be changed. I believed that if we just based everything on the Bible, ministries would succeed and churches would grow.
I was fueled and driven almost solely by ideals. I was going to be true to God’s Word where others failed to be. God’s Word can’t go wrong, so how could I?
Having ideals provides a direction in which to go and a goal towards which to drive. Ideals direct what you want to build. I’m still all for having ideals.
But life taught me that ideals have limitations and a specific usefulness. If you had tried to tell me that at age 21, I would have dismissed you as ignorant of and lacking faith in God’s Word. Only people of limited faith, people who had given up on the truth, believed ideals weren’t attainable. Such was my arrogance. I didn’t call it that. I called it “confidenceâ€.
Ideals, being “perfectâ€, serve as the carrot-on-the-stick to urge you forward. But I didn’t believe ideals will always be a carrot-on-the-stick -- ever before you, never attainable. I’d have saved myself a lot of frustration and anger had I learned that sooner. God had to beat it into me through life.
I had to learn that reality is neither perfect nor perfectible – at least not now. I believe that is in part the lesson of the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21). That vision describes the church in its glory – but the church only attains that after Christ has come and defeated the enemies. In the meantime, we are in process moving imperfectly, in fits and starts, toward that perfect ideal. We deceive ourselves if we think we can achieve it – or even that we are supposed to – in our lifetimes. I stubbornly refused to believe that when I was young.
More than that, I had underestimated how far short we fall of the true ideal – God Himself in all His infinite perfections. Just being finite, we fall short of God’s glory. Adding sin to our finiteness, even the smallest of sins, causes us, not only to fall further short of the ideal, but makes it even more difficult to reach it. Worse yet, challenge a group of sinners (even forgiven ones) to build “an ideal people†and their imperfect interactions mess everything up in almost unimaginable ways.
In shepherding our little church, every time I thought we were moving toward our goal, something troublesome would happen. I was constantly putting out petty fires. While I put out one conflict over here, another one started over there. Each little fire incinerated a part of what I had worked so hard to build. I was constantly going back to the drawing board.
I didn’t ask “What is wrong with people?†Instead, I began to doubt whether God was able to truly save us from sin and make us “new creatures†as He promised. I began to think there wasn’t a God at all, and that I was wasting my life on a stupid pipe dream. I almost abandoned both ministry and faith because of God’s inability to keep His promises.
Yes -- you read that correctly. That’s how I was thinking.
God had to hammer into my stubborn heart that ideals were kept in the distance to provide vision, and I had to find practical ways to build what He wanted built, making concessions to the variegated imperfect reality around me.
That sounded so much like compromise, and in our circles, compromise had always been a dirty word. God pried my fingers off of that ideal and forced me to learn that compromise was also a key component in love – and love, of course, was of no little value in Christian ministry.
I was fueled and driven almost solely by ideals. I was going to be true to God’s Word where others failed to be. God’s Word can’t go wrong, so how could I?
Having ideals provides a direction in which to go and a goal towards which to drive. Ideals direct what you want to build. I’m still all for having ideals.
But life taught me that ideals have limitations and a specific usefulness. If you had tried to tell me that at age 21, I would have dismissed you as ignorant of and lacking faith in God’s Word. Only people of limited faith, people who had given up on the truth, believed ideals weren’t attainable. Such was my arrogance. I didn’t call it that. I called it “confidenceâ€.
Ideals, being “perfectâ€, serve as the carrot-on-the-stick to urge you forward. But I didn’t believe ideals will always be a carrot-on-the-stick -- ever before you, never attainable. I’d have saved myself a lot of frustration and anger had I learned that sooner. God had to beat it into me through life.
I had to learn that reality is neither perfect nor perfectible – at least not now. I believe that is in part the lesson of the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21). That vision describes the church in its glory – but the church only attains that after Christ has come and defeated the enemies. In the meantime, we are in process moving imperfectly, in fits and starts, toward that perfect ideal. We deceive ourselves if we think we can achieve it – or even that we are supposed to – in our lifetimes. I stubbornly refused to believe that when I was young.
More than that, I had underestimated how far short we fall of the true ideal – God Himself in all His infinite perfections. Just being finite, we fall short of God’s glory. Adding sin to our finiteness, even the smallest of sins, causes us, not only to fall further short of the ideal, but makes it even more difficult to reach it. Worse yet, challenge a group of sinners (even forgiven ones) to build “an ideal people†and their imperfect interactions mess everything up in almost unimaginable ways.
In shepherding our little church, every time I thought we were moving toward our goal, something troublesome would happen. I was constantly putting out petty fires. While I put out one conflict over here, another one started over there. Each little fire incinerated a part of what I had worked so hard to build. I was constantly going back to the drawing board.
I didn’t ask “What is wrong with people?†Instead, I began to doubt whether God was able to truly save us from sin and make us “new creatures†as He promised. I began to think there wasn’t a God at all, and that I was wasting my life on a stupid pipe dream. I almost abandoned both ministry and faith because of God’s inability to keep His promises.
Yes -- you read that correctly. That’s how I was thinking.
God had to hammer into my stubborn heart that ideals were kept in the distance to provide vision, and I had to find practical ways to build what He wanted built, making concessions to the variegated imperfect reality around me.
That sounded so much like compromise, and in our circles, compromise had always been a dirty word. God pried my fingers off of that ideal and forced me to learn that compromise was also a key component in love – and love, of course, was of no little value in Christian ministry.