333 Words

333 WORDS….

Everybody’s good at something….

Like the computer geek speedily ‘mousing’ the monitor into subjection while murmuring how slow this computer is.

Like the carpenter managing various tools with supreme dexterity until mission accomplished.

Like the housewife baking her 1,000th pie.

Like the acrobat who “flies though the air with the greatest of ease”.

And like the pastor who skillfully leads the people into his perspective.

It’s sunday morning and ‘Pastor’ John is delivering an important message on the authority of Christ. He has been trained, and more relevant, he has honed his skills via hundreds of sermons. Meticulously he shepherds the congregation into the needful truth of subjection unto the lordship of Christ. The people chirp encouraging “Amens”.

Next sunday, John is at it again, using his persuasive powers to convince the same people to embrace a false teaching, the authority of leadership over the lives of those under their ‘ministry’. (As a true teaching can contain occasional oopsies, so can a false teaching include truths. However, no matter how many truths a message embodies, they do not make a false teaching less false.) He quotes Hebrews, “Obey your spiritual leaders.” He manipulates Ephesians 4:11 (“He gave some, apostles, and some, prophets, etc.”) to support his defective perspective. The people chirp their “Amens”, though a bit less enthusiastically.

The following sunday John attempts balancing the two, explaining how it is possible and needful to obey two masters who often conflict, all his persuasive finesse needed to accomplish the seemingly impossible. Though the confused could not verbalize the pastor’s message in their own words, “Amens” do go forth, the congregation having long ago learned submissiveness and unity.

Unlike the computer geek, the carpenter, the housewife and acrobat, John is credited with possessing a heavenly anointing and a God-given mandate. Wrong. If John did what you do he probably would be equal in skill. And if you did what he does you might even surpass his communicative ability. And you would get the same “Amens”.