Work and rest.
Serious and silly.
Past and future.
Creativity and logic.
People try to balance things all the time. I’m one of them. My work and home lives are intricately bound together, yet I try to seperate them in order to balance them. My kids expect me to be involved in their lives, and well they should. My church expects me to be involved in their lives, and well they should. My God expects me to do both and to do both well.
Balance is hard. Its especially hard when we make the mistake of simplifying our choices down to “either/or” decisions. For example, “work and rest” are major concerns for balance. But most healthcare professionals will tell you that “rest” often involves hard work. And smart managers would prefer employees to work smarter than harder when it increases productivity.
But how do I balance my desires and hopes and dreams with God’s desires and hopes for my life?
For the past four weeks, I’ve been reading page after page of Scripture that instructs me to lay aside my own will and embrace God’s will for my life. It’s in the Lectionary for Lent. It’s found in the SOAP readings. And it has been a part of most of the conversations in our small group ministries and Sunday School classes.
So why do so many continue to struggle against God? Off the top of my head, I’d say it has something to do with the large numbers of preachers and clergy who are promising easy answers.
Let me offer you an example. Last night, I was relaxing with my wife on the couch while she changed channels.We found a total of six televangelists on (probably because it was Sunday). Four were offering monetary blessings if viewers would send in their “seed money faith token prayer partner pledge.” Two were explaining how evil some people were (not the faithful viewer, of course, those other guys).
 Let’s deal with the prosperity garbage first. Don Stewart was promising a Green Prosperity Prayer Handkercheif just like the one in Acts 10:19. There are two problems with Don Stewart’s Green Prosperity Prayer Handkercheif. First, he’s not the apostle Paul. Second, Acts 10:19 is talking about healing, not getting rich quick. Avoid this guy.
Pastors like this aren’t offering meaningful living. They are offering band-aids and kisses on a boo-boo — just something to make folks feel better. This is one of two weapons in the coddling arsenal of the televangelists. Don Stewart and Peter Popov (who has some really snazzy Miracle Spring Water that you can mop up with your Green Prosperity Prayer Handkercheif) are reducing God to a genie in a bottle who serves our whims. God doesn’t go for that — trust me.
Anyway…the other two guys were screaming about the evils of the world. Out of curiosity, we paused on Jack Van Impe’s tirade about the “Jesus Family Tomb.”
Jack spent the better part of five minutes demonizing the folks behind the special. He completely committed to the idea that the film-maker was actively attempting to destroy Christianity as we know it. Personally, I think he’s as mistaken as Simcha Jacobvici, the producer of “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” was about the tomb he was excavating. He was pointing to someone and making that guy more ‘evil’ than the rest of us so we can feel better about ourselves.
We used to do that in high school — or have it done to us. Remember? We’d put others down to make ourselves feel better.
You may be able to see what Jack has to do with this problem of balance by now. Most televangelists are too smart to tell their pledge-making audiences that they are not living right. Instead, they target an enemy in order to rationalize their own lack of action. He and others like him tend to make the “evils” of the world so extreme that our petty sins, disobedience, and lack of committment look downright holy. If I believe that tripe, then I don’t have to be good like Scripture claims.
So let’s review: Televangelists use two major weapons to keep their viewers happy and self-satisfied. Promises of wealth and prosperity keep viewers excited about getting what they want and giving Popoff and Stewart what they want. Then, indirect comparisons of “evil” people and the viewers help keep the feelings of guilt tamped down because those comparisons make us relatively better people.
So our problem is televangelists? Heavens no. Those guys are just making the problem worse.
Our problem is that we are so self-centered, we clamber to embrace any view that tells us that we are right and that we should get our way. The problem with that sort of Christianity is that, every once in a while, someone reads more than one verse out of Acts. Check out the SOAP readings here on southpleasantgrove.org for the details. You’ll love the readings from last week.
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