Ponderings Today

I know people are well-meaning when they ask, “Now that you are not pastoring or working in business, what are you going to do?”

Perhaps I should seek to know Christ better and myself less; perhaps it is better that I learn to rest in Him and not feed my anxiety by “action”. Perhaps it is time for me to learn with the Psalmist what it means for my soul to be a child who is weaned from all but Christ (Psalm 131).

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Saladin is said to have given one of his sons this advice, “I have only achieved what I have by coaxing people. Hold no grudge against anyone for Death spares nobody. Take care in your relations with people.” To be sure Saladin shed blood, but compared with his “Christian” and Muslim contemporaries, it is probably safe to say that, in the words of historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, “…he deserves his attractive reputation”.

Montefiore writes, “While his rise had been bloody, he disliked violence, advising his favorite son Zahir: “I warn you against shedding blood, indulging in it and making a habit of it, for blood never sleeps.””

Looking at the Middle East, indeed, looking at the world, Saladin’s 12^th century words have stood the test of time – a sad test, a painful test, an insane test, but nevertheless a test.

We have little opportunity to learn from a test on which we score 100%. We have much to learn from a test on which we do poorly, or even fail. Our problem with those tests is that it requires humility to learn, and often repentance – we would much rather not change, take the test again, fail again, and blame it on circumstance and other people.

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I still don’t understand how people can attend Sunday school all their lives and still not know and live in the Bible. I had an email interchange with an editor at a major publisher of Sunday school material that my church was using. I asked what the goal of the curriculum was, I was told “That is an interesting question that I’ll pass on to my team.”

I asked how people could learn if they were given the answers, that was also an “interesting question.”

Giving a person a fish makes them dependent on you – perhaps lest they should at some point no longer need Sunday school curriculum. I think there is always a need for creative and Christ-centered curriculum, let us honor the gift of teaching; but let us also recognize that gifted teaching is focused on Christ and on developing people in Christ, not on nurturing a dependence that results in people attending Sunday school all their lives without knowing Christ in the Scriptures and the Scriptures in Christ.

The Emperor is naked – stark naked, not a stitch of clothes, but we ain’t saying noth’in.