It's a Choice

I have written about this more than once, but I will do it again. It reminds me of the old joke about the church looking for a new pastor. They vetted several and finally found a guy who stood in the pulpit and just hit it out of the park.

So the church invites the guy back the next week to hear him again, and, word for word, the pastor gives the same sermon again. The deacons are perplexed. They think he must have had a bad day. Something was clearly off. So they invited him back one more time.

Again, the pastor delivered the exact same sermon.

After the service, the deacons went up to their would-be pastor and asked, “Is everything okay with you?”

“Yes,” replied the pastor. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Well,” said the Chairman of the Diaconate, “we have had you here three Sundays in a row to vet your preaching abilities, and you have delivered the same sermon, almost word for word, three times in a row.”

“Yes,” replied the pastor. “And in those three times, have y’all practiced any of what I preached?”

I say all that to say this — I know I’m preaching to the choir here and for 99% of you guys this is all amen and does not apply, but it needs to be said.

Y’all, being a jackass really is a choice too many people are making.

The latest video to surface is of the wife of a Harvard professor harassing a student wearing one of those Palestinian scarves. The girl is on the wrong side, but many people are. But the professor’s wife yelling at the girl who is merely walking by, not doing anything or bothering anyone, is just too much.

People should be opting to leave each other alone instead of being jackasses.

The other day, I put up a piece defending the forgotten pastor. On Twitter (of course), the pastor of a small Baptist Church in South Carolina came after me and denounced me as not a Christian. Why? Because, among other sins, I had defended the deceased pastor, Tim Keller, for being friends with Francis Collins. That, apparently, means I am not a Christian. Really? Really.

I highlight the pastor whose Twitter bio suggests he has attended every seminary ever (a red flag) to note this is not just on one side.

The common denominator is the people who are too into politics right now. They’ve made politics their idol. They have decided they have to police the heretics for their god. They have justified it all and, on the right, many of them have justified by faith. They have engaged in an apologetics of their creation to defend their idol worship as worshiping God.

Y’all, this is more than about politics. It is, for those of us of faith, spiritual. For those who are not of faith, call it psychological. But it goes beyond partisan divides.

People are choosing jackassery. They like it. It feels comfortable to them. For some, it feels necessary. That it feels comfortable or necessary is a real warning sign that something spiritual is off in a growing number of people, including some in the pulpit.

Loving your neighbor is a commandment. It does not mean standing in your neighbor’s yard with a bullhorn yelling, “repent or burn.” It means actually loving them — being relational with them. Drawing them to something better, not turning them off with jackassery. And if you are not spiritually mature enough to do that, just leave people alone.

Don’t be a jackass. It really is that simple, but clearly harder and harder to actually do. We, all of us myself included, need to do better.