Comments on: A Big Mixed Message

by: kwilson

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:45:37 +0000

Wonderful quotes! This gets me thinking about a couple of other areas that need exploring, but I think that they deserve their own threads. The first will likely be the desparate need for more preaching and edification on doctrine in the church today. It seems as if we are more and more becoming a community of pragmatic approaches to growth, but without a substance of the fundamentals. That is, IMO, a wrong and shortsighted view…

by: cnaphan

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 23:47:54 +0000

Francis de Sales says on this:
“Reputation, after all, is but a signboard giving notice where virtue dwells, and virtue itself is always and everywhere preferable. Therefore, if it is said that you are a hypocrite because you are professedly devout, or if you are called a coward because you have forgiven an insult, despise all such accusations. Such judgments are the utterances of foolish men, and you must not give up what is right, even though your reputation suffer, for fruit is better than foliage, that is to say, an inward and spiritual gain is worth all external gains. We may take a jealous care of our reputation, but not idolise it; and while we desire not to displease good men, neither should we seek to please those that are evil.

…

Let us keep Jesus Christ Crucified always before our eyes; let us go on trustfully and simply, but with discretion and wisdom, in His Service, and He will take care of our reputation; if He permits us to lose it, it will only be to give us better things, and to train us in a holy humility, one ounce of which is worth more than a thousand pounds of honour. If we are unjustly blamed, let us quietly meet calumny with truth; if calumny perseveres, let us persevere in humility; there is no surer shelter for our reputation or our soul than the Hand of God. Let us serve Him in good report or evil report alike, with Saint Paul;so that we may cry out with David, “For Thy Sake have I suffered reproof, shame hath covered my face.”

Of course certain crimes, so grievous that no one who can justify himself should remain silent, must be excepted; as, too, certain persons whose reputation closely affects the edification of others. In this case all theologians say that it is right quietly to seek reparation.”

by: kwilson

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 18:49:02 +0000

Thanks for your comments. We are indeed burdened to represent the Lord well and to put the Kingdom forward in the best way we know how, but as ourselves, in whatever place the Lord has put us. That means our utmost effort to be obedient in all respects, but nonetheless may not make us appear either perfect nor even happy at times.

The problem occurs when it is implied that one should somehow be other than themselves in order to cast a better light.

The Lord will draw His own to Himself, and who can know what the situational requirements for that are. Even our difficulties and visible struggles, assuming that they represent sincerely Christian effort, will be used. They are in fact part of the process.

I do not in this instance have any particular situation or experience in mind, just observation over time of the exhortations in the church (generically speaking) and within Christain community to always ‘act’ to put the best face forward to non-believers. It is often said that they are watching, and strongly implied that their future may be determined by what they see. In the face of Devine Sovereignty this latter implication is incorrect, and that is the root of problem.

by: cnaphan

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 04:03:27 +0000

I know a former pastor who legally smokes marijuana to relieve chronic pain. Oh, what a bad reputation that man endures from his fellow Christians! What gossip! Yet, how similar to the “crime” of healing on the Sabbath it is. It’s like the church community inwardly thinks “Now, if I don’t throw a stone at this fellow, everyone will know I have sins myself, and that’s bad for our church.”

Is there anyone who cared less what others thought of them than our dear Lord? He was baptized yet was sinless, did penance yet had nothing to repent of, fraternized with outcasts and foreigners, ate with sinners, broke civic rules regarding the Sabbath, was mocked and died a criminal’s death, yet was the Evangelist to the evangelists! Shame on us, sinful and weak, who cringe at being thought less than perfect!