I Wrote A Blog I Couldn’t Post

And it was a really good one too. It was all about the Learning Channel’s Gosselins and Duggars and how similar all of us are to those two families. But for some reason I couldn’t pull the trigger. I showed it to some trusted friends and talked it over with Linda. She encouraged me to hold off.

The problem was we all live in the press cycle now. As the days went by my thoughts became less and less relevant. It was really frustrating.

But this morning it all became clear as I listened to Erwin McManus talk about the story of the blind man in John 9. You know - the one that Jesus put his spit/mud cure all on. As Jesus and the disciples were walking along the disciples asked Jesus why this man was born blind. Was it his sin or the sin of his parents?

Right there I saw it – because Erwin made the point. That’s what was wrong with my blog. The disciples saw the blind man and thought, “Here’s a great opportunity for an abstract spiritual conversation.” Actually they didn’t see this blind man at all. They didn’t know who he was. They didn’t care about him. He was Blind Man, Example #1.

As good as my ideas might have been, I was seeing the Gosselins and Duggars as “Christian Families, Examples #1 and #2.” But I don’t want to reduce people to that. People aren’t just examples to discuss. Like the blind man, each of us illustrate God’s amazing nature and work in our lives - even when we suffer and fail.

We’ve become a world full of analysts, a chattering church clucking along about this issue and that. We talk about people like they are just spiritual illustrations. It’s like we think they exist just to make our points. We come across suffering, point out that this is evidence of worldly sin or churchly failings, and then totter off to make the next point.

That kind of Church won’t change Washington , D.C. or any other city. The world knows what its like to be reduced to a label and they are not surprised when we treat them exactly the way they treat each other. It confirms what they suspect - that we aren’t that different.

But what would it look like if the Church – and I – were more interested in bringing healing to hurting people instead of just making my point?

P.S. If you want to check out Erwin, the sermon I’m referencing was June 21, 2009, titled “Unexplainable: The Seven Wonders of Jesus, Jesus’ Power Over Suffering” at Mosaic in L.A. You can check it out http://mosaic.org/podcast/ or on iTunes. I’m an enthusiastic fan.