Let me start my first post on CRN.Info by saying that I see it as a real big privilege and honour to have been invited to write for this site. I first came to CRN.Info via a link on Chad Holtz’s site who I found on A Little Leaven. So never say that nothing good can come from the ADM’s… What I like so much about CRN.Info is that everybody gets a chance to speak their mind on whatever subject is posted and comments only get moderated in the most extreme circumstances. I have only once seen comments deleted and that was to protect someone who frequently comments here and who is mostly critical about CRN.Info. There are not many sites on the web, and that includes Christian sites, that have this kind of integrity and I count myself fortunate to be in such company.

The Forest or the Tree?

Lately there have been a number of posts at CRN.Info that got derailed because of people getting hooked onto one small detail in the post. One such example is the post by Jerry on the 3rd chapter of Rob Bell’s book Jesus Wants To Save Christians. The reason why it bothers me is not so much that the thread got derailed, although it does make me “die moer in”*, but that people missed the message of the post. It just gets lost in all the noise of the comments. This got me thinking about some things my dad taught me.

My dad was a wise man who faithfully pastored small churches, never looked for the glory and had a spotless character. If I can grow to be half the man he was… He gave me these bits of advice:

Put it on the shelf…

When reading a book or listening to a sermon and there is something that you do not like or understand at that point in time, don’t ignore that together with the rest of the book or sermon but rather write the thought down, put it away and revisit it later.

This advice has come in handy on many occasions in two ways. Firstly when something I read or heard some time ago would come back and suddenly make sense or be truth in another context or time. Sometimes it was things that I heavily disagreed with but then God seems to open up some truth to me and use the previously discarded to change something in me. The second way is that when I do that I can actually focus on what I can learn and appropriate now in my life. In other words don’t get so caught up in the detail that you don’t agree with or don’t understand that you miss the core message that God wants you to hear.

He might be a donkey but…

Growing up in a legalistic pentecostal denomination there was lots of preaching that made you feel like a useless piece of you know what and this caused me to dislike a lot of these preachers (my dad was quite the opposite). When there was a service where one of these preachers spoke I protested loudly about going and then my dad would drop this bit of wisdom:

Separate the message from the man. If God used Balaam’s donkey he can use anyone to get the message across.**

I think we can use some of that… I might not like John MacArthur’s Truth War-type attitude but I learned a lot from the Grace To You programs. You might not like Rob Bell’s fuzzy language but his fresh perspective on things might just open something new about God you’ve missed before. Separate the message from the man and you might just hear God speak to you.

The diamond in the rough…

Look for the wisdom, truth that applies to you, in the most unlikely places

Sometimes people will come with the biggest lot of nonsense and you might think what a load of … That is when you need to start prospecting, filter out the dirt and find the diamond. Most of the ADM’s writing falls into this category for me and like prospecting it is hard work but sometimes there is wisdom to be found that can be applied to my life (Even if it is to learn not to act in similar fashion).

These bits of advice might not be deeply philosophical or theological but I found God speaking to me at the most unlikely of times and that makes them precious to me. (And because my dad said so…)

* An Afrikaans expression for very angry
** I’m not calling anyone a donkey