Intelligent, well versed, witty even. My thoughts lingered to my father this morning as I sat and watch the pastor give his weekly sermon.
He was no more than 30-ish - well into the prime of his life actually. Here he was expounding all the intricate details of The Good Book to a crowd that consisted of people mostly twice his age. And yet he spoke with great conviction and courage for the things he had to say were hard to say, but harder still to hear.
About 30 years earlier, it was my father who stood before this very stage. Preaching the Word of God to a congregation that consisted of mostly his peers - young adults that eventually grew old and became the elders of the church today. I look at the pastor today and imagined how it was for my father when he did the preaching. Back then, my brother and I were just toddlers. My mother would sit in the front row minding the both of us. According to my mother, my brother was a restless little bugger who sometimes crawled/sprinted out onto the stage as my father was giving his sermon and my father had to stop a while to shoo him back to the seats - much to the amusement of the crowd. Not me, I was always a good boy. :-P
My memories of my father here consisted mainly of his standing on the front rostrum quoting some bible verse while the congregation listened and nodded attentively, or behind the drum set jamming it up with cool drum rolls and upbeat tempos. I was too young to understand anything that was happening at the time, including how and why my father eventually got booted out of church, but at the time, in my mind my father was the coolest man on earth - and there was nothing I wanted more than to be just like him when I grew up. Such was the way I idolized my father.
Because my father was a preaching, I just assumed that he was a Godly man. I guess that's what all of us do. Surely, a man who preached the word of God was a man of God right? The two facts were supposed to be mutually implied. But that was before I could understand things like hypocrisy, false hearts and weakness of the flesh. As I grew up, I slowly discovered that my father wasn't quite the Godly man I thought him to be. He was flawed in many ways, and the things that he did, said and felt proved himself to be only too human.
He was judged harshly - shunned and rejected till eventually he moved our family hundreds of miles away, in search of solace. People he called brothers turned their backs on him and called for his immediate removal. The ironic thing is, the people who called for him downfall weren't necessarily better. Many of them had flaws of their own. Many of them drank, gambled and womanized and lived according to the ways of the world too. But nevertheless, they took the moral high ground and hiding behind a shield of holiness, they kicked him out. But it's hard to blame them. It is natural of people to judge the men who claim to serve God more harshly. We simply cannot accept it if a person we look to as a spiritual Sheppard goes awry in his own ways. It puts a shadow over every word ever uttered from his mouth. To preach the word of God in public but do the opposite in private is the epitome of hypocrisy.
I looked at up at the stage at this man. He certainly had the charm and charisma. People would follow a man who spoke like that. And he preached very closely to the words of The Good Book. Take words and passages that's were inspired by no less than God himself, and deliver it through a man who spoke with so much wit AND conviction, it's hard not to want to believe the man is indeed a man of God.
But is that so? Look at what has happened with the Catholic priest in the US and Europe, look at all some of the misguided and perverted former religious leaders such as Jim Jones, look at my own father. If you ask me, a priest / pastor / religious leader is as godly as a criminal is evil. It's likely to be true, but not necessarily so.
Though it is not my will to see this man fall from grace, no one should ever judge him too quickly or condemn him too harshly if he ever should. It's not that we should start developing a tolerance for what is wrong or lower our moral standards. It's just that it seems that when it comes to people we look up to, be it a celebrity, a government leader, pastor, or just someone we deeply respect, we develop false impressions on who they really are and what they are like.
I used to love my father, and idolized him. And then I grew up and started to see his flaws - and they were many. I felt betrayed. I felt misled. I felt like the person I believed in never existed in the first place. And then I grew up some more and made mistakes of my own - and they were many too. Then I looked at my father again with fresh eyes - and saw in him again the man that I used to believe in, existing there amongst all the flaws and weaknesses, like it always has. I idolized him no more, but I learned to love him regardless.
He is only human. So is the pastor. So am I. So is everyone else.
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