A Failure to Communicate

My friends and I in college often joked about someone having a basic youth conflict.  If you don’t get the humor of that; you can ask me sometime.  Usually the said youth was hung up on one of the latest fashion fads. Today they call those props. Well, maybe 5-10 years ago they called them props and probably have a new word for them now. Those were the days (those days when I was in college, think Calvin Coolidge) you’d hear about a generation gap. The older folks and the youths sometimes seem to talk past one another.  Young people often don’t think their elders understand them.  But then, the ancients don’t sense those of lesser years like to listen too much. They hear you; just that it goes through one ear and. . . . right. They act like they know it. . . . right. That’s why they’re called cliches. Why am I even saying this? You already know everything anyway.

I was informing one of the basketball players on the team I coach that if he didn’t start running, he might get to experience one of my size thirteens. He ran faster. That’s good. We didn’t fail to communicate. Another young man behind me quietly said within hearing of the rest of the team: “That would be itchy.” Guess what? Now everything that is bad is itchy in our school. If someone falls down, that’s itchy. A bad grade? It’s itchy. Starting to get a cold? Itchy. You might be surprised in a few years when, in Webster’s, “itchy” has another meaning. Mosquito bites can be itchy too, but you’ll need to look closer to the top of the definition.

Why is it that we often can’t get anywhere in a doctrinal discussion?  The usual.  Fear.  Pride.   Youth do have extra doses of these.  Christians will grow.  Life has a way of knocking people down.  The young ones haven’t had the equal share of smack-down that older folks have.  I want to hone in on what I think is a major fear factor that throws obstacles across the trail of truth.  Many men have some loyalty to non-Scriptural institutions that inject fealty into their followers, keeping the serfs on the manor.  They pipe in fear through the I-V tubes.

I may be mixing my metaphors, but pay attention better and I wouldn’t be making this look so hard.

When we threw away our binkies and blankies, we men should have rid ourselves of the need to cling.  Large organizations feel safe and provide cover, if only for fragile egos.  Nothing like a pat on the head from the powerful man behind the curtain.  Sure he might be a bumbling professor, but that’s a mighty kingdom he’s a part of.  Perhaps we can call it the Baruch Syndrome.  Jeremiah and he were doing big work, of tremendous value.  Problem was, no one was buying it, even at the blue light special.  When he looked in the mirror, it always came back “fairest preacher of them all,” but no one else seemed to recognize it.  He started shrinking in that mirror until he looked like a dwarf.  He was getting his view of himself from the populace instead of from his position before the Lord.  So God gave him this therapy:

Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not.  Jeremiah 45:5

The B in Baptist is supposed to be:  Bible Sole Authority for Faith and Practice.  We sort through the Bible and do what it says.  But men begin thinking that they report back to the big blankie in Greenville or Detroit or Lansdale or Watertown or Minneapolis or Hammond or Chattanooga.  Instead of What Did Jesus Do, it is:  What does BJ approve?  Can you say honorary doctorate?  Can you say preaching invitation with large “love” offering?  Can you say Jason Janz will let me swim in his in ground swimming pool?  Can you say you get my drift?  Or do we have a failure to communicate?