I am more often than not a glass is half empty guy who refuses to quit. Just the other day I read once again Einstein’s famous determination that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but thinking the results will change. The writer was using the quote to denigrate pastors who try the same tired strategies of church growth but with each mounting failure refuse to acknowledge the zaniness of their methods. Of course this was a successful and popular pastor who was passing along his success story to the rest of us who were clearly “insane”.
The use of the quote to burst my glass is half full bubble was infuriating not so much because the author might be so wrong in his assessment of me and my vocational myopia but rather because of his use of a deist’s philosophical musings to prod me to follow him along in his “God kissed” autobahn to success. I find it disturbing to put it mildly the assumption that every “successful” ministry is right and every “unsuccessful” one inherently flawed.
The trend for the Christian community to migrate toward large churches notwithstanding, is it reasonable to assume that every blooming branch bears good fruit? Is it just as fair to determine that every dried branch is a dead one? Take two extreme examples as a point of contemplation. Was Solomon a good fruit branch? If so, what makes us so certain he was? We could quickly point to his magnificent proverbs, his monumental expansion of Israel’s prominence upon the world stage, his brilliant observations and his gigantic building projects and justifiably call him a good branch….and yet…
The second example is Jeremiah who failed miserably at every turn. He never married, never parented successfully a single child, could not turn more than a few miserable souls around, was a pitiful orator, never put two positive words together in any sentence, had the most contentious relationship with God one could imagine and perhaps did not have a single day in his life that was even partly happy. Year after year he made the same predictable, pedantic prophetic mutterings and may have won a convert with his methods…maybe one. Insanity…
Is prayer insane if you never clearly hear God speak to you? Is faith insane if you miss out on life’s big bonuses? Is love insane if you are turned away? Is integrity insane if you are never believed? Is life insane if you die in the end? Is the glass half full if you haven’t yet gotten your drought from it? Is the world insane if success is the measure of every branch’s worth? I may wish I could be Solomon but honestly I would rather shoot hoops with Jeremiah. Is that insane?
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