Fat Doctors and Self-righteous Pastors

Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? Matthew 7:3

A man went to his doctor for a physical examination. The doctor gave him an initial exam and then sent him to five other physicians, who checked him out in their areas of specialty. A week later, the man returned for a report on the results.

Sitting behind his desk, the doctor fingered several sheets of reports, lingering over a few pages. Finally, he closed the manila folder and reported, “You are in fine shape – your heart, your lungs, all those things are in good order. But you are too heavy.” He then gave the man his expert counsel about the damage that the extra pounds he was carrying could do to his heart and lungs and blood vessels.

The patient began to feel apprehensive. Then he looked at the doctor and realized the doctor was two inches shorter than he was and probably weighed about 235 pounds!

Here lies the dilemma of the trained mind. The doctor was providing accurate and needed counsel, while unaware that he himself needed to address the problem of his own weight. Being a doctor gave the overweight physician no immunity. Until the doctor applied his medical knowledge to his personal lifestyle, he too was in physical jeopardy.

The point is that we pastors, with our specialized knowledge, leadership positions and spiritual skills, can fall victim to a false sense of security. We must remember that in teaching others about God, we must know God ourselves; in calling others to faith, we must be believers too; in feeding others, we must also eat soul-nourishing food. Like everyone else, we too need help to grow spiritually.

Holy things can become ordinary to us, so customary and familiar to us that we become casual about them. As “professionals” who work regularly with the contents of the Bible, we must guard against subconsciously viewing the Scriptures as only a literary treasure out of which we teach and preach great things that we falsely assume we have mastered. We must search ourselves, asking, “As we routinely shepherd souls, do those who experience our leadership perceive a genuine caring for them? Do they perceive alongside responsible scholarship an evident faith? Do they sense both a love for truth and a heart for God? Do they perceive within our prayers the accent of our personal reverence?”

What people want to see in pastors as they lead in worship or read from the Scriptures is reverence. Reverence is not a tone or a posture. It is the atmosphere exhaled by a man who is aware of the Presence of God. Our responsibility to God begins and ends in our living and ministering in that Presence.