the proGnosis

I’m in the middle of decorating our bedroom and as I removed the lid of the first tub of paint, I was reminded about how much I love paint! You may not know this about me, but I’m actually a retired artist—I took early retirement with a nice redundancy package when they were laying people off in 2005! I still do art when I have spare time. I think it’s the artist in me that loves paint so much. I love it’s smell, it’s texture, the way it moves with the brush and all those potential colours. I love it even when it’s just ‘light stone’ paint applied with a roller on badly papered bumpy walls that I can’t be bothered to strip and re-paper or re-plaster.

That may sound weird to you, if you’re not an artist too. It’s the same for the musician who loves whatever instrument it is they play; for the poet or author who loves words; for the actor who loves a stage; for the chef who loves food…and so it goes on!

So for the theologian, well he is the one who loves the Words that inform him about God, the Bible. The evangelist is the person who loves the ‘evangel’, the gospel. And the pastor/shepherd, well he loves the sheep, the people of the Christian community. They are simple but profound truths. Many have gone far wrong in them, such as the liberal theologian who probably prefers intelligence more than the Bible and so doesn’t care for it in the same way. There’s the pastor who prefers the sound of his own voice more than he prefers listening to people and caring for their needs. The evangelist may forsake the gospel for a social gospel that is no ‘evangel’.

This isn’t just for the ‘full-timers’ though. All Christians (who love Christ by the way) should be theologians, pastors to one another and evangelists. That’s not to deny the particular calling of the ‘full-timer’ but for us all to realise the roles we all should all play in the life of a church. And we play those roles by first realising a love for God’s Word, God’s people and God’s gospel.

None of us will have pure love for them all the time, and this needs to be worked upon as we see love fading. But do you love them? How can you love them more?