Faith Venture

Parents sent notes. They came to my house. They pleaded. I was an elected member of the school board. There were parents who wanted us to start a “gifted and talented” program because they were convinced their little offspring would be the next Mozart—or something.

I advised seeing the movie Amadeus. Do you really want your child to be sub-threshold or even over-threshold psychologically disturbed?

These memories returned while I was thinking about how many “Christians” over the past 2,000 years have wanted to be prophets. 

For one thing, they thought that meant foretelling the future. They missed the part of the Bible where God says he hates fortune-tellers.

And they inevitably get it wrong.

And they think that means telling everyone else they have it wrong and they are all going to hell.

They don’t know. I’ve not heard of a human person yet who had the power to look inside another person and know for certain the status of their soul. Sure, people leave trails. But, I certainly would turn back any power vested in me to determine someone’s future. Although I’m sure that there are people who just love telling other people off.

They also, unless they had some weird persecution complex (check out Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ for a Freudian take on Jesus), they haven’t read and understood the bios of most of the prophets. They had lonely and frustrating lives.

You are what you are. As Paul once told a church that was messing up organizing itself, they should look at the spiritual gifts of everyone and everyone look at their spiritual gifts. They should be tested. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. That is the road to grief.

Note: we instituted a “gifted” program like everyone else. The teachers that first year said, great, we have the brightest kids, we’ll make them work. The parents said, our kids are in this special program, they should all receive automatic A’s that are worth 5 points on a 4-point scale. In the end, I don’t think it mattered much. There are many kids not from that program running around with MA’s and PhD’s. 

Note Two (don’t read if you are going to read the book): 

The last temptation was marrying Mary, having kids, and sitting on the doorstep enjoying family life.

This entry was posted on January 11, 2024 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Attitude, Gifts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.