Doctors and Preachers

Humiliated myself by going to the doctor yesterday. Not only was I measured, again (for real?), but I was gazed upon with dubious eyes by both nurse and white coated somebody or other. She, of the white coat, lowered her glasses, tsked, and told me to “feel better.” It’s not that there’s nothing wrong with me (don’t pile on), it’s that there isn’t anything anyone can do. It’s a virus. The children all got well, according to her, because they rested. I, she intimated, probably didn’t. The cure, then, is to “feel better”.

Drove home not feeling better but feeling nettled and angry, and also clearer about why bad preaching is so dumb. For real, how often have I gone to church (not Good Shepherd) and been told stupid things like, “do better,” or “have joy,” or “stop sinning.”

I don’t always realize that was the substance of the sermon until I get home and try to piece together what I heard. And then, like driving home from the walk-in, I find myself frustrated and angry. That’s WHY I went to church! Because I couldn’t “be good.” I was failing. I was ill. I needed help. I needed to know that there was someone who could come in and do something, could even see what the problem was.

All the symptoms are there, but I, not being able to see inside my own body, can’t even know what to do about them. Or, or in the case of the sermon, I listen knowing that I’m overwrought and in peril, but I can’t see inside my own soul. I can’t properly diagnose my condition. It’s up to the preacher to rightly splay open the scriptures so that God can use them to do his healing work. But if the preacher doesn’t do that, if he just stands there and tells me to be a better person, a holier person a more joyful person, it’s still then on me to effect a cure. Only I’m just as incapable of doing it as when I first came in and sat down.

Seriously, if you’re in church and the preacher is telling you to do something impossible–unless it’s the humanly impossible action of being really sorry about your sin and calling out to Jesus to make it better, to take the sin away, to effect a cure that you yourself do not even fully understand–go find another church. In this case I am punished for going to the walk-in, as I always am. If I’m not better in another half week I’ll go find my real doctor who is a sensible and kind person, who has never told me, thank heaven, to go home and “feel better.”