the back burner

the 41

For Funke and others, here's an extended entry from one of Dr. Barker's chapel addresses.

Excerpted from Dr. Barker’s “How My Mind Has Changed” speech. (October 13, 2004. Covenant College)

I now turn from the how to the what of my changes of mind. I shall present these in the form of forty-one mostly unrelated aphorisms, each beginning with the expression “I have come to believe…”

1. I have come to believe that words hurt longer than sticks and stones.

2. I have come to believe that it is not important whether I wear a coat and tie when I speak in chapel.

3. I have come to believe that it is of very little consequence whether the Atlanta Braves win the National League Eastern Division title.

4. I have come to believe that though long-range planning is prudential, God designed us to live in day-tight compartments.

5. I have come to believe that I would do well to focus more on enjoying God than on anxiously attempting to glorify Him.

6. I have come to believe, in accordance with Proverbs 10:23, that wickedness is no more a sport to a fool than wisdom is fun for a person of understanding.

7. I have come to believe that I will probably never in this life outgrow my doubts.

8. I have come to believe that though it is not inferable from the Bible, retirement is a good idea.

9. I have come to believe that prayer is incalculably important.

10. I have come to believe that the traditional wedding vows say all that needs to be said at a wedding.

11. I have come to believe that “They got married and lived happily ever after” is an admirable goal and a dangerous illusion.

12. I have come to believe that, as Edmund Spenser wrote, “… blisse may not abide in state of mortall men” (Faerie Queene, I, vii, and 44).

13. I have come to believe that although ideas have consequences, so does digestion.

14. I have come to believe that what is new is not always progress.

15. I have come to believe that what is new is not to be rejected just because it is new.

16. I have come to believe that change is often necessary, is almost always painful, and usually comes with no guarantee that it is right.

17. I have come to believe that a zeal for control causes serious damage.

18. I have come to believe that those who recognize and are willing to work on the dysfunctionality of their families and themselves have a long head start on the rest of us.

19. I have come to believe that the influence of birth-order in one’s family is ignored at our own peril and the peril of others who are important to us.

20. I have come to believe that the people I know best and love the most (including myself) are the people I know the least.

21. I have come to believe that we dangerously confuse our finiteness with our fallenness.

22. I have come to believe that though we appropriately long for perfection, the inadequacies, the incompleteness, and the imperfection of this life aren’t always so very bad.

23. I have come to believe that one of my most serious sins is unthankfulness.

24. I have come to believe that it is less enlightened to pray, “Lord, help me to know the right thing to do” than to pray, “Lord, help me to do the right thing.”

25. I have come to believe that biblical single-mindedness resides no closer to the rigidity of the obsessive than it does to the scatter of hysteria.

26. I have come to believe that our thinking would be clearer and our discourse more gracious if we declared a two-year moratorium on the expressions “Reformed,” “Calvinistic,” “the integration of faith and learning,” “world views,” “the antithesis,” and “common grace.”

27. I have come to believe that those of us who are most at home in our own tradition have a lot to learn from Lutherans, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Pentacostalists.

28. I have come to believe, with Lewis Smedes, that being right is not the most important thing in life; being forgiven is.

29. I have come to believe that the dogged pursuit of Cartesian certitude has been a devastation to my soul.

30. I have come to believe that many people, Christians and unbelievers alike, live a lot better than their theories and doctrines.

31. I have come to believe that many people, Christians and unbelievers alike, live a lot worse than their theories and doctrines.

32. I have come to believe that, as God designed Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh to be golfers, Barry Bonds to be a batter, and Greg Maddux to be a pitcher, He designed—not at such a lofty level but equally importantly—my wife to be a gardener and me to be a reader (and, who knows, maybe a poet).

33. I have come to believe that if I could produce 100 truly good poems, that would trump 25 years of college administration and 45 years of college teaching.

34. I have come to believe that being smart is not as important as being good—not even close.

35. I have come to believe that my obsessive desire for attention and approval has been a devastation to my soul.

36. I have come to believe that desperately trying in the wrong ways to be special has come close to shipwrecking my soul.

37. I have come to believe that I am special (as is each of you).

38. I have come to believe that self-deprecation, self-abnegation, self-abasement, and self-effacement are not the same as Christlike self-denial and self-sacrifice and are insults to our Creator and Savior.

39. I have come to believe that though without Christ I as a sinner deserved the wrath and curse of God, I did not deserve to be sexually molested as a boy.

40. I have come to believe that healthy life in the community, life in the body of Christ, fosters individuality but condemns individualism.

41. I have come to believe that, as Proverbs 29:11 says, “A fool vents all his feelings, / But a wise man holds them back.” And so

it seems to me appropriate to conclude by quoting what is, I think, my shortest poem, a poem almost as short as its title:

Contrition

I
Regret
Words.

Posted by nickles at May 31, 2007 06:09 PM | TrackBack