Friday, February 01, 2013
Pointing at Self
At Christian Post, Paul Tripp tells of his own blindness to self:
Leadership is an intoxicant, one begins to think oneself worthy of the adulation that comes with the spotlight. But the spotlight is just part f the make-up, hiding the flaws.
Tripp's testimony is about the damage his self-blindness did to his family. How fortunate he is that it did not damage his church. I have seen the institutions that Christian leaders serve fatally damaged becasue of self-blindness. It is usually in the name of grace that I have seen the damage turn from hurtful to fatal becasue no one was willing to confront.
Tripp said:
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1. The reality of spiritual blindness in the life of the pastor. If sin blinds, and it does, then as long as sin remains in the heart of a pastor, there will be pockets of spiritual blindness. And as I have written elsewhere, the scary thing with spiritually blind people is that they're blind to their blindness. This means that the pastor needs "instruments of seeing" in his life as much as the people to whom he ministers (see Heb. 3:12-13).I think that most people that enter into ministry are blind to self - honestly, and they enter ministry as a means to avoid serious self-examination. Oh sure, they have a pet "weakness" that they confess at appropriate times, but genuine self-examination seems not to be in the cards.
Leadership is an intoxicant, one begins to think oneself worthy of the adulation that comes with the spotlight. But the spotlight is just part f the make-up, hiding the flaws.
Tripp's testimony is about the damage his self-blindness did to his family. How fortunate he is that it did not damage his church. I have seen the institutions that Christian leaders serve fatally damaged becasue of self-blindness. It is usually in the name of grace that I have seen the damage turn from hurtful to fatal becasue no one was willing to confront.
Tripp said:
The next several weeks were extremely painful as I saw that anger everywhere. But I experienced the transformative pain of grace.Grace is NOT! painless. Maybe it is time to speak up.Technorati Tags:self blindness, pain, grace
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