Fine Prints: October, 2006

Choice? Chance? Or Both? October 7

"Do NOT Ask Me How I'm Feeling!" October 14

Brains, IQ Scores and Other Complicated Matters October 21  

The Pastor's Secret Wardrobe October 28  

Choice? Chance? Or Both?

OK, I admit it: I’ve got this thing for underdogs. You can be pretty sure that if there are down-and-outers in the picture, I’ll be on their side.

For starters, I eschew glibness. So I get rather incensed when I come across sweeping statements that haven’t really been thought through. Statements that–although well-intended–may actually add to the burden of those already struggling. Call me crazy, but it seems to me that our job as Christians should be to lighten burdens rather than increase them.

Anyway, the other day I came across a statement that left me feeling as if I had dust on me teeth–really abrasive. “It’s choice–not chance–that determines your destiny.”

Was the writer talking about short-term or long-term destiny? And, for that matter, does it really make any difference? It seems to me that the same principles apply for both. And I don’t think the statement is accurate in either case. At least not totally.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think choice is hugely important. We make good choices. We make bad choices. And there are consequences for both. Both affect the course of our lives. But our choices aren’t the whole picture.

A few years ago I went to hear General Colin Powell present a lecture. He seemed to think that we’re not quite as much the masters of our own destiny as some might like to think–and maybe even boast about.

When asked the secret of his success, he said: “I worked like a dog, and luck noticed.” He recognized that despite his diligence, things could have gone another way.

King Solomon said candidly–or was it pessimistically?–that “the race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

Solomon isn’t suggesting that speed and strength and learning aren’t great blessings that usually produce significant advantage. But there are forces–“chance,” he calls it–that can wreak havoc with even the best-laid of human plans.

Now, back to the destiny thing. Did you choose your parents? Your country of birth? The religion to which you would be exposed during your formative years? I doubt it. Yet haven’t those factors been critical in the course your life has taken?

The Message renders Deuteronomy 14:2 this way: “You are a people holy to God; God chose you out of all the people on the earth as His cherished personal treasure.” Now a question: Do you think that a person growing up in a Hebrew family and regularly exposed to that verse would have a different worldview and a different sense of self than, say, an animist growing up in the jungle, who’s perpetually seeking to placate the “forces” behind nature that seem arrayed against humanity?

I don’t wish to discount the importance of good choices. But our destiny–both temporal and eternal–is influenced by more than just our choices.

So before we risk bruising by too vigorously patting ourselves on the back, it might be good to remember that “chance” will probably play a bigger role in our ultimate destiny than most of us would like to admit.

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor 

"Do NOT Ask Me How I'm Feeling!" 

While I was visiting Australia last spring, an elderly pastor told me of a conversation he’d had with an even more elderly resident of an assisted-living home. The pastor’s story gave me insight that I think has been partially lacking in my archive of insights.

As the pastor started to speak to the old gentleman, the man raised his hand as if to say, Stop! Then he said, “Don’t ask me how I’m feeling today. The doctor asks me how I’m feeling. The nurse asks me how I’m feeling. The janitor asks. So do my grandchildren. I’m sick and tired of being asked how I’m feeling.

“Tell me you voted for the Labor candidate. Then I’ll swear at you for awhile. We’ll argue a bit. Then we’ll move on to the next topic. But please don’t ask me how I’m feeling.

“Tell me the cricket score. Ask if I’ve read the latest headline. But whatever you do, do NOT ask me how I’m feeling!”

Now I’m not all that old—despite how I may appear to a 10-year-old, and despite the fact that I’m only a couple of months away from becoming a full-fledged, card-carrying participant in our congregation’s 55 and Very Alive group—so I don’t have a full understanding of what a truly senior citizen goes through. But it seems that those who are truly senior may too often be unwittingly disenfranchised from the mainstream of life—especially if they live in some type of home for the aged.

Just because people’s bodies have let them down to the extent that they must have assistance with some of life’s routine chores doesn’t mean that they automatically lose all interest in everything but their own state of being. Very often their minds are still capable of full function. More than that, their minds are full of life experience that would be invaluable to any who actually took the time to listen to the lessons they’ve learned. (Or do we think we’d rather repeat all their mistakes ourselves?)

Years ago in Australia we lived near a health retreat. On rare occasion we would take the family there for a meal. During one such outing we met an elderly rabbi and his wife—both survivors of the Holocaust, and both from families whose survivors had been few. We invited them to our home for a meal. And over the next two or three years, they came to visit us whenever they spent time at the health retreat.

What a feast it was when they visited—and I refer to the stories they told and the insights they shared rather than to Leonie’s excellent cooking. I remember asking the rabbi if he had been the “pastor” of a synagogue most of his life. His reply was priceless: “Since I’m only 87 years old and don’t know just how long I may live, I would hate to say that I’ve been in charge of a synagogue for most of my life. But I have been in charge of one for 62 years.”

Think how much we would have missed if we had assumed that our conversation with the rabbi and his wife couldn’t go any further than “How are you feeling today?”

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor

Brains, IQ Scores and Other Complicated Matters

On September 7 Leonie and I celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary. Also on September 7 an internet blog called SciGuy posted “proof” of what roughly 50 percent of humans have long suspected–that men are smarter than women.

Fortunately, our anniversary celebration was already history by the time I discovered what SciGuy had to say. I’m quite sure that had I found it sooner and shared it with Leonie, it would have had a chilling effect on our festivities. As the blogger himself said about posting his discovery that day, “I guess it’s a good thing that date night in my household was last night, and not this evening.”

So how are men smarter than women?

For starters, men have bigger brains. On average, about 8 percent bigger. In addition, men have some 15 percent more neurons–the part of the brain that actually gets the job done. But the real clincher comes from some Canadian researchers who’ve analyzed about 100,000 SAT scores. To the delight of some and the dismay of others, “they discovered that males surpassed females by an average of 3.6 IQ points.”

And the story gets even more interesting–if you’re a male, that is. Researchers have shown that “men have nearly 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence compared with women.”

As a male, I’d like to just leave it at that and say, “See, we told you so.” But the research doesn’t stop there.

For example, all that gray matter that males possess doesn’t seem quite so impressive when considered in light of the white matter. In fact, “women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence compared to men.”

And when it comes to multi-tasking, it seems that women have it over men, hands down–because females have a bunch of additional neural pathways between the brain’s two hemispheres. And intuition? I’d place my bet on a female any day. But back to the SAT scores.

“I believe that the differences probably lie in the variables they [haven’t] considered,” says Bruce Bracken. One plausible explanation is that more females than males decide to go to college and thus take the SAT test. (The study did in fact include about 10,000 more females than males.) “It may be,” Bracken continues, “that the males who would not have scored as high on the SAT chose not to take it.”

Of course, it may also be–as an increasing number of researchers are beginning to suggest–that IQ tabulation itself isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. I mean, who’s really “smarter”: someone who can figure out an abstract puzzle? or someone who can figure out how to survive happily in today’s socially complex world?

Jesus said something about the foolishness of gaining the whole world but losing one’s own soul. And I think he might also have something to say about the futility of IQ smarts if they don’t lead to a more satisfying life.

I don’t know whether there truly is or isn’t a disparity between males and females when it comes to IQ scores. What I’m quite certain about is that an IQ score doesn’t really mean all that much.

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor

The Pastor's Secret Wardrobe 

The other day I was painting our guest-room closet when I suddenly had a flashback–30 years back, to be precise.

Looking into my almost-empty paint container, I was reminded of some advice I received at a “Young Pastors Retreat” during my first year of ministry. The advice came from someone fairly high up in the church hierarchy, so as pastoral novices, we took note. Well, sort of.

“It is imperative,” the church leader told us, “to have the respect of your church members. And the way you dress has a lot to do with how they will perceive you. You should never be seen by your parishioners when you are in clothing unbecoming to a pastor.

“For example,” he said, “ if I were painting my house and ran out of paint, I would never think of going to the hardware store–where I might meet a church member–wearing my paint-smeared clothing. I would always clean up and put on a collared shirt and tie. If the church members were to see me in old clothes, it would diminish the office of pastor in their minds.”

I sat there rather stunned.

I mean, I’m a farm boy. The environment where I grew up was rough-and-tumble. Macho-male. Redneck, even. In the congregation I attended back then, seeing a preacher occasionally in paint-splattered clothes would go a long way toward ensuring his acceptance by his members. Some prominent calluses on his hands and a bit of dirt under his fingernails wouldn’t hurt, either.

The males in our congregation wanted a pastor who was a man’s man. The kind of guy who could shed his suit, put on his “grubbies” and feverishly pitch bales of hay if ominous clouds portended potentially hay-ruining rain. The fewer times the pastor was seen in a suit, the better.

I listened respectfully to the preacher’s advice. But I didn’t buy it in 1976, and I don’t buy it now.

Oh, I think pastoral dress should be appropriate to the occasion. And I definitely want the members of my congregation to respect me. But I don’t think that hiding the fact that I sometimes wear paint-splattered clothes is going to achieve much. As I learned in high-school Spanish class (one of the few things I learned, mind you): “El habito no hace al monje”–the habit does not make the monk. Or more generically: Clothes do not make the person.

Yes, I want the respect of my congregation. But in today’s postmodern world, respect doesn’t come because of a title. Nor does it come from projecting the image of never sweating or getting dirty. Respect comes from how you treat others, how you do your job, who you really are as a person. And, actually, that’s how it should be. For far too long we’ve honored people solely on the basis of their station in life–whether they truly deserved honor or not.

Too many of us have tried to demand respect without realizing that true respect is earned. Too many of us have lost sight of the servant-leader example of Jesus.

Somehow I don’t think the Carpenter from Nazareth–who was the epitome of down-to-earth (think about that one)–would have been embarrassed to be seen in His work clothes.

Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor