Sensitivity for Christians 101

I WASN’T MR. SENSITIVE in my younger days.

Actually, still today, I can be direct.

And by “direct” I mean filterless.

Like a Camel cigarette.

Take the little Post-It size limericks and sayings I pasted to the front of my desk back when I worked my way through seminary as an editorial assistant at a denominational headquarters.

Many of the editorial assistants posted sayings that were wise, profound, and sensitive.

Example isn’t another way to teach, it is the only way to teach.
–Albert Einstein

Pray as if everything depended on God; work as if everything depended on you.
–Ignatius of Loyola

I chose a path less traveled.

Death be not loud.
–Stephen M. Miller

Cookies, cookies all galore
Cookies, cookies on the floor
Cookies, cookies I am no crumb
Peanut butter on my thumb.
–Stephen M. Miller

Boy bees knees
A sleazy sneeze
Big fat girls are hard to squeeze.
–Stephen M. Miller

I kid you not, I wrote those lines. Can’t you tell? And I taped them to my desk in an evangelical denominational headquarters in the late 1970’s.

In retrospect, I have no idea why I was not fired.

Or why no one ever asked me to remove them.

Except that one preacher passing through who mumbled his complaint to someone in the office he knew. So I got the word secondhand, which wasn’t enough to motivate me.

Besides, it came from a preacher. What do they know except how to sedate you in two minutes or less?

See what I mean?

I really was like that during my seminary days.

I’m not sure if I have mellowed, or if I have adapted to the changing culture, or if God’s Spirit has taken a jackhammer to me.

Something has changed.

I typically still say pretty much what I think.

But I think I don’t think quite the way I used to think.

That’s what I’m thinking.

If someone ever invents time travel, and I am able to go back to my late-1970s self, I might quietly, invisibly paste onto my desk a couple of personally paraphrased Bible verses – alongside my limericks:
 

You are one of God’s people. Look like it. Put on mercy and kindness the way you wear clothes. Wear a little gentleness and patience, too. And don’t forget the most important thing. On top of everything else you wear, put on love. That’s what everyone should see first.
Colossians 3:12-14, Steve’s Bible Translation

But my 1970s self would probably figure that preacher taped the verses up there. So he’d wad it up and shoot it for two points in the nearest basket.

Change isn’t always bad.

A 10-book giveaway by Steve, ends 8.29.13.