[TruthTalk] My Sister and Peaches

[Jonathan Hughes]

Morning all,   I picked my sister up from the airport last night.  She lives in the United States and works there as a children’s pastor.  I mentioned the discussions we have been having here regarding Bush’s policies, America’s responsibility, repentance, and the reflective approach to 9/11 that Lance and I prescribe.  She immediately told me of how much of America is doing just that, engaging the event with thoughtful and prayerful speech.  She mentioned that talk radio has been constructively discussing why the rest hates the west for over a year now.  I said to her, well that certainly is not like the forum that I am attempting to engage.  She looked up from her dinner and said, “Oh, you must be speaking with fundamentalists.”  I smiled.   There is nothing like a nice, ripe peach.  So soft, juicy, delicious, sweet, everything a peach should be.  But not all peaches are like the perfect peach.  Many peaches are hard, unforgiving to the touch, un-impressionable.  They look great from the outside, the fuzz in the right places, the colour just right.  But when you pick one up it is hard.  Your thumb leaves no imprint.  You put the peach down and search for one that is impressionable, one that will be sweet to the mouth.  Of course you keep an eye on the first peach; you hold it again tomorrow but it is still hard.  Each day you lightly touch it hoping for that softness, hoping against odds that the peach will become all that it is meant to become: the perfect peach.  Although it still looks beautiful on the outside it begins to rot on the inside.  Within a few days, this peach that had so much potential is now rotten, beginning to smell.   I would like the TT forum to become more like the soft peaches: impressionable, teachable, and pliable.  This is my main problem with fundamentalists; they have lost the ability to be molded, to become soft, teachable.  Rather, they look great from the outside, perhaps looking like the model Christians.  They do most things right; they look like good peaches.  But when you pick one up, attempt to become more intimate with that peach you notice that it is hard on the inside.  A nice looking peach, but little visible fruitness.  These peaches tend to be rather angry, responding out of their hardness, their rigidity.  Softness is considered too feminine, too liberal.  Meanwhile, they slowly rot inside, their juice drying up.   My very first post on Truthtalk was about epistemological humility; the changes that occur in our doctrines as we become closer to God.  I asked for examples from people (after providing a few of my own) on where God had changed them, molded them differently from what they first believed.  I found it astounding when none of the ‘fundamentalists’ on this forum replied, not one of them.  It appears that fundamentalists grow in the faith, just never change in it.  What an eye-opener for me.  I beg of you, plead with you, allow the Spirit to keep you humble, to be impressionable, to listen and hear the Spirit’s voice in whatever guise it may come to you.  Allow yourself to be healthy peaches, full of juice and a delicate sweetness.   Jonathan