Pastor's Column - August 26, 2012

PASTOR’S COLUMN. We Presbyterians are also known as Murphy’s Denomination. We believe that if anything can go wrong, it will. Thus, we want safeguards in place to keep it from happening and procedures that tell us what to do next if it does.


We take sin seriously, be it individual or corporate. We’re the regulators who gave America a government of checks and balances, the same sorts of checks and balances in our Presbyterian Book of Order. Over the centuries we have labored to have a policy or a rule in place for almost every matter under the sun and Son.

“If anything can go wrong, it will.” When I was younger, it amused me how uptight we were about this, but as the years have gone by, it is one of the things I appreciate most about Presbyterianism. Why? When we’re right, we’re right. Read the papers. Watch the news. Human beings are a moral mess. I laugh every time I hear something like the following: “An industry spokesperson says that no regulation is needed. The industry will police itself.” Sure it will. All the way to the bank.

The Bible is our authority when it comes to understanding human nature. Jesus says, for example, “No one is good but God alone.” He also says to the men who were about to stone the woman, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” What happened to the Garden of Eden? What’s the cross all about?

A confession, as in our Book of Confession, is a statement about a particular topic based upon what the Bible teaches. Our Confession of 1967 says the following about human nature. “The reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ exposes the evil in humans as sin in the sight of God. In sin, persons claim mastery of their own lives, turn against God and their fellow humans, and become exploiters and despoilers of their world. They lose their humanity in futile striving and are left in rebellion, despair, and isolation… All are in the wrong before God and helpless without his forgiveness. Thus all humans fall under God’s judgment. No one is more subject to that judgment than the person who assumes he is guiltless before God or morally superior to others.”

I’ve always thought that Pogo the possum in the comic strip Pogo has to be Presbyterian. His best-known line? “We have met the enemy and he is us.” -DJ