Leaders who are looked up to constantly
who give out answers competently
who everyone assumes are living what they are saying
often have acute experiences of dissonance
“Who I am
and what people think I am
aren’t anywhere close
to being the same thing
The better I get as a rabbi
and the more my reputation grows
the more I feel like a fraud
I know so much more than I live
The longer I live
the more knowledge I acquire
the wider the gap between
what I know and what I live
I’m getting worse by the day…”
Found Poem - Eugene Peterson - Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
I think there are at least two ways for a pastor to respond to this. On the one hand he can enter a spiral of depression and failure that lead to him either leaving the ministry or subsisting in it as a fraud. He will see himslef as a total failure and be unable to come to terms with the case built against him.
On the other hand, the more he learns of the gap between what he knows and how he lives the more he will understand grace and be all the better for it. He will truly be able to love others because he will begin to see them as God does and he will love himself for the same reason.
Getting Worse
