Here in the country we think that having five cars in front of us at the roundabout is an infringement of our human rights.
Andrew Roycroft recalls the observation ‘You are not stuck in traffic, you are the traffic’ as being a salient reminder that a traffic jam is not something that others are doing to you, but a common experience you’re sharing with others.
He offers observations to pastors, other church members, and young people.
The paragraphs directed at pastors seeks to deal with the ‘us and them’ mentality that can so easily develop (or be fed by church members).
Pastor, you are the traffic: one of the easiest areas to develop a ‘them and us’ attitude, to imagine oneself aloof from the cumulative setbacks and declines of the local church is in pastoral ministry. Pastors are called to teach God’s people, to edify and equip them for works of service, to care for and disciple Christians so that they grow through the seasons and storms of life. With this kind of work in hand it is easy to imagine that we are somehow divorced from sin’s co-operative, that we are solely curative rather than causative when it comes to spiritual regress.
In such circumstances I need to remind myself that I am the traffic, that I contribute my unit of fallen humanity to the community of God’s people who are clogging the highways to holiness and heaven. I am not merely an agent of change, but a subject for whom change is vital. My skewed perspectives and lopsided priorities, my casual acceptance of my own faults, my willingness to ignore what God says and transgress what God forbids, my truculence in the face of what God is clearly saying in his Word, are part of the problem we are all facing as pilgrims. Any other view of myself will lead to conceit, to unconfessed sin, to pastoral insensitivity, and to a Pharisaical approach to life which will be deadly to others. The acknowledgement that ‘I am the traffic’ will lead to true heart work, true self-scrutiny, and a vitality in my walk with God among his people which is indispensable.
Read the whole post at Thinking Pastorally.
