Not everyone is everything

We should stop acting as experts all the time

It has been a rather un-edifying week for news. As I type that, I think perhaps I have been overly influenced by British understatement: it’s been a disappointing, upsetting, and disturbing week for news. First, there was the news that Philip Yancey, a best-selling Christian author (25 million books), confessed to engaging in an eight year affair with a married woman. I read The Jesus I Never Knew about a decade ago, and wasn’t overly moved by it. But I understand that many have been very influenced by his writing and his example as a sort of “Christian who is okay with experiencing doubts and asking questions.” It’s odd— many years ago I might have desired such a role model, but I now suspect that a person admitting and embracing the experience of doubt being a particularly unique selling-point is an odd necessity of American evangelical Christianity. Finding my home in more historic Christianity, it is simply a given that you will have doubts sometimes, but also that your own personal feelings aren’t all that important; God does the saving, God offers nourishment and grace in the sacraments through the ministry and witness of the church. You can trust in that and not tie yourself into knots making sure you still believe all the time. Anyway, I digress.

After that came the terrible news that a woman, Renee Nichole Good, had been shot and killed in an encounter with an ICE (United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent. People quickly formed opinions on whether this was a murder in cold blood, or a justified act of self-defence. People watched videos of the shooting from eight or nine different angles. Public figures purporting to be Christians said unbelievably cruel and crass things. Other people denounced them for saying such things. It’s all very upsetting.

I usually do not comment on these sorts of things, because I feel I would only be adding to the “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” And I also think that my commenting on it adds to a culture in which everyone imagines themselves to be an expert of whom a verdict is required on every news story. I am not an expert on the psychology of cheaters or narcissists who carry on duplicitous lives and perpetuate deceptions upon their families and fan bases for the better part of a decade, nor am I ballistics expert, or acquainted with law enforcement guidelines on what constitutes self defence. Perhaps more than all of this, as long as I am not actually asked as a matter of civic duty to serve on a jury, I don’t think it is good for my soul to watch, even once, a video of someone’s life being snuffed out, much less from eight different angles, with coarse, angry language applied to the victim, all for the purpose of drawing my conclusions on Twitter (X).

So why am I verbally processing all this on Substack with you today? Great question, and as I type this, I’m not confident that I’ll actually end up sharing it. But I noticed in reactions to both of these upsetting events a common thread that I think is worth noting. I haven’t drawn full conclusions about it, and I would be interested to receive your input. It is what I perceive to be the strongly held American belief that everyone can be everything. Let me try to explain.

Something I found odd about Philip Yancey’s confession was that he said he had “disqualified himself from Christian ministry” which Christianity Today interpreted as him “Withdrawing from ministry.” This struck me as odd. Yancey, as far as I know is not in ministry. He has never trained at a seminary, he’s not a pastor, he’s not, as far as I can tell on the board of any nonprofits. It is striking, actually, that he does not mention church at all, which makes one wonder if church factors in to his understanding of ministry or the Christin life. If you had asked me prior to this debacle “Is Philip Yancey in ministry?” for all of the contributions Yancey has made to his readers and their faith journeys, I would have said “No, he’s an independent writer who lives in a cabin the mountains of Colorado.” The last part is relevant not only because I am from Colorado and miss the mountains, but because it highlights the solitary nature of his (prior) vocation. It reminds me of the time around half a decade ago when a young man I was seeing at the time broke up with because “he wasn’t prepared to support my public ministry.” This was news to me because I didn’t consider myself as having a ministry! I am a writer! To me, it would seem self-important and misleading to call what I do ministry. And conversely, for me to withdraw from “ministry” would be fairly meaningless— it wouldn’t cost me a salary, it wouldn’t cost me anything unless I withdrew my books or donated their royalties to a charity. So, similarly, I struggle to see what it means for Yancey to “withdraw from ministry.”

Anyway, I posted about this on notes in the form of a question— a question I meant sincerely. What is going here? Does it actually mean anything for Yancey to withdraw from ministry? Has he considered his writing career as ministry for all this time? Is that appropriate? People were more defensive than I expected. Firstly, several people took this as a side-swipe at some of my own family members’ line of work (which was not my intention), but more generally people objected to the idea that Yancey was not a minister or did not “do ministry.” One person writes “Every vocation is a kind of ministry.” Another person objects, stating that the home is a ministry: “Who is the home accountable to besides the family and the Lord? You have your ministry as well. Your books represent Christ and your walk with him.” Here, I think people found objectionable that not everything a Christian does should be considered a ministry. Another aspect of the objections was that people seemed to think that me saying that Philip Yancey’s books were not ministry meant that I thought they were worthless.

There are many replies one could make to these objections. One could say that while everything in the Christian life can be an act of witness or worship (1 Corinthians 10:31), that doesn’t mean that everything is an act of ministry or indeed that the role of teacher, or pastor, or priest is not a distinct role that not everyone is called to inhabit. For example, one could look to Romans 12:

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve (Joy here: the word here is διακονίαν which is used elsewhere throughout the New Testament as “ministry”); if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

I suppose one could argue that this implies the whole of the Christian life is a form of “service” (διακονίαν) or “ministry.” But then wouldn’t this mean that Philip Yancey ought not to withdraw from ministry? Wouldn’t it mean that “withdrawing from ministry” mean he ceases to be a Christian, e.g. to serve the Lord. To me, then, the implication is that ministry is a distinctive way of serving God as a minister or διάκονος as it is referred to in the New Testament, which is usually translated as deacon or minister. Also, some objections seemed to point to the idea of seminaries or churches being a “modern institution” when it seems to factually be the case that the idea of the individual or atomic family being an independent, self-accountable unit (as opposed to the clan or the extended family as it is embedded in local community) is actually the post-enlightenment (as secularisation and individualism become predominant), modern, and innovative view not to be found in most of Christian, or for that matter human, history. Think Matthew 10:35 or how all the apostles left their families or never formed them to serve as ministers. Or, think of the fact that until very recently, most families neither had access to a Bible in their native tongue nor could read, and so the “spiritual life of family” was mediated through the church, where the minister would preach to those who couldn’t read. But these are asides to what struck me.

The idea that all people are ministers, or the objection to distinctive offices or callings.

This came out more clearly to me in the reactions to the shooting of Renee Nicole Good. People don’t seem to trust the media, the government, government agencies, or social media. Everyone needs to see and make a judgement themselves. Everyone is an expert. But here again, I find myself asking: what does this mean? When a forensic investigator goes before a jury, their professional life is on the line. They have gone through years of training and professional internships. They have qualifications that could be rescinded (not unlike a minister). They are accountable to their industry, to the legal system, and to the community. They could be put in jail for drawing a hasty conclusions or misinterpreting the facts. This means that they are accountable, and that accountability (hopefully, but obviously not always) restrains their personal biases and reactions. Our society is dependent upon people inhabiting these offices: police officer, who is not the legislator, the judge, or the jury, but who will be held accountable to all of these. And furthermore, our society depends on people being willing to take up these weighty offices; being willing to train for many years, to submit to the rules and regulations that enable them to become qualified, and the ongoing scrutiny of their profession, the legal system, and public opinion.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that people can’t have views or profound reactions to what seems to be a sort of lightning bolt moment in American society. But there’s something odd to me in the way that people suddenly take on the office of forensics investigator, judge, jury, and even executioner, with the rather horrifying result of people confidently saying that Renee Good deserved to be shot in the face, or contrarily that the officer was certainly a cold-blooded murderer— before any investigation has even begun, far less been concluded. I think this is a reflection of a profound loss of trust in institutions, and probably with some good reason. But I’m not sure the solution to loss of trust in society is for everyone to become self-appointed ministers, police officers, economists, doctors, judges and executors. It’s not effective and I’m not sure it’s good for us.

I personally am thankful that I don’t need to fill the office of a minister. I watch in gratitude as my pastor graciously navigate intensely painful family situations in the church, drug addicts walking into the church mid service, or the aunties in the front pew complaining that the Christmas trees have different hues of lights. I am also thankful that I am not a doctor, that I don’t need to hear all day about people’s peculiar bodily functions and fluids, make sure that I prescribe the right drug in the right dosage, and deliver life changing diagnoses. On the flip side, I am thankful as a writer (note: not a minister!) for my agent, my editors, my manuscript reviewers who hold me accountable and improve my writing.

We all have offices in life, people to whom we are accountable, relationships that constrain and motivate us. But we are not all, and do not need to be, everything. And I think there is something important in realising and accepting that. I think that when we forget this, and when we spend hours on the internet acting in the roles of forensic investigators, doctors, judges, ministers, or any other number of offices for which we are not trained and in which we are not accountable, we become distracted from thoughtfully and faithfully fulfilling the offices to which we are clearly called and which we do actually have a duty to fulfil.

In closing this, I find myself thinking about the statement from Janet Yancey, Philip Yancey’s wife of fifty-five and a half (as she notes) years. She writes this:

I, Janet Yancey, am speaking from a place of trauma and devastation that only people who have lived through betrayal can understand. Yet I made a sacred and binding marriage vow 55½ years ago, and I will not break that promise. I accept and understand that God through Jesus has paid for and forgiven the sins of the world, including Philip’s. God grant me the grace to forgive also, despite my unfathomable trauma. Please pray for us.

I have seen some people express pity for Janet Yancey, saying she is trapped in a conservative bubble that forces her to stay in an unhappy marriage. They point out that even Jesus gives an okay to divorces in the case of infidelity (Matthew 19:9). I do not pretend to know what it feels like to be in her position, but it seems to me that people attribute much less agency to her than may be the case. In her statement, I read the words of a woman who took seriously the calling, the witness, one could even say the ministry, of marriage, and the office of wife. I see someone who is unwilling to let the sins of another person make a foolishness of the vows that she made and of that office to which she has been faithful all her life. I don’t know that it is what every person could or ought to do, but I have only the greatest respect for her commitments and her fortitude. I will pray for them.

I feel challenged to take even more seriously the offices to which I am called. I am not called to be everything, but I am called to a few things, a few offices, a few people. I hope to fulfil those as well as I can, being no less or more than I am.