Isn't It Just Like God?

I am currently reading Eugene Peterson's latest book, "Tell It Slant, a conversation on the language of Jesus in his stories and prayers" (available in bookstores on October 15). In chapter 2, where Peterson re-visits the story of the Good Samaritan, I found these words: “One of the standard ploys of defensiveness is to seize the offense to put the other person on the defense, to take attention off of my weakness or fault and shift attention to the other person.” Immediately my mind went to my recent e-mail response to the brother in Christ who thinks I'm emergent/postmodern. When he came to mind, I thought, "Oh, man! God you couldn't be asking me to look at my own defensiveness toward him, could you?" But, of course, He was. And isn't it just like God to use Eugene Peterson to call me to repentance for my defensiveness toward someone who thinks Eugene Peterson's translation of Scripture is "nothing short of a hack job on scripture through the distortions of a mystic."

So today I wrote an apology to my brother in Christ. The apology was for the defensive tone I took in my quite lengthy response to his concerns about my theology. If my theology and pedagogy are orthodox, than why the defensiveness? Rather than simply inviting him into a dialogue, I came at him with a point-by-point rebuttal to what he had written about what he perceived to be my theological positions. After reading the Peterson quote, I went back to my e-mail to this brother and found that, in the emotions of the moment, I had made sure it was clear that I was on the side of Jesus and Paul in my teaching methods, which certainly had to communicate that somehow he was not. As I looked back over my lengthy e-mail response, I had to admit to him that, at some level, I had felt, "I've been in vocational ministry about as long as he's been alive." In case you missed it, that's called pride. Not a particularly endearing or engaging quality to exhibit.

So I took the time to acknowledge my sin against him and to let him know that my door is still open if he wants a dialogue rather than a monologue from either him or me. I don't know if he'll take me up on the offer, but I didn't want to resist what seemed clear to me to be what the Holy Spirit was asking me to do. Isn't it just like God to use all the pieces of our life (the books we read, the people we encounter, even the failures [which being translated means sin] we experience), if we'll let Him, to conform us to the image of His Son?