“Do not call unclean, what I have cleansed.”
I must write this. I’ve tried all week to talk myself out of it, but I can’t… so, I’m just going to have to lay it out.
An acquaintance contacted me earlier to ask if I knew, or knew about, a certain evangelist. If I did know him, he wanted my opinion, but not before he offered his own. “He appears to be very full of himself, and he dresses very eccentrically to draw attention to himself.” I do happen to know the gentleman of which he spoke. We are, in fact, close friends. After some discussion, my acquaintance concluded the conversation with these words: “I felt he was very obnoxious and eccentric and so I wrote him off.”
I am not naming names, because I don’t want this to be, or appear to be, personal. However, this does highlight a strain of thought that runs deep in many Christian circles today. We tend to embrace or dismiss folks based upon their appearance or mannerisms without ever taking the time to examine the part of a man that is most revealing . . . his heart. The heart tells so much more about a man than does the cut of his jacket. Because of this, we often fail to recognize personalities and gifts that God sends our way because they don’t fit our preferred profile.
When I first encountered the evangelist in question, I wasn’t particularly impressed. I found his wardrobe, hairstyle, and some mannerisms a little off-putting. Yet, in my six decades of ministry, I’ve learned that God often chooses a variety of men and women who aren’t up to my “high and holy standards.” Too often in my own life, I have written men off at first glance because of what I might consider undesirable qualities of speech or appearance or been turned off by a particular doctrine I might disagree with, only later to discover a man of immense depth and profound gifting. We know that God spoke to Peter on a rooftop in Joppa, “Do not call unclean that which I have cleansed.” I have since grown to understand that this can also mean, “Do not despise the man I have called.”
Too often, our preconceived ideas of a “man of God” are polished, warm, immaculately dressed, and possessing a classical oratorical aura. Historically though, God seems to choose the opposite when he has important work to do. Search the scriptures for yourself. You will find that the prophet God sends our way often lacks spit and polish, tact, or a polite demeanor.
I’m pretty sure Jesus’ cousin John raised a lot of eyebrows as he strode out of the wilderness in his camel-haired coat, with a skin full of locusts and honey swinging from his shoulder. Rough? Yes. Polite? Not at all. He was certainly not a proper gentleman as his piercing eyes landed directly on the proper religious men of his day and shouted, “O generation of vipers, who has warned you to escape from the wrath to come? Therefore, bear fruit worthy of repentance, and do not think to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’”
No, John did not dress as men thought he ought. He did not speak as men thought he ought. He certainly did not behave with proper religious decorum, but thousands came to the river to receive the baptism of repentance; through him they encountered the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.
Not enough? I speak on, and remind us of Ezekiel, who lay on one side for 390 days, baked bread over dung, and shaved his head with a sword. May I mention Isaiah, who went about naked and barefoot for three years to emphasize the prophecy God had given him. And there are more: Jeremiah, who wore a wooden yoke through the streets of Jerusalem, buried a linen belt until it rotted, or the bile-covered and partially digested prophet, puked up out of the belly of a fish onto the shores of Assyria. Then of course, there was Hosea who married a whore and named his children “not loved” and “not my people.”
Yes, and David danced before the Ark of the Covenant in his underwear to the disgust of his wife . . . and, dare we mention the neer-do-wells that Jesus chose to turn the world upside down: Fishermen, tax-collectors, zealots, harlots, dreamers, and worst of all –– a persecutor of the church.
My friend, if eccentricities bother you, the Holy Writ provides plenty of fodder to chafe your sensitivity. Do I dare mention the perpetually depressed, cigar-smoking Charles Spurgeon, a man God surely must have been off his game to choose. Or George Whitfield, who was run out of England and nearly ran out of the United States because of his zeal. If you want to get right down to it, pick me: Born out of wedlock to an 18-year-old cotton mill worker, deserted by his mother when he was 16 months old as she fled her father’s violence, physically and sexually abused, growing up alone with no chance to be anything other than the white trash he thought himself to be. I won’t belabor this further – on these matters I have spoken enough.
For a moment, allow me to speak of my friend.
In all my life, I have never met a man more zealous for souls. He is an evangelist by gifting, meaning he leaves a trail of men and women behind him to whom he has imparted the gift of evangelism and a fiery passion for souls. In the past thirty years, he has touched almost every continent with his zeal. He is single-minded about the Great Commission; he is unafraid to confront lazy, religious piety with the clear commands of Scripture to win souls, a call many in the church have abandoned for comfort, order, and a vacuum of non-confrontational preaching. In a generation where Pastors are seeking church members instead of disciples, marking offerings and building programs as a measure of their success, and social media notoriety in exchange for changing their communities –– I mark my friend as just the dose of medicine the church in America needs.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said, “Set yourself on fire with enthusiasm, and people will come from miles to watch you burn.” We already have too many who are snug in their comfy religion, looking down their noses at guys who are on fire. But let me tell you who the desperate lost souls of this generation are streaming to see. We need more men willing to join Jesus in turning over tables and cleansing the temple, and a whole lot fewer men worried about how the preacher dresses or wears his hair.
It always frosts my pudding when men who do little to nothing dare sit in judgment of the man pouring his life out for the gospel. I don’t look at a man’s garb. I don’t look at his haircut… I need to see his heart.
Try it sometime.
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