Updated Friday, Jan. 25, 2008

Willing hears solve problems

Reading Scott McLean's good letter from Jan. 5 (printed issue), calling for God's people to grow up, brought back memories of my brief time in North Carolina in the late 1980s.

If young ministers think the polarization in the state convention is bad now, it was just as severe then. At the annual meeting, we would take a vote on a matter and the vote would be 2,000 for, 1,998 against.

There are few issues on the Southern Baptist agenda that could not be resolved if people of willing hearts would sit down together and seek common ground on these matters.

In the matters where we cannot agree, God's people are going to need to learn how to submit to one another. That's a dirty word these days, but it's found all through scripture. (Ephesians 5:21, for starters)

To "submit" means "I give in to you, even though I think I'm right." (Obviously, to give in when I think I'm wrong is not submission at all, but the simple act of a right-thinking person.)

The one who submits is the stronger of the two, for submission is more difficult than insisting on getting our own way.

Two drivers met in the middle of a one-lane bridge. The first stuck his head out of the window and called out, "I never back up for fools." The other threw his car into reverse and said, "I always do."

Joe McKeever

New Orleans, La.

(EDITOR'S NOTE - McKeever was pastor of First Baptist Charlotte 1986-89.)