Pigs and Church Members
A friend of mine recently told me about a minister that went to a pig farmer to talk with him about attending church services. The minister asked the pig farmer if he would come to the congregation. The pig farmer replied “I would but there are some hypocrites there. I personally know that one of the members of the congregation is having an affair on his wife and one of the deacons is a drunk.” The minister asked “so you will not come because of some of the members?” “Yes,” said the pig farmer. “You see that congregation that you preach for is full of hypocrites and I refuse to go to a congregation like that.”
The Minister said he understood and proceed to ask if he could buy a pig from the farmer. “Of course you can,” said the pig farmer. “I have a ton of little piglets.” The preacher and the farmer walked to the area to pick out a piglet. The preacher surveyed the lot and pointed to the smallest, skinniest pig of the bunch. “That’s the one I want,” the minister stated. The farmer firmly said “That one, he is the smallest pig of the lot, there are tons of other pigs that are healthy, huge, and better.” “No, I want that small little pig; I want to go around town showing everyone that this is the type of pig you are raising at your farm,” the preacher replied. “You can’t do that, everyone will think that this is the only type of pig I have on my farm, they will judge the one exception as true for every pig—this is not fair”, said the farmer. The preacher shot back “you judged the whole congregation by just two poor examples, what is the difference?”
There are a lot of people that judge the entire congregation full of loving, kind, and Christ-like people by one or two poor examples. You should know better!
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About The Author
Matthew … loved your story. Made an excellent point.
Thanks for stopping by my blog. I’m anxious to come back by here and spend a little more time.
blessings,
Hey Matthew,
I just found your blog from Tim’s site. I see that you are reading the Natural Economist. If you haven’t read it, I would suggest Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt. It sounds like one that you might enjoy.
I am currently reading Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles McKay (actually I am taking a bit of a hitus from it). It is about crowd theory in relation to financial disasters.
A word of warning; it takes some time to read because it is long and it was written in 1854. This means Old English vernacular, but worth the time invested.
I did check out Freakonomics, great read. Very insightful.
Great post! This is a good illustration for a sermon!
Just this weekend, I hear the can’t come to church because of a bad member excuse. Personally, do not see the Lord saying “oh poor you, there was bad people in church, not everyone was perfect, well you should not go there.” Instead I see Him saying “I gave the church to teach you to love someone besides yourself.”