Christians by nature must act as part of a community -- no Lone Rangers. The trouble is, this is against our nature.

Most of you who have spent much time on this site know that I have suffered through two back operations as part of an attempt to overcome a variety of different pains. The started in my back, legs and feet and the first operation was designed to relieve these pains. In fact, it was successful and accomplished just that. However, I awoke with a new set of pain in my rump, groin, and foot -- all on the right side.

After tw and a half years of pills, needles, a variety of therapies, including some of the holistic approaches, I underwent a second surgery that so far has only marginally helped.

This leaves me in an odd position.  I cannot sit more than twenty-to-thrity minues without pain. Once the pain comes it takes a day or more to get it back under control. I have lost a lot of stamina, so if I stand too long I wear out. I take a variety of pain medicines to control the pain and at times they put me in places where I cannot focus. I become moody, irritable, and so forth.

My story is not different than anyone else's who suffers from chronic pain. I use a variety of approaches to my days in an effort not to succomb to the pain and pills. For example, I have a huge stack of books by my side and read based upon mood -- commentaires, geek books, occasional non-fictiion, and every once in awhile a novel.

The novels are hard to judge -- bad language, bad scenes. My favorite has always been action adventure, but that means bad morals as even the good guys shoot people.  I am just finishing one that has a reasonable story line, but irritates me. 

I understnd the basic formula behind these adventures.  Probably you do too. The hero may or may not be a true hero ("James Bond"). He will make mistakes that eventually work to his benefit. He gets in over his head. And, in the end, he wins the battle.

In this particular story, the hero is a geek in charge of a geek squad, only they venture out into the real world away from virtual reality and end up getting shot at and beat up. Still, the hero fails to call in help from those who can handle the firearms because, after all, he is the hero. There is a team out there somewhere beyond the next page ready to help, but they never arrive in time since no one sends out the SOS signla soon enough.

This is our national mentality. We have all been brought up on the idea that it is an idividual battle and if we do not win the battle ourselves, we are, if not faiures, at least not the hero.  While we play team sports and work in companies that promote team play, the game is still won by the individual.

This is a huge comparison to Christianity. There is only one hero in our faith -- Jesus Christ. Everyone else is just some part of a huge body. We each have a role to play within the body, but the body itself will not function without all of us. There is no function labeled hero. Paul makes this point with great clairty in 1 Corinthians 12.  The little toe, the eye, the hand, the brain, and everything in-between are all interconnected. The brain may have great thoughts, but without the mouth and / or hands to convey those thoughts, they are useless.

The trouble is, we do not act this way. We all still want to be Lone Rangers. We want to win the most souls to Christ. We want to run the project on our own. We want to be the hero. When we approach the faith in this fashion, we end up in situations like the heros of the novels. We end up over our heads and have to sit back and ask for help. Since we should have asked in the first place, this makes us feel embarrassed and out of control. If only we took to heart the concep that we are a body and planned our moves in this fashion.

Then maybe our minstries would be more fulfilling and our fruits more productive.

Just a thought.

Jim A