"The 'Nastiness' of Life" and The Call of Ministry

Yesterday I was flipping through the radio, and I happened to catch the end of a report quoting a pastor. He said, “My job is to protect people from life’s nastiness.” That remark stuck in my crawl.

Our world is full of all kinds of “nastiness.” That’s the reality of our existence as people. Ever since the Fall and we’ve been cast out of Paradise, nastiness is part and parcel to what it means to be a human being. It’s just as much a fact about life as death—the ultimate “nastiness” that faces us in our postlapsarian reality.

postlapsarian- from the Latin post, meaning “after,” and lapsus, meaning “fall” The word postlapsarian is a theological term to refer to life after the Fall of Adam and Eve from a state of created perfection in Eden

Pastors are called to minister to folks where they are, in the midst of their lives, in the midst of their “postlapsarian” realities. The reality for pastors, however, is that they are still human despite their ministry in persona Christi. No matter how much they may try, they can’t make life better for those under their charge or make the “nastiness” of life go away. No matter how much they try, pastors can’t “protect” people from all the brokenness of life.


THE EXPULSION FROM THE GARDEN, by Gustav Dore
Christians do well to realize that the job of the church and all those ministers of the gospel isn’t to make life better, although that might happen. The job of those who serve in the name of Christ is to proclaim the truth—the truth that our world is fragmented and in need of healing and that God promises us healing and restoration through Christ.

When the church tries to hard to gloss over the “nastiness” of life and make the world a better place of our own accord, we neuter Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, rendering it pointless. We make the grace of God something cheap, something that can be experienced without recognition of the imperfection of reality.

The reality, the truth that ministers of God’s Word are called to share, is that God’s grace is costly—so costly that God enters this world with all its “nastiness” and experiences it to the farthest, most terrifying extent possible. God’s grace is purchased with God’s very life…God doesn’t protect us from the nastiness of life, but enters into it with us and unsettles it, upsets it. The “job” of any minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not to protect people from the nastiness of life, but to name it and declare God’s gracious power to deliver us from it.

-DS