This article was writen my good friend David Roper. It is kind of  a book review of sorts but I think you may find it a help to your unbelief.  David Roper is host of several pastor's groups in my area through Idaho Mountain Ministries. He is an well circulated author and all around beautiful servant of the Lord Jesus.  Enjoy!   

                                                       Qualified

Time was, I shrank from what was right,
    From fear of what was wrong;
I would not brave the sacred fight,
    Because the foe was strong.

 
But now I cast that finer sense
    And sorer shame aside;
Such dread of sin was indolence,
    Such aim at heaven was pride.

 
Last summer I finally got around to reading Stephan Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane, the first volume of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever.[1]

In his book, Donaldson tells the story of Thomas Covenant, a young novelist, who is inexplicably stricken with leprosy. After the last two fingers of his right hand are amputated, his leprosy is arrested, but he’s taught that his only hope of survival lies in scrupulous visual self–examination (VSE).

Covenant is devastated when his wife abandons and divorces him in order to protect their son from exposure. Furthermore, people around him cast him in the traditional role of a leper: unclean, outcast, unwanted.

Unable to write he struggles to go on living; but as the pressure of his loneliness mounts, he begins to experience episodes of unconsciousness, during which he enters an alternative world known as “the Land.”

In the Land, Covenant is fully healed, but he stubbornly refuses to believe that he has been cured and continues his frantic, obsessive VSE. Even though he is greeted in the land as an ancient hero, Berek Halfhand, he cannot believe that he’s been healed of his disease.

Covenant is touched by the transcendent beauty of the Land and the kindness of its people, but is unable to take up his call to face the ancient enemy of the Land, Lord Foul the Despiser, who seeks to blight and ruin the countryside, for he is paralyzed by his inability to accept the fact that he has been made clean.

Against the Despiser stand the Council of Lords who have dedicated their lives to acquiring the wisdom by which they may stave off the attacks of Lord Foul. Covenant can only give half-hearted support to the council, and bargains his way out of involvement, for he is controlled by the tragic belief that his leprosy has rendered him unfit.  Hence the title: “Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever.”

I have friends like Thomas—downcast in their sins, struggling in “wan hope,” the  discouragement and lethargy that grows from over–scrupulous self-examination and morbid fixation with one’s sin and guilt. [2]    

I like to remind my downcast friends of Peter’s three–fold denial, and subsequent encounter with his Lord on the beach by the Sea of Galilee—Jesus’ cordial greeting, the warmth of the fire, the hearty meal, the love and acceptance, and no mention of Peter’s failure.

“Do you love me Peter?” Jesus asks.

Peter, humbled by denial and defeat can only murmur, “You know my ‘affection’ Lord.” It was the best he could do.

Jesus answers: “Go be a pastor.”

It may be that some of us, humiliated by sin and failure, are very much like Peter and question our credentials. We daily minutely scrutinize our souls and find ungodliness there and wonder if our struggle with sin has rendered us unsuitable.

The answer, of course, is that sin in itself can never disqualify us, for forgiveness and renewal is always at hand if we are truly repentant.

Repentance of course, is the essential element. Deliberate and hardened indifference and disobedience do render us unfit for good works. We must be “converted” to use Jesus’ word: we must hate our sin, turn from it and ask for our Lord’s forgiveness. Then we can rise from our fall and begin again. George MacDonald said that the man or woman, “Who, after failure, or a poor success, / Rises up, stronger effort yet renewing—finds thee, Lord, at length, in his own common room.” When we turn from our sin and ask for his help our Lord is there to lift us up. Then, like Peter, full of our Savior’s affirmation, we can go out to strengthen our brothers.

It seems to me that God is not after perfection as such (that awaits heaven), but the humility that comes from self–awareness, for humility is the essential element in all that we do. Failure cures us of the illusion of self–perfection and pride—aiming at heaven, to repeat Newman’s turn of phrase. We learn for ourselves God’s goodness and love despite our failure, for he gives great grace to those who are greatly humbled. “We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven” (C. S. Lewis).

We should of course, strive for perfection, and show progress, but we must be content with occasional failure. And we must be patient while God himself chooses and develops those aspects of our character that give him the greatest pleasure (cf., Philippians 2:13). In his own time he will deal with all that shames us.  

Jean Nicholas Grou put it this way: “If someone falls into some error, he does not fret over it, but rising up with a humble spirit, he goes on his way anew rejoicing. Were he to fall a hundred times in the day, he would not despair-—he would rather cry out lovingly to God, appealing to His tender pity. The really devout man has a horror of evil, but he has a still greater love of that which is good; he is more set on doing what is right, than avoiding what is wrong. Generous, large-hearted, he is not afraid of danger in serving God, and would rather run the risk of doing His will imperfectly than not strive to serve Him lest he fail in the attempt.”[3]  

Peter, who knew appalling failure, has the last word: One day very soon the one who has called us will “perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish” us (1 Peter 5:10).  In the meantime, be a pastor!

DHR