Bigger Is Most Certainly NOT Always Better

Of the multitude of really foolish ideas our society naively buys as unquestionably true, one of its most foolish, fiercely held, and utterly false beliefs is this: bigger is always better.

In 1927 British essayist and author G. K. Chesterton, in a book entitled The Outline of Sanity, wrote about what he called “The Bluff of the Big Shops.”

Chesterton wrote more than 35 years before Walmarts and such would begin metastasizing all over America and beyond, but already in England he was seeing little shops being gobbled up by big, and thus supposedly better, shops. He wrote an essay basically asserting that big stores are rarely ever better than small stores and that a society that allows its little shops to be gobbled up by big ones ends up far poorer for its folly. An honest (big) newspaper editor told him they couldn’t print it without alienating big advertisers (“big shops”). So Chesterton simply included his thoughts in a book instead of a newspaper.

He wrote that “a big shop is a bad shop” and “not only vulgar and insolent, but incompetent and uncomfortable.” He opined that “shopping there is not only a bad action but a bad bargain.” If you care about the quality of the product and the quality of the service, bigger is almost never better.

To use Chesterton’s illustration, it’s not true that having a hundred people trimming hats or tying bouquets means that you’ll end up with many more quality products and many more happy customers. The best work will always be done by “a particular craftsman for a particular customer with particular ribbons and flowers.” (Imagine that!)

If you have a blunder in a small shop the “individual customer can curse the individual shopkeeper.” Or, if he’s a nicer sort—forget the cursing—he has an opportunity to talk to a shopkeeper he knows and who cares about his business, rather than a person who is a cog in an impersonal machine.

Oh, but it’s so convenient that all those products are there in the same place. Really? In Chesterton’s England shopping in big shops simply meant that you walked indoors a long way in one shop rather than outdoors the same distance to smaller ones.

The largeness of the big shops is mainly convenient to big shop owners who are able to gobble up “better businesses and advertise worse goods.” Chesterton was quite aware that in this world big fish eat little fish, but he doubted that little fish have to “swim up to big fish and ask to be eaten.” Surely people who recognize the importance and value of little stores would do well to “vote” with their feet and their pocketbooks while some small stores with large quality (and owners and customers with real relationships) were still un-gobbled and available. Little did he know how few “little fish” would remain undigested.

Well, I’m out of space. So we’ll just let this week’s “Focus on Faith” focus instead on modern marketing. Don’t be blaming me for any comparisons or contrasts you might be tempted to draw between mega-marts and, say, some mega-churches.






Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Genuine Holiness Is God's Light, Not Mankind's

A “rustler’s moon.” That’s what cowboys used to call a quarter moon. It was bright enough that a rustler could see to carry out his cattle filching, but it was not so bright as to spotlight his thievery.

But here’s a fact likely lost on all but your most astronomically-gifted cattle rustlers: be it quarter moon, half moon, 13/16 moon, or blue moon, not a single photon of the “light of the silvery moon” is its own; every ray is actually the light of the blazing sun.

I think a valuable lesson lurks in the moonlight. Christ has called his disciples to be light in a dark world, but not a spark of it is ours; it is all reflected from the Son. If it is his, what business do we have being haughty about shining?

Some of the prevalent ideas about holiness are not all that shiny. The biggest mistake is humanity’s favorite folly: we focus on us and not on God. We like to “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps,” light our own sparklers. We stand before his much-more-than-nuclear “consuming fire” proud as Punch of the firefly “holiness” we’ve caught in our own little paper bag.

Focusing on ourselves, we tend to be more sanctimonious than sanctified, sewing scarlet letters on sinners while harboring far worse sins in our own souls.

Focusing on ourselves, we focus on externals. Remember Jesus making fun of scrupulous Pharisees washing the outside of their dishes but leaving last week’s dinner to mold inside?

Real holiness is not focused on self at all. It is not sterile, not colorless, not short on blood and long on hypocrisy. It is most certainly not joyless. It overflows with the very life and joy of God.

Genuine holiness is not all about being knotted up by the “nots”: “touch not, taste not, handle not” (Colossians 2). When I make holiness something about my light rather than God’s, one more tribute to my hard work, willpower, and fine character, just one more sticky note stuck on the mirror—“Be holy” right alongside “Don’t forget to floss”—I create a sad caricature of the real thing.

Instead of becoming more like God, I become a pretentiously pious, persnickety, pain in the tail section, “evaluating” everyone else’s holiness by the twisted knots in my own self-focused tale rather than living joyfully into the wonderful story of the God whose light I was created to reflect.

I’ve long quoted the Apostle Paul’s words in Ephesians 2, reminding us that salvation is the gift of God, by grace through faith, “so that no one can boast.” I’m to live as a person who is both saved and being saved. Why? Because I’m God’s, and God is at work in me.

What I’d not so much noticed were the same apostle’s words at the end of First Corinthians 1, reminding us that God’s gifts to us through Christ are righteousness, redemption, and . . . holiness. And then he admonishes, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” I’m to live as a person who is both holy and being made holy. Why? Because I’m God’s, and God is at work in me.

Real holiness is not centered on me; it is centered on Whose I am. Any light in my life is God’s, not mine.







Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

The Creator of the Universe Can't Be Tied Up in a Box

I once saw John Denver, hair wet and with a clothes bag tossed over his shoulder, heading through a hotel lobby toward the desk. Two weeks or so later, he crashed his plane and died.

Christian author Max Lucado is still very much alive and writing fine books. In his book Fearless he tells about introducing himself to a lady standing in a hotel check-in line with one of his books under her arm. He was hoping that her doctor hadn’t prescribed it as a cure for insomnia.

Well, wide awake she was, but she absolutely refused to believe that the guy talking to her, claiming to be Max Lucado, really was. She didn’t think he looked a thing like the thirty-year-old Max whose picture was on the back cover of her book.

Max finally gave up. The dear lady steadfastly preferred her “Max-in-a-box,” “freeze-framed in a two-by-three image” to the real thing. She missed a nice meeting with the author she admired, but she did provide him with a great illustration for a later book.

Lucado makes the point better than I could, but it really is sad when we make the mistake of preferring “God in a box” to the living Author of life and joy.

In a thousand ways, we try to tie God up in the boxes we prefer. Instead of allowing God to shape us into his image, we want him to look just like us. We much prefer him to be a member in good standing of our particular group and no one else’s. We want him to share all our pet peeves and prejudices, bless our particular persnicketiness and pious piffle. Frightened of a meeting with the Lion of the tribe of Judah, we like a safe Lord all tied up and constrained, muted and tamed, Christ the King of the universe nicely contained in a cardboard box.

The heart of the problem? Fear.

I wonder if there aren’t a good many folks who know enough about God to worry about the fire of his holiness but not enough about him to feel the warmth and joy of his inexhaustible mercy and love, not enough to let God’s perfect love cast out their fear so that they can respond to his warm embrace? They look at church folks, too often busy tying up God in their own boxes, and naturally wonder about anyone who would try to hold a nuclear reaction in a cardboard box.

And church folks? We’ve long displayed a morbid fascination with walls, be they cardboard or stone. Deep and soul-shrinking fear causes us to trust the walls that constrain and blind us more than we trust the Savior whose pardon and power free us and who will never be content to stay behind the walls we build.

Were it not for soul-throttling fear, we might all step out of our boxes more often, meet more of the family, actually learn something from each other, and together glorify the Lord we can never “manage, control, and predict.”

Two things, at least, are sure. We’ll never get God tame enough to stay in any of our boxes. But that completely untamed Lion loves us all with a joy-filled fierce and beautiful love.



Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

"Act Like What You Already Are: God's Kids!"

“All through the New Testament,” William Barclay writes, “there rings a plea for Christian unity.” Yes! Jesus himself asked, in his John 17 prayer to the Father, “May they [his disciples] be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me . . .” Evidently Jesus believes that one of the strongest proofs to an unbelieving world that he is indeed God’s Son incarnate is that love for him unites folks who would not normally be united.

Notice that the plea is not for us to somehow create unity between the followers of Jesus Christ; the plea is for us to recognize the unity that already exists through his Spirit.

No one knows what was causing friction between two ladies in Philippi named Euodia and Syntyche, but the Apostle Paul entreats them, “Make up your differences as Christians should.”

Probably both gals were fine Christian women, but their sad claim to fame is that they fussed loudly and longly enough that their quarrel threatened the health of the church they both professed to love. Why did they fuss? What was the issue? Nobody knows. Nobody cares. Which is probably the largest lesson of the tale.

But fuss they did. Over the color of the carpet? Over Sunday School material? (I’m kidding, but I’ll betcha the fuss was in that class of mountainous molehills. By the way, don’t we realize that it’s not good for followers of a crucified Lord to always get our own way?)

Did their quarrel erase the fact that they were both sisters in the Lord? No! The apostle doesn’t write, “Become sisters in Christ!” They already were—even when the fur was flying! What he’s saying is: “Grow up! Act like what you already are—sisters in the Lord.”

I would be a fool if I thought I needed to create brotherhood between my younger brother and myself. He is my brother. Most of the time, I’m even proud to claim him. (Then there was the time he blew the top off the neighbor’s new fencepost . . .) But whether I claim him or not makes absolutely no difference as far as our physical brotherhood goes. We are brothers because we have the same parents. We cannot create brotherhood. But we can recognize and cherish it, and that’s scads more important than one of us “winning” in some fuss.

Sometimes God’s children disagree. Big surprise? Sometimes they quarrel tooth and nail and engage in power plays. Occasionally, they even fuss over something important. Just like, well, just like children.

We Christians should be more interested in lifting Christ up and less interested in winning “holy” wars. Our divisions, whether in the larger Body or within local churches, are a slap in the Father’s face.

But even when we seem the most divided, our job is not to create unity but to recognize the unity that is already there binding believers together simply because we are children of the same Father, bought by the blood of the same Son, and given life by the same Spirit.





Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

A Tale May Be Told By the Length of Chromosome Tails

Have you heard about telomeres?

A telomere is “a region of repetitive DNA sequences at the end of a chromosome, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes” (Wikipedia). Hmm.

Telomeres, it seems, are sort of like tails on the ends of our chromosomes. Like the plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces, they keep our chromosomes from “fraying” and may have a lot to do with how we age. Young people have the longest telomeres. Their bodies are better able to fight off the effects of aging, such as weakening immune systems, etc. And so, may your chromosomes prosper and their telomeres be long!

A recent morning show segment on telomeres was interesting (and kind of funny). The doctor/reporter gal had made arrangements to have her telomeres tested. (Yes, you can, too, for $249.) They were revealing the results (eight percent margin of error) live on national TV.

Her physical age was on a chart. We waited for her “telomere age” to be banged up there on the same chart. (Yes, how heart-warming to a 54-year-old like me if his telomeres turned out to be what you’d expect in a 45-year-old!)

The doc was 59 (if she was honest), and we watched as her “telomere age” was revealed. Good news! It was a round number. Bad news! It was 70!

She took it pretty womanfully, I guess. She managed to get the words out, “Well, I’m not all that surprised.” Oh, but she looked surprised. She looked like she was trying her best to breathe even though she’d just inhaled a golf ball!

Having recovered somewhat for the camera, she then betrayed, I think, both the arrogance common age-long to the human race, and the particularly striking arrogance of our time. She said, “Well, I’m not too surprised. I grew up in a home with second-hand smoke, and I partied too much sometimes in college.” But since then, she allowed as how she’d lived “a good life.” She didn’t mean morally. She just meant she’d been very serious about stuff like never drinking milk a cow would actually claim, etc.

Well, living smarter will probably help you live longer (and the good doc vowed to be even more serious about it and come back in five years with longer telomeres). But I’ve got news for you: you won’t do everything right. You can’t. And even if you do a bunch right, life has a way of dealing with such arrogance. (The Greeks called it “hubris.” World-class pride.) You’ll slip in the shower and break your neck, or you’ll be such a pain in the neck that somebody will run over you on purpose and put you out of our misery!

The Apostle Paul is surely right: bodily exercise is “of some value.” But let’s be careful not to put all our eggs in this earthly basket. Besides, who in their right mind wants to live to be 120?

If we have no hope beyond this present life, then we’d better fixate on our fraying telomeres. But those who trust in God can live life with hope and joy, knowing that our life both here and hereafter is in good hands.






Copyright 2011 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.