PLAYING GOD OR PLAYING MAN?

By Randy Shannon, Pastor First Christian Church Taken from the Sweet Springs Herald

For fifteen years I directed plays and musicals for Marshall High School. One of the things that I hated most about this experience was the excruciatingly painful process of casting a show.
I was haunted by the knowledge that whatever decision I made I would invariably hurt many feelings and perhaps even prompt a few tears.

After one cast list was posted, two senior girls, who didn't get parts, came by my room to sign up for a drama club field trip. Knowing that they must have been disappointed I told these two Christian young ladies how impressed I was by their character. Rather than ignore me, or be angry at me, they had come to sign up for future events as if to say, "it's all right... we're not holding any grudges." Not everyone would be so gracious. "I'm sure glad you guys came to see me," I said, "you could have been out there slashing my tires or something." Laughing at the suggestion, they teased, "we couldn't find your car."

When reading the familiar passage in John 3: 16, the word "whoever" leaps out at me. I'm glad that God doesn't have a cast list to fill for heaven. I'm glad that he doesn't have to say, "well, I really wish we had a place for you, I know you'd be great to work with and you are a talented person but you just don't have the look I had in mind. We just don't have a spot for you." I'm glad that Jesus tells me that in my Father's house there are many rooms.

I'm sure that many people felt like I was playing God when I made my casting decisions. But I wasn't. If I were playing God then everyone who truly wanted a part could get one. I wasn't playing God, I was playing man. It's man that values appearances over character. It's man that creates exclusive little circles that are hard to enter. God is inclusive; He offers His love and forgiveness to "whoever believes in Him."

We would do well to play God in our churches; to open our hearts to others as freely as He opened His to us.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life." --John 3: 16