Every so often the soul of a church gets indigestion. We have nagging cramps which ruin our appetite for worship, sour the sweetness of our fellowship and lesson our energy to serve others. The condition is as common as the common cold. Every church has faced it. Every church will face it. Here is one man’s recovery story.

It all started out so innocently. I was, how shall I say it, “concerned.” I cared about the well-being of the church. I cared about its reputation. I cared about its integrity. I cared about what people believed. I cared about what people did. I cared about doing church right. Lots of other folks didn’t seem to care but I did. And then at some point, I crossed a line. I started caring too much. I started noticing gnats. A gnat here, a gnat there. Here a gnat, there a gnat, everywhere a gnat-gnat. Liturgical gnats. Doctrinal gnats. Moral gnats. Things were not the way they should be. People kept messing up the church. And so I made it my life’s work to get rid of the gnats.

And believe you me, it was work. To strain out gnats you have to be a well-conditioned neurotic. This is no sport for a weekend hobbyist. To start with, you have to find the gnats. And that’s not easy to do. They’re sneaky, tiny, not easily visible to the untrained eye. They lurk around when and where you least expect them. Things may seem happy and peaceful but the gnats are still there — somewhere. So you must search ever more carefully. You can’t take a day off. You can’t drop your guard. You must be ever vigilant. Once you find one you kill it. Then you feverishly work to make sure their cousins don’t come around. For if you squash one gnat there’s a hundred more to follow. Every day you check the window and door screens to make sure the mesh is still tight. Once a week you caulk every crack in the house. When making love you keep your ear open to the sound of any gnats overhead. You eat dinner with a fork in one hand and a flyswatter in the other. During the summer time, you promptly burn the leftover watermelon rhines in your fireplace to keep any fruit flies from loitering around.

Well, one day I was going about my business to fix the church and then it happened. I walked into a worship service and saw something that irked me. There was another pesky nuisance around. Someone had changed the paper used for the worship bulletin. It used to be fine linen, 104 bright white, 24lb. weight. Very dignified, sturdy and easily readable. But now it was a drab, off-white copy paper of a very flimsy 20lb. weight with far too little opacity. I took one look at the new bulletin and was aghast. At the sight of that unseemliness, I decided to boycott the service. No songs. No prayers. No bread. No wine. No Jesus. It was at that moment, with my jaw dropped to the floor in disgust, that I felt the strangest sensation in my mouth. Something fuzzy was tickling my tongue. And then to my horror, the thing, whatever it was, was forcing its way down my throat! My body started contorting like a snake sucking a rat. I was swelling up and ready to bust. I felt my mouth stretch open wider around two strange humps. It was like someone had inserted a crowbar into the roof of my mouth and was trying to send my upper molars into the center of my brain. Eventually, the entire beast, whatever it was, was inside my body. A terrible case of indigestion came upon me. The next morning, I waddled into the doctor’s office like a woman pregnant with a 1,500 pound baby. I told him of my general condition — sleeplessness, joylessness, anxiety, frustration. “And I have to go to the bathroom all the time,” I said.

He took one look at my misshaped soul and said, “Sure enough. You’ve done it. You’ve strained out a gnat and swallowed a camel. I can tell by the hump poking out of your arm pit.”

I said, “What? How in the world is that possible? I mean, how can I not see a camel in front of my nose when I can spot a gnat on a tick’s back from a hundred yards?”

“Well,” the doctor said, “I’m a gastroenterologist. I treat digestive disorders. You’ll need to see an optometrist to answer that one.”

And so I went to the eye doctor. Dr. Kramer told me what I feared. “Young man, you have a log in your eye. It’s a big one — a redwood. I’m surprised you didn’t notice it sooner. It impairs your vision, causing you to lose perspective, distort proportion. It reduces your ability to see clearly. It makes you miss colors — sunsets, landscapes.”

What a day, I thought to myself. First a camel invades my personal space and now a redwood is growing in my eye. “Can I be helped?” I asked the doctor.

“You can but it will take a lifetime. Camel-gut (Matthew 23:24) and log-eye (Matthew 7:5) are chronic problems. I want you to put these grace drops in your eyes two times a day until you die. Confess your sins to a friend. Make frequent visits to God. Count your many blessings, name them one by one. Practice mercy.”

I took the doctor’s advice and left to find some friends. When I found them, I introduced myself. Stammering in my speech, I said: “Hi, my name is George. I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m a malcontent.”

They responded, “Hi George. We’re glad you’re here George! Work it and it will work for you George.”

And so began the first day of the rest of my life.

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