A Royal Statue

I've never had a serious hospital stay after infancy, but the fact is that the hospital is a weird place. It's an isolated island of sickness floating amid the ocean of the healthy. It's this strange little world that becomes completely self-contained and independent when you enter inside. If you're a patient, you're probably already disoriented because of the sickness that landed you there, so you're at a loss to really mentally process everything that's going on. You're like a child going to school for the first time. A school where everyone has E. Coli. Plus, your very life is being handled by people you've never met.


Naturally, this makes you very vulnerable.

As a nursing student, I've been learning a lot about the patient-nurse relationship, and how vulnerability plays a big part in the formation of this association. Let me explain it this way: if you're in pain, you start to look for help. When help arrives, you become extremely grateful and possibly very close to the person who helps you. You can start to look up to your nurse, doctor, or any healthcare professional.

My pastor once said something like this, "The church is a hospital."

Well, my first tempation was to think, "Well, if the church is a hospital, then the pastor is the doctor, right?"

 *Insert buzzer sound here.*

No! If the church is a hospital, then God is the doctor! I think looking up to the pastor as some sort of super-being comes from the fact that we, as flawed, pathetic sinners, think that there is someone who's made it. And you know what I mean by "made it," right? I mean, this is someone who sneezes and holy vapors come out. Someone who has been able to rise above the dung-heap and be triumphant. Well, if there's anything I've seen, it's that this man does not exist. The simple truth is this:

We are all sick.

I guess what I'm trying to spill out of my brain is the idea that we can't elevate anyone to a position they were never meant to hold. And we tend to do that with just about everyone, albeit differently with some people. Worship leaders, celebrities, political figures, sports stars, and the list goes on. We idolize these people above "the norm," when all along Christ is the one who even allowed them to the position they have attained.

Don't you see how disgusting this is? Romans 1 would say that we've "exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!"

My suggestion is that we idolize Christ and stop putting action figures on a pedestal made for A Royal Statue.

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