How I Write Versus How I Live

How I Write Versus How I Live

by Bob Kellemen | Founder and CEO, RPM Ministries

I’ve been thinking lately how difficult it is to live what I write. In my books like Soul Physicians and Spiritual Friends, I write about living the Christian life and being a Christian friend.

Frequently I fail at both.

While pondering my dilemma, I stumbled upon a quote from Samuel Johnson’s The Rambler (1750, Essay 14). (See Sympathy for Hypocrites by John Zahl at his blog Mockingbird.)

“It is not difficult to conceive that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For, without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear, and is in the same state with him that teaches upon land the art of navigation, to whom the sea is always smooth, and the wind always prosperous…

We are, therefore, not to wonder that most fail, amidst tumult and snares and danger, in the observance of those precepts, which they laid down in solitude, safety, and tranquility, with a mind unbiased, and with liberty unobstructed… Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory.”

Well put. Two lines summarize it best for me.

“It is not difficult to conceive that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives.”

“Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory.”

I want to live well what I write. However, I’m not there yet.

More importantly, I want to live well what is written in God’s Word. I’m certainly not there.

I’m thankful for the grace of God in Christ.