Coronary Christians and adrenaline Christians

If you learned from the John Piper interview in the current issue of WORLD magazine, here’s one other interchange I had with him that you’ll find valuable:

You’ve mentioned two kinds of Christians. Please develop that. There are coronary Christians and adrenaline Christians. Adrenaline is given you for an immediate moment of wild and wonderful and courageous activity—and then it’s gone and you feel depleted. Coronary Christians are those whose wonderful blessed heart just goes “lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.” It just goes on and on.

What’s an example of a coronary Christian? If you’re a mom and you’ve got kids in public school, I think what God wants you to do is to go to PTA meetings and stand up and say what needs to be said no matter what happens. Say what’s inappropriate for 6-year-olds in sex education; say what needs to be done in science class. We need to get beyond the sense that “if I can’t fix it, I won’t talk.” You’re not called to fix it. You are called to talk and keep talking until you don’t have a voice in you anymore.

A lot of pro-life people have persevered that way. Here in the Twin Cities, Pro-Life Action Ministries has been around all the time I’ve been a pastor. Some folks over there are just as steady as they go. They’ve been here forever. It is hard to stay in pro-life work and keep at it. It’s hard to be a crisis-counseling ministry. It’s hard to do street ministry and mobilize people for street counseling and prayer vigils—and they have been doing it for decades. We are not even on the same page theologically. I know that, but I’ve got to admire stick-to-itiveness.