The Emperor

You know the story. The Emperor desperately wants and needs to be seen as superior and special in the eyes of his subjects, so he gathers his advisers together to come up with a plan which will do just that. Ideas come thick and fast, but nothing suits the Emperor. Until, that is, one of the courtiers brings in a new wardrobe of clothes, and this leader loves new threads above everything else. As he peers at the adviser’s arms, over which these new clothes are draped, he utters the words, “I don’t see any new clothes, there are no new clothes”.

The rest of the story is legend. The courtier convinces the Emperor that these are the finest clothing lines that have ever been produced, and his staff and subjects will be beside themselves when he goes out in public. The Emperor is convinced, and not only that, everyone else is told that they cannot see them because they are so fine. Word gets around that their leader is going on a procession through his Empire to the adulation of his subjects. To a man and woman everyone convinces themselves that these clothes are so fine, they are magical. The crowds ooh and aah as he passes by because no one wants to admit to being so backward that they cannot see these fine clothes. In the end it takes a small boy, who shouts in innocence, “the Emperor has no clothes!” The game was up, and it took a little lad who hadn’t been told and convinced that the clothing was special.

Oh how we are like the crowds gasping at the finely dressed Emperor, convinced that he is wearing the best suit that money can buy. To say anything else would tell everyone that we were the stupid ones. So we stay silent as the new fad, phase, program, or advance is rolled out to the adoring crowds. Now put yourself in the church seat or pew, when a newbie comes in to sweep clean, and introduces a new way to do your church. You are the ‘simple faithful Christian’ and they are the enthusiastic graduate who has convinced everyone that their way is best and will work a treat (and they have the diploma to prove it).

Do we, like the crowds around the Emperor in his underwear, accept the patently obvious confusion, or wait for a young believer to shout the thing that we all know to be the truth, that the new program or system is without the warmth of decent covering and has left us hanging out cold and dry? What?? This isn’t the first time??? It has happened before????