"(in)... truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left" (2 Cor. 6:7, RSV)

Society largely views the ten to fifteen percent among us who are left- handed as disadvantaged. But reality refuses to allow such prejudice by consistently revealing many of these who so deviate from the normal to be outstanding successes rather than as failures. In the spheres of history, literature, culture, politics, and entertainment Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Mark Twain, James Michener, Harry Truman, George Bush, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, Cole Porter, Robert Redford, and Whoopi Goldberg demand such a mention.

In the baseball world, where these are known as Southpaws [as the pitcher normally faces West toward home plate in the standard field which places his (left) throwing home to the South], Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth used their leftness to great advantage. Even the early Israelite, Ehud, drew his dagger from its cloaked and concealed position on his right side with his left hand then plunged it unexpectedly into the soft belly of the tyrant Moabite King, Eglon -- a maneuver that rid Israel of its oppressors for eighty years (Judges 3:15- 30;1 Chron. 6:8).

I. BALANCE IN MINISTRY

But Paul's message to the Corinthians about weapons of righteousness for the right hand, and for the left, offers no preference about the exact location of the armor he advocates for the effective Christian warrior. The Apostle rather simply pleads for an equipoise of weapons mat builds an appropriate balance between attack and defense -- that maximizes the symmetry between sword and shield to yield the best values for both protection and assault. For the soldiers of Bible times these two fundamental implements of warfare equipped them for their basic responsibilities. Within such military symbols we find powerful images of balance, comfort, and challenge as related to a responsible, biblical, pastoral preaching ministry for today.

Jesus' Style

Variety best describes Jesus' role repertoire. His ministry included both attack and defense. On occasions He approached persons and related to them with a confrontational attitude. At other times He practiced methods which featured compassion, encouragement, comfort and support. This diversity appears to be as intentional as it was effective. His wide range of interventive, interpersonal relationships may be may be explained as advances deliberately designed to motivate changes in persons. But they were determined by His ability to analyze situations and to respond to the specific needs of the individuals concerned in the most appropriate manner. The diversity revealed in His role repertoire can be theologically and more precisely defined as a series of considered choices to function flexibly along a continuum of approaches ranging from the prophetic to the priestly, from the confrontational to the affirming, and from a disturbing of the comfortable to a comforting of the disturbed (Carlson, 1976: passim). Several respected psychologists have independently defined the twin poles of such relational procedures as paralleling actual contemporary therapeutic counseling methods naming them as "directive" and "evocative" (Frank, 1963: 247-248) and "reeducative" and "reconstructive" (Wolberg, 1967: passim).