by A. A. Neale

I'm a tinkerin' old fool. I may not know much about it, but I'll raise the hood, take apart the radio, and, even at my advanced age, peek inside the computer's innards. Maybe it's just plain curiosity, or maybe a secret desire lurks in the old ticker to fix the world, but give me a screwdriver and pliers and stand back, because I'm at it.

I can't tell if I've saved more money by tinkerin', but I've enjoyed it. Except when I have to call the repairman, and he gives me one of those "I-wish-you-hadn't-messed-with-this" kind of looks.

Not only do I tinker with my own appliances and purchases, but at the slightest hint I'll tear into my neighbor's little item as well. (I have two that will still talk to me.) I get itchy fingers when something isn't working just right.

Other people are tinkerers, too. Among them were the Corinthians. Except they started tinkerin' with something that wasn't theirs AND that never needed messing with to start with.

The good old apostle Paul slapped them on the hand. "For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?" (1 Cor. 4:7, NKJV). He had just told them that they shouldn't tinker with the Sacred Text, not to "go beyond the things which are written" (v. 6). Why was that? One reason was because the gospel wasn't theirs, it didn't belong to them. They weren't any different from any other congregation and couldn't boast that what they had was original with them.

You just don't tinker with what isn't yours, especially when it doesn't need fixing. Now I'm still learning that lesson about appliances, but I hope I figured out that when it comes to the Perfect Plan the Lord sent down from heaven, we'd best leave it as is and do things just like he said to do them.

The Corinthians, to get back to our verse, had begun to glory in men and their high-falutin wisdom. And that led, as it always does, to some bad teaching as well. So they got immorality in the church, and abuses in the Lord's Supper, and legal cases in the courts, among other problems.

Before we shake our heads at them, we might take note that the modern church has done pretty much the same. We've got some big-name britches writing and speaking around the country and off in other countries. They look good, and sound good, and make us feel real good. Never mind they're not quite dead center with the gospel. Besides, we tell ourselves, who's got it 100% right anyway?

So Mr. Paul's words come back to slap our tinkerin' fingers. Who's gospel is this, anyway? Mine? Yours? Theirs? Then why have we taken spiritual screwdrivers to God's purchase to play at will with a perfect System? In some quarters, it's the Corinthian church all over again.

Now there are some folk who just refuse to walk around oogling at Personality Junction. They know that what they've got isn't theirs to tinker with. They have figured out that, no matter who we are, even if we're the great apostle Paul, we're no more than "servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God" (verse 1), and that's how everybody ought to consider us. Another minor detail: the big requirement for a steward is to "be found faithful" (verse 2), not to be an original thinker, or a confounded tinkerer.

Some of those old fools are still around. And I'm thankful for that.