A Tribute to John Charles: A Man and his Books
News2Use – August, 2015
Rob Tennant
My friend John Charles is nearer to
the end of his earthly life than is to the beginning of it. He is 85.
He has Alzheimer’s. Only God knows
how much time he has left.
For me, to be his friend and his
pastor these past 9 years has been a true privilege. Pastors are, in a sense, friends to all the
church members. And whatever the
relationship is, however intimate or distant, when a church member nears death,
the pastor is drawn close. This is
nearly always the case. Maybe the pastor had not been a large
force in that person’s life, but as death closes in, suddenly, the pastor
becomes important. No matter how good we
are at doing it, we pastors are seen as the guides who shepherd people from
life on earth to eternal life in the embrace of God.
In John’s case, it is happening, but
with a caveat. Before Alzheimer’s took
John away, he and I were close, and it was because of who he is, not because I
am his pastor. John has had many pastors
before me. And if someone else were here
at HillSong, he would be as close to that pastor as to me. It is a mark of his and his wife Marion’s
faithfulness that they committed themselves to the life of the church.
Before
I mention John’s books, I need to make this clear. Throughout his life, John was a committed
Christian who took discipleship very seriously.
I remember our men’s Bible study – all men over 70 with 38-year-old
me. We were moving furniture into the
apartment of a newly arrived refugee.
John was on one end of as a couch that we being carried up the
stairs. He had the skin on his knuckles
ripped off as his hand scraped the brick wall in the stairwell. But he didn’t drop his end of the couch.
John was faithful in service. I remember the times he told me of how
members of his family became Christians.
He knew what was stake and so, he teared up as he shared the stories. Yes, the stoic bookworm John Charles was
moved to deep emotion when he thought about someone he loves accepted
Jesus.
John was husband, father, grandfather,
brother, friend, teacher, and mentor. He
was all these things. He should be
remembered for these roles and for the love he had for God and his family. That is John Charles much more than a
library.
The library does also need to be mentioned. John Charles was a lover of Biblical
scholarship. A Bible scholar is not
someone who just reads the Bible over and over.
That in and of itself is good and noble and a worthwhile pursuit I recommend
to all Christ-followers. And John did
that. But he also studied the Bible
critically. Doing this did not demystify
the Word for him. Rather, critical study
increased John’s reverence for scripture as critical study does for anyone who
is a person of faith and dares to ask the tough questions.
John studied the scripture in the
original Hebrew and Greek, and he studied early commentaries in Latin and
commentaries from the great 19th century German scholars. He was a master of languages. He also studied in depth theology, church
history, and hermeneutics (methods of scripture interpretation). In terms of scholarship, he was a renaissance
man.
Over the course of his life, this
study of God through the writings of great scholars was a passion for him and
he amassed a library of over 2500 books.
A few weeks ago, his family gave me charge of the books. I could keep as many as I liked. The rest I needed to donate to pastors or
church libraries or seminaries that would resonate with John’s approach to
theological study.
I have long known that the day would come when John
and Marion would call me to be the steward of his life’s passion. Now that it is here, I am amazed by the
enormity of the task. It is a true
blessing. My own pastoral library will
just about double by the time I am done.
I have taken in great books and it has impressed upon me a sense of
responsibility. I won’t be the scholar
he was. I am terrible at languages. I muddle along in Greek and am hopeless in
the others. But, John left me a lot of
great theological writings and Bible commentaries. To honor him, I need to read these works and
be shaped by them.
I am going to do exactly that. It will take years and I have already
begun. I am studying two works by
American scholar Karl Donfried and one by Alister McGrath of Britain. I have changed some things, and dropped some things
out of my life to give me time to get a jump on reading these great works. I won’t ever be John Charles. I am not supposed to be him. But his life’s work will have a powerful
effect on me living the call God has set
before me.
In addition to responsibility, the fact that I am now
the steward of a significant portion of John’s life has had a great humbling
effect on me. I think I was starting to
create an idol – John’s books. I only
paid homage to the idol in my mind, nowhere else, but there in my consciousness
it was occupying a bigger and bigger space.
God freed me from this idolatry when God made it clear that I had to
give many of these books away to pastors who I knew would cherish them, read
them, and grow in theological knowledge because of them. As we divvied up the books, many times, one
of my friends claimed a book I really wanted.
It was freeing to let him or her have it. God is the maker of my life as a pastor. The books help, but they shouldn’t just help me. I was humbled to pass John’s blessing on to
others and they were enormously grateful.
The responsibility to be a theologian-pastor and the
humility to be a giver (and not a hoarder) are truly things God is using to
shape my life. Of course my appreciation
for John and Marion and my love for them has grown immensely in recent
weeks. As time passes, this summer of
the disbursement of theological blessing from a man who had more than enough to
give will fade in memory.
But it won’t fade too far into the background. There will be an afternoon in the near future
when I will be reading. I will want to
go over to John and Marion’s home and have a cup of coffee. I can’t drink coffee without thinking of my
father and of John Charles. I will want
to sit with John and discuss the protreptic purposes in Paul’s terminology in
Thessalonians. Of course you don’t know
the word ‘protreptic.’ Microsoft Word’s
spell checker didn’t know it either. And
to be honest, I had to look it up. John
wouldn’t.
But, John is not here for that discussion, not
anymore. He has eternity in the
resurrection ahead of him for he truly is a Christ-follower and will be with
the Lord in the Kingdom forever. But he
is gone for now. I won’t be able to go talk
it over with him and listen as he shares with me how he became a reader and
collector of great theological literature. We have had that conversation so
many times and now I won’t be able to sit with him again.
And yet, I will.
I will sit in my office, look at my shelves, take a sip of coffee, shove
my nose back into that book, and John will be there with me.
Rob Tennant
