WHAT’S YOUR TUNA CASSEROLE?

She was very kind. When my wife and I were young evangelists and our firstborn was only an infant, way out west we were holding services at a church without an evangelist quarter. A saintly widow of the church hospitably opened her home to our family for the week. She was so kind. When we arrived, she had supper prepared for us, and I was in trouble. It was a wonderful home-cooked meal, but the main dish was a 9” x 13” dish of tuna casserole. Now see, I have an aversion, in general, to fish and, in particular, to tuna. Just the smell of it—and I can smell even the faintest traces—causes me to want to gag*. This repugnance is neither imagined nor self-fabricated. It is even hereditary. When my younger son was only a toddler, a can of tuna could have been just opened and, as soon as he caught a whiff of the smell, he would begin showing signs of nausea. So, I was in trouble. We blessed the food and thanked our hostess for the wonderful meal. When it came time to serve myself, I settled on a tactic I had learned for dishes I, as a guest, found distasteful: I dumped a rather small spoonful of the tuna casserole on my plate and then quickly smashed it with the top of the spoon and spread it to cover a large area of my plate. If one didn’t notice how thin the layer was, it looked like I had a lot. When the meal was over, I congratulated myself for being so clever and getting through the tuna casserole. It was over. Past. Done. Not! At suppertime the next evening I was looking forward to the meal. As we sat down at the table, I quickly became dismayed. Our hostess had rewarmed the tuna casserole and added a few fresh sides to it. I don’t even know how I made it through that meal. I just know that at bedtime I said to my wife, “You know how much I hate tuna. You must eat up that tuna casserole. Listen to me: ‘Eat up that casserole!’” She is a great wife. You might have guessed: The next night at supper, the casserole made its third appearance, and my faithful wife doled herself a gigantic dollop. Tuna is bad enough fresh. I could not imagine what it must have tasted like after the second, left-over warm-up. I don’t remember how many appearances the tuna casserole made that week. I just know that my wife sacrificially took care of what I found so unpleasant. Often, we humans do with internal struggles what I did with the casserole. What we find unpleasant within ourselves, we project to someone else to deal with—as if it is their problem. We put it on them. For example, a father, angry and frustrated with work, comes home and yells at his kids—for nothing they have done. He has put his tuna casserole on their plate. A church member struggling with inferiorities blames the church family for being uncaring or unfriendly and his not feeling a part. That one wants everyone else to eat his tuna. Another is boiling with bitterness in the cauldron of his heart for having been done wrong. He finds fault and lashes out at any who might be unlucky enough to approach him in an attempt of kindness. Once again, one’s own internal baggage, tuna, has been dumped on someone else’s plate. Today at church, if you should find yourself not liking the music, annoyed by others, bored with the preaching, or angry with a brother or sister, consider that there may be nothing wrong with the music, preaching, or people. Perhaps, it's just something with you. Same with your family. You are unhappy with your spouse, your children, your parents, or your siblings. Maybe the problem's not with them. Maybe it's with you. God too. This thing you find wrong with God, or His ways, we know it can't be anything wrong with God or His ways. It has to be something with you. If you dislike tuna, don’t blame the host who is trying to be kind. And for sure, don’t try to make it someone else’s responsibility to eat it. You could just accept that the unpleasantness comes from something about you and get down to business and eat it. Or, unlike repugnance with real tuna, you could ask God to remove the aversion. By the way, what is your tuna casserole? Do you try to put it on someone else’s plate? --Pastor Clifford Hurst