The Lutheran Hour

"Type C"

#93-23
Presented on The Lutheran Hour on February 8, 2026
Speaker: Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler
Copyright 2026 Lutheran Hour Ministries

Text: 1 Corinthians 2:12

“I can deal with anything,” Adam says. “I can deal with anything. I can deal with disease, with illness, with a broken bone. Give me something I can fix. But I don’t know how to deal with this. This is for life.”

Adam is a TV character. He’s fictional, but his dilemma is very much true to life. His dilemma comes from a dichotomy—an either-or template he places on his problems: either you fix it, or forget about it. Those are the only two options. So, Adam says, “Give me something I can fix.” But the problem Adam can’t fix is his son, Max. Max is nine years old and obsessed with dressing up as a pirate. And, as if donning a red bandana and a white, puffy-sleeved shirt to school every day wasn’t already enough to make Max a magnet for every bully in the hallway, also—Max isn’t very good at baseball. He’s clumsy. He’s awkwardly self-centered, and over-shares random facts about cockroaches. Max is the weird kid. And his dad doesn’t know how to fix him.

Max and Adam are characters in a comedy-drama from 2010 called Parenthood. It’s a spin-off of the Steve Martin movie of the same name. The TV series features Max and his dad, Adam, plus their family and extended family. Max’s dad, Adam, he’s in his forties, he’s married, has two kids. And Adam’s brother and two sisters with their families live close by, along with their aging parents. And they all look to Adam. He’s the oldest. They all rely on him. And Adam prides himself on being the go-to guy, Mister Fix-It. But Max? Adam doesn’t know what to do about him.

After Max gets expelled from school for fighting, biting, breaking a classroom aquarium full of fish, Adam and his wife take Max to see a renowned child psychologist, who tells them, “Max … is a wonderful boy. He’s smart. He’s sweet. He’s very intelligent…”

And?

…and his behavior is consistent with Asperger’s syndrome (which today would be classified as on the Autism spectrum).”

On cue, Adam shifts into fix-it mode. “All right, this is fine. We can work through this. This isn’t insurmountable. I think we should just tackle this one by one. So, pirate costume—I think getting him out of that is key.”

The doctor says he’s happy to discuss strategies for specific behaviors, but he thinks that starting with the big picture would be more helpful. “This isn’t a prison sentence,” he tells them.
Adam: “Okay, how long is this going to take?
Doctor: “How long is what going to take?
Adam: “To get Max back on track. To get him turned around.”
Doctor: “There is no timeline. There’s no cure. Max is going to have this for the rest of his life. What you can do is help to uncover his gifts; understand how he learns; support him.”
Irritated, Adam interrupts, “Okay, all right, well, just in case we can never see you again, what do you suggest we do to get him out of the pirate costume?” The doctor takes a deep breath. “The first step is not to wrench Max out of his comfort zone. The first step is to—join Max where he is. And then, when he’s ready, you walk him into the world.”ⁱ

Good advice, but it’s not registering with Adam. “Give me something I can fix,” he says.

Author David Zahl, in his book, The Big Relief, references the character Adam from the TV show Parenthood as a classic example of a “Type A” personality.ⁱⁱ Zahl goes on to note that the Type A-B personality categories are too simplistic to be super helpful. But, the simplicity is part of what makes it so memorable and so frequently referenced. You’ve heard somebody say, “She’s so Type A,” or, “That’s just how he is—he’s an A-Type.”

How did it happen, that you can say “Type A,” and people know exactly what you mean? Maybe it’s because our culture is dominated by Type-A behavior—U.S. American culture, anyway. It’s probably different in Canada. But Americans, we’re taught to say, “Give me something I can fix.” And we constantly feel this pressure to always be working, always growing, improving, always trying to fix something. You’re supposed to fix up your house. Fix your health. Fix your finances. Fix your kids. Fix your spouse. Fix thyself.

And if you can’t fix it, then you’re probably just Type B, so forget about it. Watch some more TV. Roll over. Take a nap. That pretty well captures our prevailing cultural wisdom: either fix it, or forget about it.

On this program, we’ve been listening to a 2,000-year-old letter written to followers of Jesus of Nazareth living in the ancient city of Corinth. And Corinth’s culture, like ours, was Type A. Corinth was a Roman Empire colony. And colonies of the empire were supposed to fix things, to bring order, peace, prosperity to the conquered lands they had pirated from their neighbors. And people who lived in a Roman colony, such as Corinth, felt the pressure: either you compete, or roll over. “Get ‘er done”—or get out of the way. Fight to be first or take your place in line with the rest of the losers.

And this wisdom, so-called, was seeping its way into the Christian community at Corinth, foisting this false dichotomy on them, distorting their view of reality. So Paul, this Jesus-follower who helped them start their church community, writes a letter. He wants them to see beyond the accepted “wisdom of the age.” That there’s another option beyond A-Type or B-Type. There is a C-Type, a Christ-Type.

Which means, you don’t have to fit into this dichotomy anymore. You don’t have to choose between either “scheme for power” or “be sedated by circuses.” No! You don’t have to follow the wisdom of the world, because we follow Jesus. Together, we have the mind of Christ. We’re C-Type.

Listen to this introductory part of the letter with me. Paul tells them, “Brothers and sisters, remember what you were, when you were called to follow Jesus. Not many of you were wise according to the world’s standards, not many of you were powerful or influential, not many of you were born into high status. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being may boast in the presence of God. It is from God, because of God that you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it’s written, ‘If anyone boasts, let him boast in the Lord.’ And me, brothers and sisters, consider me. When I came among you proclaiming the mystery of God, I did not come with lofty words or ‘wisdom.’ Because I resolved to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my message, they were not with sensible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of God’s Spirit and power, so that your faith would not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Now, among the mature we do speak wisdom, we impart wisdom, but it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are being reduced to nothing. No, we speak God’s wisdom, in the mystery of what was hidden, which God determined beforehand, before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, because if they had, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God prepared for those who love Him.’ God revealed this to us by the Spirit, because the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

You see, no one knows the thoughts of a man, except for the spirit of that man within him. So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God, except the Spirit of God. And this is the Spirit we have received—not a spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God so that we may understand the things freely given to us by God. And we share these things with words—not words taught by human wisdom, but words taught by the Spirit of God. We explain the truths of the Spirit to those who are led by the Spirit. The person who is without the Spirit, the person led by his fallen nature, that person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, because they are foolishness to him. And he cannot understand them because they are evaluated, they are judged by the Spirit. But the person led by God’s Spirit evaluates/judges all things, and he himself is judged by no man, because who has known the mind of the Lord or has instructed Him? But we—we together—we have the mind of Christ.”

That’s from 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. Paul teaches them, and he teaches us, that God is by nature a loving Father. He’s a good Dad! And God has always been like this. He’s always been overflowing with this Spirit of fatherly love, because God has always had His Son, Jesus. And God created us—He created all humans—to become like His Son, like Jesus, to become God’s adopted children, God’s kids. God wants to give us His Spirit so that we can become more and more like Jesus, our Brother. That’s been the plan from the beginning. God worked it all out in His mind, all in advance, and He put it in motion.

But Satan, this powerful spiritual being, created by God, but now turned away from God, somehow got us humans to believe that it was all foolishness. That it was too good to be true—that God wants all of us as His kids, not just the smart, good-looking ones, but even the weird ones out back in pirate outfits. God must be up to something, we told ourselves. It can’t all just be a gift. And it certainly can’t be for everyone. So, we A-Types pirated the creation for ourselves, and the rest of us just rolled over. And now we’re in a real fix. And we can’t get ourselves out of it.

But here’s the mystery no one saw coming, nobody guessed, nobody imagined how God would still fulfill His plan for us, in spite of us. See, God could have, but He didn’t just wrench us out of this distorted reality that we’ve created for ourselves. No, He joined us. He put on our pirate outfit. He became one of us, in His Son, Jesus.

Jesus joined us. He lived among us. He didn’t follow the Type A/Type B wisdom of the world. He didn’t accept that false dichotomy, that you either have to force your fix on the world or else forget about it. No, Jesus joined us and He stayed with us, even when that meant He would be rejected, stepped on, bullied, crucified by the powerful A-Types, while all the B-Types rolled over.

But this proved to be God’s plan all along. That Christ would die for us, not to force a fix on us, but to embrace us, right where we’re at. Jesus did embrace us in His death on the cross, but He does not leave us in our false, self-centered reality. He didn’t roll over for us. He resurrected for us—rose from the dead for you, to meet you where you are. Because it was the only way for Him to walk you into the world.

In that show I mentioned at the beginning, Parenthood, Adam, the dad, is faced with a false dichotomy: an unreal either-or when he learns that his nine-year-old son, Max, is on the Autism spectrum. Max, his son, is stuck in his own reality. He’s socially isolated. He’s separated from his family, fixated on his own interests, and just plain weird. Adam wants to fix him, or at least just get him out of the pirate costume. But then he’s told, “there’s no fix for this.” And he gets stuck in that false, fight-or-flight dichotomy.

The doctor, however, helps him see that there’s another way. Don’t try to wrench him out of his reality. Join him. And at the end of the episode, we see Adam doing just that. Max is out back, weird as ever, wearing that goofy red bandana, swinging a tennis racket like a swashbuckler. And dad is right there with him—“Arrrgh, me matey”—dressed up like a pirate.

When God’s Spirit meets us in the world, He comes to us not as an idea or a force or a feeling, but dressed up in our outfit, dressed up in human language. God clothes Himself with human words. Like Paul, the apostle said, “We share these things; we share this wisdom of God with words, with vocable, understandable words,” the story of Jesus, the testimony recorded in the Bible. That’s where the Spirit meets you—in the Word.

So, listen to it. Read the Bible. Read it aloud. Talk about it with fellow Christ-followers. Internalize it. Sing it. Savor it. Pray it. That’s where God the Holy Spirit promises to meet us, to give us the mind of Christ, to walk us back into the world as God’s kids, little Christs.

As the show, Parenthood, continues through the seasons, you get to see Max grow up and mature. You see his parents and his family trying to do what the doctor said, not just to join him where he’s at, but to walk him into the world, out of his isolation and into community.

So also, with the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t leave you where you’re comfortable. He walks you into a community gathered around Jesus, the local church. And this may seem like the greatest foolishness of all—the church. If you’re part of a church, you know exactly what I mean. And if not, go join one and you’ll see. Because there, you will find all types: A-Types trying to fix everybody, B-Types who just roll over, along with an odd assortment of all sorts of others who don’t fit in either category. And it seems foolish that all these people who don’t quite fit together every week would come and worship Jesus. But this, too, is God’s wisdom.

At the end of the passage we heard from 1 Corinthians, Paul says, “We have the mind of Christ.” Notice he says, “We.” Not me, not you, but we together have the mind of Christ. It’s not any of us individually, on our own. You and I need other Christians to become a Christ-Type. We need the Spirit to walk us into a local church for the sake of the world because I am not enough on my own, and you are not enough on your own. No one is. Because, as David Zahl points out with the Parenthood analogy, although we are called to become like Christ, we’re not the parent in the equation.ⁱⁱⁱ We’re the weird kid out back with the red bandana and the puffy-sleeved shirt. We are Max. Or should I say, “We arrrgh.” In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

i Parenthood, Season 1, Episode 2, “Man Versus Possum.” NBC Universal (March 9, 2010).
ii David Zahl, The Big Relief: The Urgency of Grace for a Worn-out World. Grand Rapids, MI, Brazos (2025), 83.
iii Ibid., 85.

Reflections for February 8, 2026
Title: The Wisdom of God

Mark Eischer: Once again, here’s Dr. Michael Zeigler.

Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. Today I am visiting with Dr. Dan Paavola. He’s a regular guest speaker on this program. You’ve probably heard his voice before. Welcome back to the program, Dan.

Dan Paavola: Oh, thank you for letting me come back. And oh, that makes me a little nervous when you say you’ve heard his voice before. Oh, not the most melodious voice in the world, but I thank you very much for letting me be on The Lutheran Hour again.

Mike Zeigler: Our privilege and pleasure. So Dan, our message today I just shared really was a contrast between God’s wisdom and the wisdom of the world. And after I preached it, I’m realizing if you only read this passage from 1 Corinthians, you might think that there is absolutely no common ground between those two: God’s wisdom, wisdom of the world. However, you read other passages of Scripture and you see that, while the world gets the most important things about God wrong, it doesn’t get everything about knowledge or the world wrong. For example, Paul says in Romans 12:17 that Christians should try to do good, to try to do what is good in the sight of all people. Which means that there’s got to be some common ground between what the world thinks is good and what God thinks is good. So Dan, I was reading your book, Patience and Perfection, we’ve talked about this before, and in that book you share an experience about going to the hardware store or the big “Big Box” home improvement stores. And I think it’s a great analogy that helps us walk through this tension between God’s wisdom and the world’s wisdom. So could you just briefly share that analogy with us?

Dan Paavola: Well, you go into a big box store and God bless them. Okay, let’s just make this simple. You need wood screws. You need number 10, two-inch wood screws, flathead. And you need stain. No mystery, except where are they? I mean, these stores are big and you swore the stain was right by the paint. They moved it. The screws should—should, what a useless word—the screws should be here. Well, ya ha. Yeah, that’s a good word. So, on the one hand, Mike, we know a felt need. We can identify that I need forgiveness, or I need hope, I need healing. And think of the miracles Jesus did for people who knew what they needed. And so they came to Him as lepers or as paralyzed. So we know a need, but in the vastness of God left to ourselves, we’d never find, He’d remained hidden and distant from us,

So thank goodness. Instead the Holy Spirit comes with a word to give us that direction. And it’s even simpler than “that’s aisle 22 and the left side.” And I’m sorry, I’m not sure I really got that. No, He gives us the direction. Isn’t that a marvelous thing? And now we could go the other way, too. Sometimes in our little town, Cedar Grove, Wisconsin, we have a hardware store that’s been around for, I bet, a hundred years. Same building, same store. It’s a wonderful place. It’s not big. Maybe I have a problem, and I don’t know what the fix is. That’s what you have the friendly hardware guy who’s been running this store for all these years and he’s got a little bit of plumbing in him, a little electric, a little woodwork, in a little of, you name it. Maybe I just need the thing if you point it to me or I need the person who knows the thing I need. And isn’t God the both-and? He directs us to what He’s already done. What aisle? It’s where the cross is and the empty tomb. And when I don’t know what I fully need, there He stands, and says, “So what do you need today?” And He knows.

Mike Zeigler: This is where the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world overlaps. For example, we all know that the world would be better if we just treated each other the way we would want to be treated. But the deeper problem is not that, but it’s a broken relationship with God, our Creator who offers healing in Jesus and forgiveness and healing. And then the rest of these horizontal, so to speak, relationships can begin to be healed. But if we don’t even have that relationship between us and God in view, we don’t even know where to get started.

Dan Paavola: Paul encountered this when he went to Athens. Remember, he sees all of these idols and he sees an idol to the unknown god. And instead of dashing them to pieces saying, “Oh, you foolish people, you don’t even know the name of your god.” He says, “I see you’re very religious. You even have an altar to the unknown god. That which you worship as unknown, I’ll make known to you.” Isn’t that a great connection? “You know, a sort of vacuum, and you tried to label that vacuum the ‘unknown god.’” Paul says, “You know the vacuum? I know the One who fills it. I know the God you don’t know. And by the way, He’s the only God.” And what a great invitation! So as you said, they know a part. There’s a wisdom that recognizes my emptiness or failure. But then God steps in and says, let me fill that for you. He doesn’t come to condemn and judge the world and dash us to pieces, but He says, “I’ll fill what you’re lacking.”

Mike Zeigler: Yeah. This is where they clearly diverge that this is not the solution that we were looking for or hoping for or asking for, but it’s the one that we need.

Dan Paavola: And God graciously keeps offering this to the world. Wouldn’t it be easy for God to say like a frustrated teacher, “All right, you know what, you are just not getting it. I’m done. I’m taking the offer back. We’re not going to teach that lesson anymore.” There’s only one central lesson. Paul said it: “I determined to know nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified.” That’s our message to the end of time.

Mike Zeigler: We, the church, we’ve been given this solution. We’ve received it by grace. It’s not anything we earned, but we know it’s the only solution to the world’s deepest problems. How should we go about offering this solution? What should our posture or our method be?

Dan Paavola: The old Law-Gospel sanctification is about as old a structure as you can get. It admits that life is not the way it should be. You know, something broke, something isn’t. I wish this, but it doesn’t happen. And when the preacher puts himself into that, you know, you and I can, I’ve so often said, and I’m sure you do this too, you say to someone, “Well, now this might not be true of you. This might not have happened to you.” Oh, but it has. You don’t say that part, but you know, and then you relate to just the frustration. Something as simple as Romans 7: “You know, the good that I would do, I don’t, and the evil that I said I’d be done with, still here.” You say that and people are nodding their heads saying, “Yeah, yeah, I know that. I know that.” So we start with that law upon ourselves, but it’s a law that people can understand. And then we go to the Gospel where God does the most unthinkable thing, putting that failure on His Son and His Son’s accomplishments on our record, calling us innocent when we know we’re guilty. And that Gospel is what draws people in. That’s our hope, of course. Because then we can say, “It’s not me, it’s us. We.” This is His gift to all of us.

Mike Zeigler: And as Paul says, “No eye saw it coming. No ear heard about it. No one imagined it. But this is what God has prepared.” And we receive it gratefully,

Dan Paavola: And that’s why we go again and again. You know, someone might say, “Well, don’t you get tired of talking about Jesus and the cross?” Well, no, my heavens, it’s a great gift, but it’s also a great mystery and wonder of the world. I think I better go over that ground again. Yeah.

Mike Zeigler: Yeah. We need to hear it one more time. Thanks so much for being with us, Dan.

Dan Paavola: Thanks.

Music Selections for this program:

“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Thy Strong Word Did Cleave the Darkness” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.