Christianity

7 Dangers of Fanciful Interpretations – part 2

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Continuing yesterday’s list of 7 dangers of fanciful interpretations:

4. Fanciful interpretation may lead to preacher puffery. If you get lots of empty praise, which you probably will if you preach the equivalent of donuts and cupcakes, there is a very real danger that you may believe the hype and get puffed up.  You may get far less feedback from people who are deeply convicted, or who need time to be with the Lord because of what they’ve heard from His Word.  So actually the fanciful approach is a short-cut to puffery (unless you learn to discern the value of feedback and praise!)

5. Fanciful interpretation may lead to unnecessary division between believers. On the one hand there are those who will be deeply troubled by what they hear from you.  On the other hand there will be noise from the less discerning who get very hyped up by your sugary fare.  Chances are that these two groups will have some difficult conversations when the latter look to the former to celebrate the teaching they’ve enjoyed so much!

6. Fanciful interpretation may put off thinking unbelievers. Some people do think and may sit there looking at a Bible as you talk.  What if they evaluate Christianity and decide that we’re all apparently unthinking or fanciful in what we believe? Some people are able to see through the lack of intellectual credibility of some Christian communicators.  Then we all get tarred with the same brush.  More importantly, Christ is rejected based on the false assumption that the Christian faith is intellectually deficient or inconsistent.

7. Fanciful interpretation disappoints God. It doesn’t honour God to treat His Word as if what He inspired isn’t good enough, or interesting enough, or relevant enough.

And other dangers?

7 Dangers of Fanciful Interpretations

/ Peter Mead / 3 Comments

Fanciful interpretations get great feedback, but they do great damage.  Fanciful interpretations get some people very excited, but those who know their Bibles, or have been to Bible school tend to look glum in the midst of the hysteria. Is this because all who have training are killjoys?  Or is it perhaps because they see through the hype like a parent watching children getting excited about excessive amounts of sugar?

You can usually spot the indications of fanciful interpretation.  One big red flag is when people are saying, “I would never have got that from that passage, wow!”  Or even, “That was so rich, deep, original, (you choose the description)!”

But if people are so obviously blessed and encouraged, what is wrong with it?  Let me offer seven problems with fanciful interpretation:

1. Fanciful interpretation teaches listeners bad Bible study. You may have convinced yourself that that particular reference to a boat has a deeper meaning relating to postmodernism, or that the name of the valley is an anagram of a suburb of Manchester, or whatever.  But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that your clever interpretation doesn’t seem to do any harm and is motivating for the listeners on a spiritual level (perhaps a spiritual theology of David’s brothers’ names, or the significance of a geographical feature for the Christian life).  Surely no harm is done?  It is if the listeners then copy your way of handling Scripture and come up with an application you find objectionable (the cults do this all the time).

2. Fanciful interpretation offers nutritionally empty fare. Perhaps you’ve come across the notion of empty calories?  Something made with highly processed sugar and white flour and unnatural ingredients.  These things tend to taste good (temporarily), but have no nutritional value.  In fact, over time and in excess, they can do great harm to you.  The same is true of overly sweet, overly processed Bible fancies that stir excitement but offer no nutritional value.

3. Fanciful interpretation may cause listeners to give up on their Bibles. After all, if they can’t see how you got there, maybe instead of copying your approach, perhaps they’ll just feel inadequate and give up on their Bibles.  They may look forward to hearing you again (which is the motivation for some speakers), but their Bibles will gain dust in the meantime.

The rest of the list tomorrow . . .

Wilberforce on Apathy

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Yesterday I quoted from Peter Sanlon’s article in Anvil, focusing on Jonathan Edwards.  After looking at Augustine, Richard Sibbes and Edwards, Sanlon finally turns to William Wilberforce.  I have to admit this wouldn’t have been the next figure in church history I would have expected in this tracing of engaging the emotions in ministry.  Nevertheless, it is very helpful indeed.

He notes Wilberforce’s book title, “A Practical View of the prevailing religious system of professed Christians in the higher and middle classes in this country contrasted with real Christianity.”  Let me quote from the article, including a quotation from Wilberforce.

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“Wilberforce saw that the main reason for his difficulty in abolishing slavery lay in the apathy of people to others’ suffering.  He perceived that the only solution lay in genuine Christianity which engaged the emotions in their God-designed role of making a person feel as he or she ought to feel.  Only if approached in this way could people be moved to action.

“Wilberforce’s critique of unemotional and apathetic Christianity remains penetrating.  He noted that a ‘hot zeal for orthodoxy’ was not the same thing as genuine internalised acceptance of the gospel.  He warned that what people paraded externally as ‘charity’ could often be ‘nothing other than indifference.’ Wilberforce suggested that in the case of many who had been ‘converted’:

Their hearts are no more than before supremely set on the great work of their salvation, but are chiefly bent upon increasing their fortunes, or raising their families.  Meanwhile they content themselves on having amended from vices, which they are no longer strongly tempted to commit.

“In all of this searching critique, Wilberforce laid the majority of the blame at the door of ministers who failed to engage with people at the level of their emotions, claiming that most Christian preaching spoke of ‘general Christianity’ rather than bringing to the surface ‘the workings of the heart.’

. . . “Much of the preaching which Wilberforce heard and rejected as less than full-orbed evangelical proclamation could be summed up in the phrase, ‘accurate, but apathetic.'”

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I suspect that Sanlon’s comments, built on Wilberforce’s significant ministry (not as a minister of the gospel, but as a politician), might be highly relevant to us today.  How much do we see a zealous orthodoxy shot through with a reprehensible apathy today?  Let’s examine our own hearts on this, and then preach to the hearts of others.

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From Peter Sanlon’s article, “Bringing Emotions to the Surface in Ministry,” in Anvil, vol.26, nos. 3&4, 2009, p239-240.

Edwards on Evangelism

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I very much enjoyed an article in the Anvil journal by Peter Sanlon.  Let me quote three paragraphs, where the middle one is a quote from Jonathan Edwards –

The primacy of the affections has implications for our ministries.  We should see that prayer, sacraments, singing and preaching are all given by God ‘to excite and express religious affections.’ Perhaps one of the areas of ministry where we understandably, but erroneously, fail to appreciate the primacy of the affections, is evangelism.  It makes sense intellectually that an unbeliever needs to understand that of which they were previously ignorant.  This is indeed necessary (Rom.10:14) but Edwards would affirm that the main point of spiritual work in conversion is in the affections.  To engage in mission which takes seriously the primacy of the affections would involve a radical overhaul of our present day reliance on programmes, courses and rational explanations:

There is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of that holiness and grace.  There is a difference between have a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness.  A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes.

A compelling case could be made that much evangelical ministry today is geared at giving people an opinion and rational judgment about God which falls far short of the sense of sweetness Edwards encouraged people to taste.  In a time when people are starving for lack of the pleasure of tasting the sweetness of God, we should not denigrate emotions but rather seek to stir up any emotion which tends towards inculcating the emotional heart-felt plea, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us’ (Luke 17:13). We must do this in evangelism, because, ‘the way to draw men and women into Christ’s kingdom, Edwards believed, was through his listeners’ affections.’

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From Peter Sanlon’s article, “Bringing Emotions to the Surface in Ministry,” in Anvil, vol.26, nos. 3&4, 2009, p238.

Chrysostom on Applause

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Way way back many centuries ago, not long after the Bible ended, there was a famous preacher called Chrysostom.  I thought I’d share a bit of his thinking today.  He’s reflecting on the tension created by the applause that was culturally part of the public speaking event, and had come into the church too:

There are many preachers who make long sermons: if they are well applauded, they are as glad as if they had obtained a kingdom: if they bring their sermon to an end in silence, their despondency is worse, I may almost say, than hell.  It is this that ruins churches, that you do not seek to hear sermons that touch the heart, but sermons that will delight your ears with their intonation and the structure of their phrases, just as if you were listening to singers and lute-players.

Then he offers a helpful simile to show the dangerous temptations facing preachers (still today, I would say):

We act like a father who gives a sick child a cake or an ice, or something else that is merely nice to eat – just because he asks for it; and takes no pains to give him what is good for him; and then when the doctors blame him says, ‘I could not bear to hear my child cry.’ . . . . That is what we do when we elaborate beautiful sentences, fine combinations and harmonies, to please and not to profit, to be admired and not to instruct, to delight and not to touch you, to go away with your applause in our ears, and not to better your conduct.

Finally, he gives a vulnerable and honest insight into the inner struggle he faced as a preacher.  Let’s face it, the flesh is a potent feature in every preacher’s experience.

Believe me, I am not speaking at random: when you applaud me as I speak, I feel at the moment as it is natural for a man to feel.  I will make a clean breast of it.  Why should I not?  I am delighted and overjoyed.  And then when I go home and reflect that the people who have been applauding me have received no benefit, and indeed that whatever benefit they might have had has been killed by the applause and praises, I am sore at heart, and I lament and fall to tears, and I feel as though I had spoken altogether in vain, and I say to myself, What is the good of all your labours, seeing that your hearers don’t want to reap any fruit out of all that you say? And I have often thought of laying down a rule absolutely prohibiting all applause, and urging you to listen in silence.

Most of our churches don’t have applause breaking out mid-sermon.  But we still have the flesh!

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This quote taken from S. Chrys. Hom. xxx. In Act. Apost. c. 3, vol.ix. 238., quoted by Edwin Hatch in The influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, 1897, p111.

How Would You Preach If

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If you knew that God was with you and intended to capture hearts and transform lives?  I know you probably respond by saying you already know that.  Me too.  But I’m asking what if you really knew that?  What if you were able to know for certain God’s character and purposes and desire for the lives of your hearers?  What then?

It seems to me that often we know these kinds of truths, but they seem to have minimal impact on our preaching.  I’m not criticizing that, just acknowledging it.  God calls us to minister not by sight, but by faith.  By sight we may see eager and open hearts, but often we won’t.  But by faith we are called to present Christ so that hearts melt and are drawn to him.  By faith we are called to preach truth so that darkness flees from the penetration of light.  By faith we are called to care for souls by feeding them God’s Word and participating in their encounter with him that their souls and hearts and lives might be filled full of the life only available as we all lean closer into Christ.

The thing is, there is no way to muster the knowledge of God’s with-us-ness in respect to our preaching.  Just like the listeners we urge to trust in His Word, we too have to believe what is taught and live in light of it.  By faith.  Not sight.  Not guarantees.  Not mechanism.  Not training.  Not anything we can generate in us.  By faith.

So, time to prepare to preach, let’s do it.

But They Know Actual People

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

It seems inevitable that a biblical ministry that brings the message of the Bible to people in this world will frequently have to engage with sin.  If you have figured out how to preach only positive messages, then you probably should preach from more than the first couple and last couple of chapters!  So as we preach we address sin.  Here’s my one point for this post, although much more could be said on numerous levels, of course: sometimes we can make reference to certain sins in the abstract, but f0r some listeners these things are not abstract.  We may speak about the sin, but they know actual people who engage in that sin.

For example, it is easy to zoom in on the sin of a certain addiction or behaviour.  From your perspective what you say is fine.  You are looking out at a broken world and speaking about it, hopefully using biblical support for what you say.  But some of the people listening aren’t working in the abstract.  They are wrestling with the issue themselves.  Or they have a friend or relative who is caught up in it.  They know the back story.  They don’t want to excuse the sin, but they feel for the person entangled in it.

What to do?  One approach would be to tread softly around all issues, never get specific, always speak happy thoughts in abstract and vague ways.  Doesn’t sound like the best approach when you’re reading the Bible and seeing God’s spokesmen in action, does it?  Perhaps the better approach is to address whatever issue and instead of saying less, say slightly more.  Sometimes just including an acknowledgment of listeners’ feelings and the complexity of sin makes all the difference.  For example, avoiding the obvious ones so we don’t get distracted from the point of the post, perhaps you are addressing the sin of eating peanuts (and have biblical support for your position!)  You might have said some things already about the prevalence of this addiction, but then maybe you include something like this:

“Perhaps you know someone who struggles with this.  You know what the Bible says, but you also know them and you care about them.  You know what they’ve gone through in recent years, or how they were hurt by that failed relationship, or the scar left by their absent father.  This is not some sort of abstract issue for you because as soon as it is mentioned you see their face.  I understand that.  We live in a broken and hurting world filled with real people with real stories.  Sin is real and it hurts.”

Then you continue with your point.  If the transition to this content and from this content is smooth, it won’t jar, but it will keep listeners with you as you touch on a subject that hits a nerve. Sin is always viewed differently when it touches close to home.  When you preach to a decent sized and diverse congregation, sin issues are always touching close to home for someone.  Be sensitive to them.  Win an audience for the Word.

Some Messages Need More Careful Intros

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

When a message stands on its own rather than being part of a series, or when a message is from a less obvious part of the Bible (i.e. from the Old Testament, or from an unexpected passage for the season), then it is worth giving extra attention to the context that is set up at the start of the message.

To put it another way, will the listeners, after ten or fifteen minutes, be asking themselves, “why are we in this part of the Bible?”  If they ask that subconsciously, then you didn’t create a sense of the need for the message during the introduction.  Sometimes all this takes is a deliberate answering of the question, “so why are we looking at this passage?”  If you can’t be more subtle, at least be that clear.  It is part of the work of the introduction to make listeners feel motivated to listen to the message, which includes helping them know why the passage is being preached.

So for an example.  Let’s say you’re preaching from somewhere like Judges.  It may feel adequate to make some introductory references to the problem of sin in the world today and then launch into historical explanations of Philistine oppression.  But the listener will probably have the sense that the message feels distant and irrelevant.  Much better to plan the introduction so that it not only makes some reference to a contemporary phenomena that was also true back then, but to make the link really overt.  Perhaps in the intro you talk about some aspect of sin in society today, but before you head back into Bible world, think through the transition.  This is off the top of my head and not for any passage in particular.  But perhaps it gives a sense of a slightly more deliberate link between introductory remarks and the Bible text:

“[Contemporary and engaging examples of sin and its consequences] . . . So we probably all agree that our society is shot through with sin, and that it’s creaking with the natural consequences of that sin.  But how are we to respond to it?  What should we be looking for, or hoping for, or aiming for, as we live in this sin-stained society today?  Let’s look at a Bible text that is over three thousand years old.  You might think anything that old would be irrelevant to today, but actually it does have something very helpful for us.  This passage was written at a time when the society of Israel faced some of the same problems we face today.  Let’s look at it to see not only what was going on then, but how God worked to bring about the change that was needed.  Let’s look and see what this ancient text might say to us today as we live in a similar situation.  Turn with me to . . . “

Thermometer Reading

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Yesterday I wrote using the notion of a thermal imaging view of the Scriptures. At the risk of overuse, I’d like to turn that thermal camera in another direction. What would people see if they saw a thermal image of you preaching?

1. Warmth of the Person. I sat through a message recently where I got the distinct impression that the preacher was cold. He wasn’t shivering. But he never smiled, not once in an hour long service. He didn’t seem warm toward us the listeners, or toward the message he preached (and consequently, even if it is uncomfortable to say it, he didn’t seem warm toward God). I recognize that different preachers have different temperaments and styles of presentation, but I suspect that subconsciously others felt the same cool temperature from the pulpit. I doubt anyone would have ever said that of Jesus’ preaching, and it is Him that we preach and represent.

2. Warmth of the Message. The content of the message says a lot about the focus of the preacher. For instance, what about the preacher I heard a while back who seemed passionate about declaring the sins of certain people in Bible times (and by implicit association, of us too). The strange thing is that the passage being preached was not pure judgment, but judgment that led into the saving work of God’s Redeemer. What was strange about that? Well, the fact that the good news climax of the passage felt like a passing reference in the conclusion of the message. Why would a preacher focus so heavily on judgment and almost miss the glorious climax of the passage? The content decisions of the preacher say a lot about the preacher . . . and go a long way to determining the temperature radiating from the front as we preach.

As you prepare to preach your next message, is your message radiating the glow of a loving and living God? As you step up to preach your next message, is your heart prayerfully prayed full so that you yourself radiate that same glow?

Red or Blue?

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Today’s post is on the Cor Deo blog.  In it I ask a significant question for Bible readers and preachers alike.  When we look at the pages of Scripture, do we see red or blue?  There’s nothing political about the post, it deals with a much more important subject than that!

Also, remember that those who comment on any post on the Cor Deo site this month will be in with a chance of winning a free book – A Praying Life by Paul Miller.  All we ask is that you also share the link to the Book Giveaway page on facebook, twitter, by email or a web link – here’s the link to share:

http://www.cordeo.org.uk/book-giveaway-a-praying-life/

To go to the post, Red or Blue? – please click here.