craftiness, honesty, and the word
I finished Jack Good’s book, The Dishonest Church. It was an okay read. I clearly don’t agree with everything he says. But the basic issue he has is that pastors are not being honest with their churches. In his case, he thinks that if they don’t believe in, say, the divinity of Jesus, then they should be honest and preach that from their pulpits. Good is convinced that the congregation may appreciate the honesty, probably admit that’s what they believe themselves anyway, and everyone will be happy… except those who do believe in the divinity of Jesus.
I agree with Good that preachers should be honest. I disagree with the tack Good takes after that. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 4:2 says:
“We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.”
Paul insists on honesty. As Chambers says today, in reference to the same verse he translates as, “Not walking in craftiness…”:
“…that is, resorting to what will carry your point. This is a great snare.”
Good starts with the human mind’s conclusions based on experience, selected research, and hunches, and then canonizes which scriptures support these conclusions and rejects the rest. Paul went the other way, rigorously pressing God’s word upon the human mind and its conclusions. It is one thing to be honest with ourselves. But what if we ourselves are crooked, confused, and wrong? Paul asks: are we honest in light of God’s word? If we are honestly falsifying God’s word, then is that honesty or craftiness? That’s a totally different question.
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i agree, well put.
i am amazed by pastors who don’t believe what they preach. how can they sleep. also i don’t understand how someone can believe some of what the Bible says and not all. it’s like the thing someone said i’m sure you’ve all heard it, “If what Jesus said isn’t all true then He was either a lier or a lunatic.”
yet some people say He was a great teacher but He wasn’t the Son of God or He didn’t rise from the dead or He didn’t mean such and such literally. i don’t consider a lier or a lunatic a great teacher.
it’s all or nothin’ baby!!!
I agree Deb. On the other hand, I really do believe that the guys that are presenting this theory about Jesus really need to be heard and understood because of their increasing influence. Many, many people, some of whom I know and respect, are buying what they are saying.
Dave:
Good conversion last night. Your comments on this book are right on. We need to objectify our experiences against some truth or standard. Our subjective experience are not subjective at all in one sense in that culture and others have influenced our ideas, without giving account of the ‘ethic’ of the influence. How are choices made and reality undersood? What is the filter?
See you again
Ken
Thanks Ken. Yes, that was a blast last night! I appreciate your comments. In my experience as a pastor, and in your experience too I’m sure, I’ve come to learn that we can seem to make things true from our experience. They seem so true that they are, at one level, a kind of truth. But it is not Truth with a capital “T”. For instance, if my daughter is convinced there are sharks under her bed, so much so that she won’t let her feet touch the ground, can’t sleep, etc., she is acting as though there really were sharks under her bed. To her, it seems true because her life manifests that high probability that there really are sharks under her bed. Even I as an adult can eventually wonder, “Gee! I wonder if she saw something that looked like a shark under her bed? Maybe there are bed-sharks?” It all seems so true… until you actually look under the bed!
Hmmm, your blog turns again to conversation about subjective experience vs objective thought. I recognize the importance in the thinking that we should not be led entirely by an emotional/subjective reaction to situations/ideas and it is great to think that we might have a comfortable distance between our experiences and truth. My question is this: When we remove ourselves from truth, do we treat truth as an object? When we treat truth subjectively, do we, then, conversely, connect with “it” as a subject? Also, might this distance produce a dullness, perhaps replacing the passion that connecting subjectively gives us (Kierkegaard’s observations, not mine)?
And,
Have you ever watched “Open Water” as a late night movie? Do you think it really matters that there is no such thing as “bed sharks”?!