Christoper Yuan Testimony (Part 2)

Christopher Yuan Testimony (Part 3)

(2)   Running out of gas or locking my keys in the car

(3)   Ordering carryout while in transit

(4)   Finding out where to meet someone in a crowded place

(5)   Being entertained and/or productive while running an errand with someone else

Here’s what this has to do with sermons: I’ve noticed that many people (myself often included) particularly enjoy aggressive, blunt preaching. Preaching with a certain shock value. Sermons that get in people’s faces and poke a finger into their chests, calling folks out for very specific transgressions.

Before I say more, let me be clear that I am not criticizing these kinds of preachers or their preaching. The Bible contains many prophets who preach exactly as I’ve been describing.

But I know from experience that it’s possible for some of us to enjoy hearing such sermons for similar reasons that we enjoy rap battles. We enjoy the aggression and the confrontation. We enjoy the sting as we admire the rapper/preacher’s skill at verbal quick-jabs (again, not saying that is the preacher’s intention). I guess I’m saying that, in some odd way, “hard” preaching could be a form of entertainment. For some, could it even be a form of the “ear-tickling” that Paul warns Timothy people would pursue?

How hazardous is it to regard one of God’s tools for spiritual conviction as just one more form of human titillation?

March 4, 2012

(Associated Press)

President Barack Obama signed the historic crime bill, No Crime Left Behind, into law this morning and discussed it with reporters in a follow-up press conference. Though the legislative document subdivides more than a cell and rivals War and Peace in length, the central idea is clear and concise: all criminal behavior will – must – be eliminated by 2024.

Critics of the law call this an admirable but utopian goal. Supporters respond that only one component is necessary to ensure its success: accountability.

Obama said in the press conference, “Frankly, I’m embarrassed when I compare our nation’s crime rate to our peers in Europe. We’ve been setting the bar too low, but that ends today.”

Specific accountability measures include unannounced combing of police department files and the threat of case takeover for social workers whose clients aren’t demonstrating adequate behavioral progress.

When asked whether such approaches might create undue pressure on police departments and social services agencies, Obama responded, “Most of these men and women are highly-trained, hard-working professionals. With the right combination of innovation, resources, and heavy-handed government pressure, I’m confident they’ll find a way to get the job done.”

Incarcerated criminals were nearly unanimous in their support of the law. “Someone finally understands what I’ve been trying to say all along,” said Buck Passer, a repeat offender serving a 15-year sentence in a Virginia prison. “I’m just a product of my environment.”

Police officers and social workers could not be reached for comment.

“He will not finish things. The rare effort of beginning has been too much; the impulse dies. So his quarry goes bad on him (12:27) and his meal goes cold on him (19:24; 26:15)…

The wise man will learn while there is time. He knows that the sluggard is no freak, but, as often as not, an ordinary man who has made too many excuses, too many refusals and too many postponements. It has all been as imperceptible, and as pleasant, as falling asleep.”

“It is not enough to learn what the Bible says about the content of our liberty.  The Bible is equally emphatic about the purpose of our liberty.  It is very easy to take this wonderful gift and offer it up on the altar of self.  In other words, the attitude becomes, ‘I get to do this, and you can’t find a Bible verse to make me stop.’”

“If we see a new and mysterious machine, I think that the first question we ask is, ‘What is that machine for?’ and afterwards we ask, ‘How does it do it?’  But the moment we ask about the purpose of anything, we may be involving ourselves in asking about the purpose of everything.  If we define education, we are led to ask, ‘What is Man?’ and if we define the purpose of education, we are committed to the question, ‘What is Man for?’  Every definition of the purpose of education, therefore, implies some concealed, or rather implicit philosophy or theology.”

“[A] transgendered person enters the congregation to hear the preaching of Christ.  This frightens parents, who do not come to church planning to explain to their children why two women are holding hands, why a man is dressed as a woman, or why the man in the next pew smells like alcohol.  Parents in the church are outraged.  I understand this; as a father with three children, I feel the tension. 

But without realizing it, parents like me are sometimes embarrassed by Jesus.  Why would Jesus draw people like that to himself?  It is hard for parents to remember that children in the crowds saw Jesus with prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners.  Parents want to go into Jesus’s presence at church in order to keep their kids safe from the world.  But Jesus keeps drawing unsafe people from the world to himself.  We are confounded.  We complain, ‘How am I supposed to explain this to my kids?’  With that complaint we lose sight of something vital: To explain how Jesus reaches people no matter where they’ve been or what they’ve done is to explain to our kids the gospel.  It is to explain our own testimony.  It is to teach the next generation how Jesus relates to people and the world.”

“This kind of jargon, which relies upon the pumping up of any simple notion by tacking on a fancy-sounding prefix or a needless extra syllable, infests the dialogue of public education nowadays like a strange syntactic illness that induces many educators to believe they have to imitate this language if they want to have a place in the discussion.

One of the most annoying consequences of this trend, as you’ve observed, is a peculiar tendency to use a polysyllabic synonym for almost any plain and ordinary word: ‘implement’ for do, ‘initiate’ for start, ‘utilize’ for use, ‘identify’ for name, ‘articulate’ for state, ‘replicate’ for copy, ‘evaluate’ for judge, ‘quantify’ for count, ‘strategize’ for plan, ‘facilitate’ for help, ‘restructure’ or ‘reconstitute’ for change. The toss-in use of adjectives like ‘positive’ and ‘meaningful’ (instead of, simply, ‘good’ or ‘real’) in front of nouns like ‘outcome’ or ‘collaboration’ is another common way of trying to pump extra air into a wilted and deflated intellectual balloon.”

On one level, I completely sympathize with the rhetorical question: who except a monster would shoot to death a man who preaches good news to the world and tries to help believers walk consistently with that news? Especially when pastors tend to be men of admirable character and kindness?

But I also thought: in view of the crucifixion of our Good Shepherd, and the martyrdom of so many who have declared His truth and coming, why should we be surprised?

One reason for our surprise, of course, is that Christians are not often killed in this free nation.

But I wonder if faulty assumptions about the gospel lie behind the question, “Who would shoot a preacher?” Perhaps the murder of a preacher makes no sense because we don’t think of the preacher’s message – the gospel – as the Scriptures reveal it: as dangerous, offensive, combative. The gospel is all those things because it insists that human beings are wicked, rebellious, and enslaved creatures who must be saved and who cannot do it themselves. The acceptance of those difficult facts necessarily precedes the embrace of the good news.

The natural man’s response to God’s truth is always suppression (Rom. 1:18), always to try to shut it up and remove it from sight. Preachers – even kind ones – who persist in proclaiming it fulfill a calling that is anything but safe.