Be Careful What You Say
by Jarrett McLaughlin
What makes the Bible such an interesting collection of writings is also what makes them so maddeningly frustrating at times. The fact that the Bible holds together so many different documents and different theological perspectives is precisely what makes it so timeless. At times, however, the more peculiar theological trajectories contained in these pages rears its head in some really quite disastrous ways. Take this pastoral call I received for instance…
In my place of ministry, the pastoral staff alternates weekends of being the recipient of messages from our on-call answering service. It’s our way of making sure that people can always get in touch with a pastor if need be. Several weeks ago, I received a message from the service from a woman who I knew to be mentally ill in some way, but I really had no understanding of her condition as I dialed her number. For the next thirty minutes I listened to her agonize over the guilt she felt for failing to remain in a constant state of prayer, for being constantly lured away from her spiritual duty by the everyday acts of eating or sleeping. It broke my heart to hear her speak of the depths of her sinfulness and how tired she was of being tested by God.
As I listened, I began to wonder where she internalized these messages of what is good and what is bad and why the Lord is constantly testing her faithfulness. Then it occurred to me that it would not be so very hard to internalize such expectations and theological convictions from simple reading of the Bible or an attentive ear to a sermon. 1 Thessalonians exhorts us to “pray without ceasing,” which given free reign in a legalistic faith would easily translate to a guilt over not praying without ceasing. Then there is Job, of course, where a totally faithful servant of the Lord is put through countless tests, all with God’s permission, to see if he will in time come to despise the Lord. Again, at a naïve read, it would be all too easy to hear in this story that God tests us without ceasing to ensure that we are in fact faithful.
I know that these texts are complex and that, with proper exegesis, we can deduce valuable insights from the wisdom contained therein. I do not want to say that we should avoid these texts or any difficult texts for that matter. But there is also another level at which these texts are heard, and sometimes that is the straightforward sense of the text. It grieved me to see an already troubled woman further damaged by her association with the Christian faith, a faith that I would hope could offer comfort and peace to her already fragile mind.
I feel as if there is some lesson to be learned here for homiletics. When dealing with a particularly multivalent text, especially one where the logical conclusion of the text leads us down a dangerous theological and psychological path, we owe it to our communities to say up front, in plain speech, what the text is and is not about. If there is a harmful conclusion to be drawn from that reading, let’s refute it right up front and not defer that task to the delicate matters of rhetoric and homiletic style. After all, we really must come to grips with the fact that, for many listeners in a worship pew, the first five minutes is all they’re going to give us.