Saturday, September 13, 2014

Theology of Criticism

As I sat through a sermon some time ago, I began to become frustrated.  Being an academically trained Bible student has its upsides, but it also has downsides.  We are taught to dissect scripture like a corpse, so as to discern what it is truly communicating.  While helpful, this can lend itself to a feeling that scripture is dead, not something with a living power.  Another downside is that we are trained that there are certain correct ways to communicate scripture.  First, one practices exegesis (the aforementioned scriptural dissection process), and then one takes the meaning found in the original context and applies it to the specific audience being preached to.  The speaker has ONE point, and one point only that they are to communicate in various ways throughout the sermon, and yada yada yada the list of how to preach correctly goes on.  You can imagine, then, how difficult it might be for somebody who was immersed in this kind of training for 4 (or in my case 5) years might have trouble hearing what the preacher is saying due to the fact that I was, instead, too busy critically analyzing the sermon.  In this particular case, the sermon was TERRIBLE.  The preacher had about 10 different points (none of which addressed particular needs of his community), he was taking verses out of context, his sermon was based on a theme instead of a scripture (Ex. "happiness".  Thematic teaching leads to looking through scripture to find verses that apply to your theme, which inadvertently makes you look at scripture through the lens of "everything applies to my theme!"  This is called eisegesis), AND, worst of all, he was communicating the message in the most boring way I thought possible.  I mean really, I think this guy sat down and thought for awhile, "what would be the WORST structure and speaking style to talk to people?"  So instead of listening and worshiping, I sat and stewed for a long period of time.  I prayed to God and asked Him to do something because this was awful.  Painful really.  Nobody was going to leave church inspired and nobody was going to leave church encouraged and refreshed by the love of God!  But as I continued to be introspective I discerned what was at the root of my cynicism and criticism.  I wasn't frustrated entirely by the bad sermon; I was frustrated because I didn't have the power to do anything about it.  Seething there, I felt an overwhelming sense of a desire for control.  Going further, I discovered that my desire for control came out of a fear that God could not work through bad preaching, and that I clearly had a diminished sense of what God could do.  My motivation for my frustration was, essentially, that God could not and would not show up through such a poorly planned and executed sermon, and that, therefore, somebody had to (and show me a minister without a God complex), which led me to become frustrated at my lack of ability to do/change anything. 

During one of my last classes my last semester at Oklahoma Christian, I was provided the opportunity, due to the scriptural context, to ask a question which has always perplexed me.  What is the difference between "judgement" and analyzing a situation and coming to a conclusion?  
And for that matter, how are opinions not simplified and shortened judgements?  I have heard more opinions in my young life span than I suspect many will in their entire lives, simply because my job as a minister is often to listen to people express said opinions.  However, the more opinions I hear, the more I have become aware of what I believe the difference is.  More often than not, when people express an opinion to me it is either a negative opinion, OR it is expressed in a frustrated manner.  Think of somebody who might disagree with current political happenings.  How do they communicate that? Now think of somebody who agrees with current political happenings.  Most likely, they express their support in a similar manner.  Analyzing a circumstance and coming to conclusions based on that analysis is not inherently evil, however, the overindulgence of this activity can be.  Why?  Because analyzing other circumstances prevents us from analyzing ourselves.  It has been my limited experience that the more we complain about the government, our frustrating family, or the general state of things, the more we are distracting ourselves from introspection.  It is almost as if our brain was built to consistently assess our internal and spiritual well being, but, in order to allow our brain to feel as if it has accomplished its purpose while avoiding the pain of an inward glance, we turn that mental power outwards.  Strongly opinionated people, in my opinion, are usually hurt people who are struggling their darnedest to avoid looking inward.  As Conan Obrien said when he was leaving the tonight show, "Please do not be cynical, I hate cynicism.  For the record, it's my least favorite quality, it doesn't get anybody anywhere."  

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