In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
As long as there has been a people of God
in the world, there have been those who looked to take advantage of them. The
Israelites had their false prophets, and Peter warns the young church to expect
their share of false teachers. He says, as the translators of the King James
Version so eloquently put it, “Through covetousness shall they with feigned
words make merchandise of you”.
Tom: But of course the trick is always identifying such people, isn’t
it, Immanuel Can? I mean, what does that look like in the real world?
Spiritual Merchandise
Immanuel Can: I think there are some obvious cases: those
alleged “televangelists” who bilk credulous people out of their cash in
exchange for prayer cloths and candles and phony
healings, or for special promises of prosperity or prayer ... clearly
they’re turning the name “Christian” into a license to
print money. But finding those guys is an obvious take on that verse.
Let’s be more subtle: let’s ask ourselves if it has any application beyond
the obvious.
Tom: This is one of those rare instances where the KJV is actually more “on”
than some of the modern translations. Most other versions say something like “they
will exploit you with false words”. In a general sense, I think that’s true.
But the “merchant” image in the verse is an accurate translation of the Greek,
which is literally “they will make gain of you”. It’s a word that only occurs
one other time in the New Testament, when James criticizes those who say, “Today
or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and
trade and make a profit.” So that’s
the sense of it, I think.
The Profit Motive
IC: Yes, that’s right. So what we’re talking about is people who are
calling themselves Christians and proposing to aid, teach, serve or lead the
people of God, but doing so with a profit motive: they’re turning Christians
into salable goods, making a tidy packet off religious activities.
Tom: Essentially the same trick used by the merchants in the temple at the time of Christ, and his condemnation of them is in the same language: “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house
a house of trade”. There was nothing wrong with the sale of oxen, sheep or pigeons in the
appropriate venues. The problem is when the house of God — which in our
day is synonymous with the people of God — is targeted as a means of
making a profit.
IC: Okay, right. But maybe it’s time to pin it down: who does this today? I mean other than the televangelist set?
The Christian Relationship Industry
Tom: Well, there’s Jim Daly and Dr. David Clarke of Focus on the Family. Daly (the president of Focus) gives Clarke (a “Christian relationship expert”) a radio forum
to promote the sale of his self-help goodies. Their racket is fomenting marital discontent by stoking the fires of petty
interpersonal grievances, giving every sufficiently gullible Christian woman a
problem that can only be solved with the expertise of the folks who diagnosed
the problem in the first place. You can buy Dr. Clarke’s book, or you can
donate to Focus and they’ll send it
to you “free”.
In the same vein, there’s Joel and Kathy Davisson, who label anything husbands do that wives don’t like “abuse”. Their redefinition of the term is so broad and all-encompassing that even a husband who inadvertently misinterprets scripture to his wife is an “abuser”. If every woman has an abuser at home, thankfully the Davissons and their guru Dr. Paul Hegstrom
have answers for them. You can buy
Hegstrom’s books, or
the Davissons’. Better still, get yourselves to one of the Davissons’ INTENSIVE seminars (only $200).
Selling Books to Christians
IC: Alright. So there are some clear cases. However, I suspect that
most of us are not in danger of being abused by such people. I have doubts
about things closer to home. At one point in my life, I worked for over a year
for a company that sold various nominally “Christian” goods: Bibles, cross
pendants, Sunday school pencils and curricula, music, workout tapes, plastic
gewgaws with verses printed on them, and books of various kinds … self-help,
romance, celebrity bios and study aids of various kinds. We also sold a whole
lot of stuff that had no right being regarded as Christian at all. We must have
sold a hundred “Christian” romance books for every Bible or study aid we shipped.
Really, it was pretty much a business, not a ministry. And like all businesses, we mostly catered to the base and trivial
tastes of people immersed in pseudo-Christian culture, focusing on what sold,
not what was good or edifying for people. And eventually I came to realize that
we were not really selling “Christian books”: we were selling books to
Christians. That’s a very different thing.
Is that a relevant case?
The Element of Deception
Tom: It certainly could be. To me, it depends very much on how these
things are conceived and promoted. The intent is relevant. The wannabe novelist
who hawks her romantic fantasies to middle-aged Christian women may be under
the delusion that she’s doing something creditable. She may even call what she
is engaged in a “ministry” and believe herself when she says it.
But Peter’s condemnation of false teachers has two aspects: (1) they “make merchandise of you” and (2) they do
it “with feigned words”, which I think refers back to Peter’s earlier statement
that they will “secretly bring in destructive heresies”. These people are not
just out to make a buck; they are consciously lying about what scripture
teaches to do it.
Some of the product in Christian bookstores absolutely falls into the “false teaching” category. But I suspect much of that
stuff is either a product of well-intentioned stupidity or a cynical cash grab
with no particular intent to distort scripture behind it.
IC: Now, there’s also another dimension to this issue more closely
related to church life and practice. Some years ago, I read an essay on
clerical sex abuse, in which the author identified two components of modern
expectations of spiritual leaders that are conducive to abuse: we expect our
leaders to have (a) expertise, and (b) charisma.
The Fetishization of Expertise
According to sociologist Edwin Freedman,
expertise is seductive on two levels: firstly, the more “expert” we perceive
the leader to be, the more passively followers yield power and influence to
that leader, and secondly, his reputation for “expertise” seduces the leader
himself to believe that only he knows what needs to happen, and followers have
less and less value to add to the situation. The higher his knowledge and
spiritual activity goes, the more he is distanced from the “flock”.
Tom: We certainly see that dynamic in the workplace. The opinion of
overcompensated consultants is worth far more to management than that of the
people actually doing the job who know both the product and the marketplace far
better than any expert. But there’s a mystique about (alleged) expertise that
makes companies willing to pay millions for it, no matter how ineffective
the advice that comes from experts actually turns out to be.
It would hardly surprise me to see that sort of sensibility among some Christians.
The Lonely Narcissist at the Top
IC: And then there’s the problem of charisma. A leader with magnetism,
energy and a sense of direction stirs people to enthusiasm, to a sort of
spiritual “high”. Freedman says this is particularly attractive to people who
lack self-motivation, and they expect the leader to “move” them. While this
grooms his ego and predisposes him to overestimate his own value, it
also forces him to operate at a high level of stress and further distances him
from the flock. The result at least some of the time is increasing narcissism and isolation in
the leader and, simultaneously, an increasing sense of entitlement to all the
support — in enthusiasm, participation and finances — that he can
get. He becomes the lone, underpaid leader … the one who can do no wrong …
the possessor of the vision and the hope of the future.
Tom: That is a job description totally antithetical to that conceived of
by the apostles when they gave us the scriptural qualifications for leadership.
Exploiting the Flock
IC: The result is that the “best” leaders on this modern, single-man
model are also the most likely candidates to become abusers of their position
and exploiters of “their” flock. Their reputation for expertise and charisma,
coupled with the stressful demands of meeting astronomical expectations, makes
them least likely to be humble, deferential or correctable.
So the profile of the “admired modern pastor” is also the psychological profile of the spiritual abuser. Not
surprisingly, the one sometimes tips over into the other.
Tom: That’s pretty grim. Under these sorts of pressures and temptations,
it would hardly be surprising to find the scripture misused in ways that
sanction, support and further the agenda of the man in charge.
IC: Or of people who realize his susceptibility to flattery and exploit
it toward their own ends.
Tom: Really?
Manipulating the Manipulator
IC: Oh yeah. I saw this in a church a short time ago. The pastor was a
new guy, and no sooner was he installed then a parachurch organization with a
rather sinister theological agenda began to woo him. First, they came to the
church on a missionary-information day and subtly introduced their bad
doctrine. Then they gave the pastor a free trip overseas and feted and guided
him to see their situation their way. And then when he returned, they gave him
a high position on their board. He, of course, praised them in front of the
congregation, established them as a funded cause on the mission budget, and
then began to parrot their poisonous doctrine from the platform.
Now, when eventually confronted on the
matter by a few discerning leaders, the pastor took it very personally. He
misrepresented his critics and acted like a martyr, denying that he was wrong
to take a salary from the congregation and also receive perks from the
organization; and he refused to see what his compromise had done to his
teaching. We might say his attitude became like that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth:
“We will proceed no further in this business.
[They have] honored me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.”
At length the situation ended, but unhappily. Both sides lost, and many were wounded. The pastor never did see how he had been played; how the incentives and praise he had enjoyed had been
bestowed strategically rather than as expressions of honor. Yet the truth was
that he had been turned into a Trojan Horse for bad doctrine.
The Damage from Outside
Tom: We talked a little about this “off the record”, and you’ve just
given me a good example of a false teacher with a greed motive inside the local
church whose misbehavior was curtailed because he found himself accountable to
other members of his local fellowship. But my observation is that a lot of
damage today is being done from outside the local church. Many leaders in the
greater Christian community have built platforms for themselves through the
internet, seminars, personal appearances and book sales that give them a
disproportionate influence on your congregation and mine; maybe even an
influence beyond that of any single pastor or elder.
And this with zero accountability. I mean, other than at the Judgment Seat of Christ, where can people like the parachurch
organization you speak of, or John Piper, or Focus on the Family, or the
Davissons be called to account? How can their influence be managed at the
local level?
IC: Well, one big problem is that discernment now has a bad name. If you
say a person’s (or an organization’s) actions don’t add up to good doctrine or
scriptural practice, you’re immediately accused of being mean-spirited. Many
people do not understand the difference between someone who’s nice, intense,
charismatic or highly regarded by others, and someone who’s speaking the truth.
And they think that questioning the doctrine of a man (say, John Piper or Joel
Osteen) is tantamount to character assassination. They think Christians ought
never to question nice people.
The Case for Discernment
But the Berean Jews are praised for questioning and examining the doctrine of
the apostle Paul himself.
Paul took Peter square on over the issue of legalism and
repeatedly exhorted Timothy to be on guard against the prevalence of
false doctrine in the church. Keeping up a façade of niceness, tolerating anything while allowing doctrine to slide is
roundly condemned by the Head of the Church himself.
Tom: All true.
IC: So why, oh why, is it considered
such a sin among us to examine anyone else’s doctrine or practices? That’s a
tragedy for the Church, because those who exploit us for material ends
invariably do so by the lethal combination of errant doctrine and
corrupt practices. If we have no discernment anymore, or if we think that
questioning “experts” and charismatic leaders is just plain bad and
unchristian, then how shall escape being “made merchandise”?
We need to recover a key Christian virtue: the humility that allows teachers
and leaders to be called to scriptural account. But where is that
being practiced today?
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