Just Stop It

My brother was joking the other day that he might someday preach a message entitled “Ten Things a Bible Teacher Should Never Say from the Platform”. I trust he’s compiling his list as I write. I hope one day he’ll tell me the other nine.

In any case, we both agreed heartily about this one: “I’m not speaking to you, I’m speaking to myself.”

No. No, no, no. Please, no.

A Grain of Truth

It sounds appropriately humble, doesn’t it? I have heard it dozens of times over the years, probably because any such admission contains a tiny grain of truth. It hints at inevitable reality. The idea is that the speaker is acknowledging that he has yet to arrive where he ought to be in the Christian life. He is recognizing that, like those in his audience, he too has issues he struggles with and sins he has yet to conquer.

Of course, in some measure what he’s saying is probably true. No Christian perfectly practices everything he believes. No Christian is perfectly conformed to Christ. All of us are works in progress under the hand of God. We trust that tomorrow will be better than today, and the day after tomorrow better than that. One day when he appears, “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is”. Until that day, perfection in the Christian life is often more aspiration than realization.

Hopefully we all grasp that, except perhaps the “sinless perfection” folks. The rest of us are stuck more or less defining sin the way the Bible defines it, and that standard rebukes us all.

Down to Specifics

So then, as a generality the statement is perfectly fine. Every Bible teacher has areas he needs to work on, without exception. The problem is that I have yet to hear this particular adage observed from the platform in only that most general sense, where of course it’s always true. No, when men say, “I’m not speaking to you, I’m speaking to myself”, it’s always about some very specific area of Christian conduct, usually one that is quite common. The speaker has been teaching the meaning of a particular passage of scripture and applying it to the life of the disciple. Perhaps his subject is giving, prayer, hospitality or Bible reading. He will teach it as good practice for believers, then tell you, “I’m not speaking to you, I’m speaking to myself.” In other words, “Despite studying the subject at some length and just lecturing you all about it, I too fail regularly in this basic area of Christian practice.” Interestingly, you never hear that sort of admission when the speaker’s subject is adultery, drunkenness, domestic violence or the use of online porn. I suppose we should be grateful for that.

The problem with the observation when we take it down to specifics is this: A man who does not characteristically practice what he preaches is a hypocrite. A hypocrite — even the humblest of hypocrites, if such animals exist — has no place on the platform.

Practice What You Preach

That’s the teaching of our Lord Jesus himself. In the Sermon on the Mount, he summarily disinvites would-be doctors with the same afflictions as their patients — or worse than their patients in that doctors should know better — from performing spiritual surgery.

If you have yet to learn a particular lesson from scripture, you have no business teaching it. The measure in which you have learned it is the measure in which you practice it. If you don’t practice it, you have not yet learned it. It is head-knowledge only. Until it touches and transforms your heart, keep such lessons to yourself.

James teaches a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. I don’t think he’s talking about salvation there. I believe what he’s saying is that our characteristic behavior establishes our moral authority before men. Works befitting our faith justify us in that sense, and in that sense only.

A Sensible Standard

That said, scripture’s standards for teachers are not unreasonable. If we were to disqualify anyone with any practical shortcomings at all from the platform, nobody but the Lord Jesus himself could speak on a Sunday morning or any other time. That is not the case. There is such a thing as relative righteousness, a concept discussed here.

The Bible teacher need not have arrived at his destination of perfect Christ-likeness. In fact, it’s impossible that he has arrived there. But he needs to be significantly further down the road than his audience. He may still slip from time to time as all disciples do, but the principles and practices he teaches should be things he characteristically models. As Paul puts it, “Not that I … am already perfect, but I press on” and “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” The unhypocritical teacher of scripture is pressing on. The aspects of Christian living he speaks about are areas in which he himself is subject to the authority of Christ on a daily basis.

A man who speaks to others about Christian conduct should stick to teaching those truths he has made some headway in putting into practice or to simply pointing to the moral glories of Christ. You can never go wrong there. He may, for example, give us a wonderful expository treatment of Psalm 2 without condemning himself in the process. James writes that those who teach will be judged more strictly. We need to bear that in mind before opening the platform to young men still struggling with some evident besetting sin. If not, when they confess their failings from the platform, we ought at least to take them at their word. If they are really speaking to themselves about failing at the very thing they have just taught us, they need to sit down and reflect on it quietly.

Just Kidding?

Thankfully, I think most speakers who say such things do not really mean them. They would not teach others to pray, read the Bible, be generous or hospitable if they didn’t believe these things important enough to engage in regularly, maybe not as much as they’d like, but certainly far more than most. They are actually better in practice than they would allow.

On one level, that’s not great. It’s hardly better to be disingenuous than to be a hypocrite. What’s generally happening, I believe, is that they are trying very hard not to come across as nags or pedants. They don’t want you to think that they believe they have “arrived”. That’s a great aspiration best achieved by not nagging or being pedantic, and by letting humility characterize all we do. We do not effectively establish our moral authority by drawing attention to our failings. These advertise themselves. They do not require our assistance. I note that when Paul called himself the “chief of sinners”, he was speaking about his pre-Christian behavior, not his present conduct. His misbehavior was “formerly”.

Humility is not verbal self-flagellation; it’s tuning out self entirely. The truly humble person is occupied with serving well, not with perpetually analyzing his own performance. Our Lord was humble when he had nothing about which to be humble. The vast majority of statements in scripture about Christ’s humility are observations made by others. The only time he mentioned it was when he was modeling it for his disciples to follow: “Watch this and do likewise.” He had to, or they would surely have missed the lesson.

So then, let the word of God say whatever it says, without unnecessary disclaimers and personal asides. The exception might be when the speaker has gained victory in an area of spiritual struggle and wants to encourage others that yes, it can be done. The Lord is good. But truly, the power and authority are in the word itself, not in our ability to live it out perfectly at every moment. Our opinion of our own performance in the Christian life could not be more irrelevant to the truth of God, which remains valid notwithstanding the worst of our failings. Let God be true and every man a liar.

Stop It

In fact, the basics of Christian conduct are not things with which any regularly active Bible teacher should struggle indefinitely. When a man who has been taking the name of Christ on his lips for months or years concedes publicly that he fails regularly at some basic standard of Christian behavior, that admission should really be cause for alarm. It may indeed take a lifetime to become fully aware of all the subtle ways in which we can be self-deceived, but the fundamentals of Christian living — faithfulness, avoiding substance abuse, establishing a good reputation, sober conduct, self-control, hospitality, generosity and good parenting — do not take a lifetime to put into practice. If they did, there’s no possible way Paul and Barnabas could have appointed elders in Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian Antioch less than two years after establishing churches in those towns, or that Paul could reasonably expect Titus to do much the same in Crete.

In fact, the false notion that all Christians may reasonably be expected to struggle with the basics of practicing their faith almost indefinitely puts me in mind of the old Bob Newhart psychiatrist sketch. His patient Katherine has a chronic problem. Bob, as Dr. Switzer, has a very simple solution:

DR. SWITZER: Tell me about the problem that you wish to address.

KATHERINE: Oh, okay. Well, I have this fear of being buried alive in a box. I just start thinking about being buried alive and I begin to panic.

DR. SWITZER: Has anyone ever tried to bury you alive in a box?

KATHERINE: No. No, but truly thinking about it does make my life horrible. I mean, I can’t go through tunnels or be in an elevator or in a house, anything boxy.

DR. SWITZER: So, what you are saying is you are claustrophobic?

KATHERINE: Yes, yes, that’s it.

DR. SWITZER: All right. Well, let’s go, Katherine. I’m going to say two words to you right now. I want you to listen to them very, very carefully. Then I want you to take them out of the office with you and incorporate them into your life.

KATHERINE: Shall I write them down?

DR. SWITZER: No. If it makes you comfortable. It’s just two words. We find most people can remember them.

KATHERINE: Okay.

DR. SWITZER: You ready?

KATHERINE: Yes.

DR. SWITZER: Okay. Here they are. Stop it!

KATHERINE: I’m sorry?

DR. SWITZER: Stop it!

KATHERINE: Stop it?

DR. SWITZER: Yes. S-T-O-P, new word, I-T.

KATHERINE: So, what are you saying?

DR. SWITZER: You know, it’s funny, I say two simple words and I cannot tell you the amount of people who say exactly the same thing you are saying. I mean, you know, this is not Yiddish, Katherine. This is English. Stop it.

KATHERINE: So I should just stop it?

DR. SWITZER: There you go. I mean, you don’t want to go through life being scared of being buried alive in a box, do you? I mean, that sounds frightening.

KATHERINE: It is.

DR. SWITZER: Then stop it.

KATHERINE: I can’t. I mean it’s —

DR. SWITZER: No, no, no. We don’t go there. Just stop it.

KATHERINE: So, I should just stop being afraid of being buried alive in a box?

DR. SWITZER: You got it. Good girl.

This is excellent advice for anyone disposed to spend more time talking about their problems than actively attacking them, but it applies even more to anyone in whom in the Holy Spirit of God has taken up permanent residence, yet who confesses he has yet to put into practice the basic Christian behaviors commended in the New Testament.