THE FUNNY THING ABOUT PREACHING...

MORE ABOUT MY DISENCHANTMENT WITH PREACHING...

Most Christians, like me for over four decades, do not realize that the Ministry of the Word is not about the Word. Or, when you listen to sermons, you don't hear the Word. You may think that you are hearing the Word. No, you are hearing anything but.....

Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the Word.

'The ministry of the Word' is a dishonest expression. Let me tell you why.

When I used to preach I was not connecting the people to the Word of God, or the teachings of Jesus.

For one thing, the words of Jesus cannot be, should not be separated from his Person. The former without the latter is a set of words, words, and words, unless we read them like a book of magical incantations in which case words have power in themselves.

Secondly, when my audiences used to listen to me preach, they were hearing my words which, out of habit, I used to present as the Word, or expositions of the Word (also referred to as 'divine message'.)

They were, truth to tell, my words ABOUT the words of Jesus.

But the problem does not end even there.

They were not wholly my words, most of the time. A great deal of it were the words of others -say, theologians, philosophers, thinkers from diverse disciplines- about the Word, or what I assumed was the Word.

So, what was it that finally reached my audience at a convention?

The words of others, mediated through my words about the Word, which I made people believe was the Word.

Now, even a school kid knows that every medium distorts. So, when the light of the Word goes through one medium -say the thinkers I read- it suffers one level of distortion.

When their words go through me, they suffer another degree of distortion.

And, finally, when it passes through the medium of my listeners, it suffers yet another degree of distortion.

After all this, people are made to believe that they are listening to the Word of God! Truly incredible.

Now does it surprise you that despite (or it because of) many decades of very energetic preaching, people are only getting more and more alienated from the teachings of Jesus Christ? It doesn't surprise me one bit.

The more preachers there are, the greater the possibility that the people get more and more confused about, and alienated from, the Word of God.

That may well be the reason God says, 'Be still and know that I am God.' Noise pollution via preaching is a greater threat to human welfare than environmental pollution through vehicular emission.

Do you want to test the truth of what I say here? Well, it can be done simply as follows-

Identify 10 or 20 regular convention-goers of 4-5 decades of convention exposure, say from the best of the lot: the Maramon Convention. Ask each one of them a set of basic questions about how they understand the fundamental teachings of Jesus. What you discover could surprise you indeed.

Best wishes.

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