When the Pastor becomes God
The sin of unfaithfulness darkens the Pulpit. In his blog, Magnus Persson writes that God is not a tool in our hands. He does not exit to serve our goals. It is the oldest temptation, making Him into our image, into our preferences.
When we preach a preferred God we have become entertainers. We preach a more exciting Jesus to attract crowds. He then becomes a coach rather than the giver of life; enabling us to fit into our systems of thinking.
Martin Luther believed that God is not found in the wisdom of the Papacy, the cleverness of the preacher or the hearts of religious impulses but in the external Word of God. If we look only to ourselves, we will never find God. I found that out the hard way, finding only my own desires inwardly. He is not found in endless prayers but where He has spoken to us in His Word which is outside of us.
This was one of the hardest truths to come by. The Word of God is completely outside of us, both to comfort and confront us. My task as a minister was not to innovate, not to consult, but to deliver the external promises of God that have remained intact even before time.
Like Satan himself, we tend to exchange the external promises of God by a temptation that haunts every pulpit. Rather than encounter God’s sovereignty, His holiness, His wrath and His completely otherness, we reshape Him lest He become unacceptable to our modern sensibilities.
We also tend to desensitize it to make it inspirational. The cross was the most shameful death of its time. The Word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are condemned and perishing it is the only power that we can rely upon whereby we might be saved. When we reduce the cross to a symbol of love, it becomes less offensive. But the cross declares us to hell and only the One who endured hell can save us.
The danger of making faith functional is that we behave in such a way as to make the gospel a product to be improved upon, packaged in new contemporary ways to make it more marketable. The minister then becomes a salesman who seals the deal by convincing one to make a decision each Sunday. God does not depend upon our management of Him. When we do, we cease to be preachers and become idol-makers.
This is a warning within theological contexts. When the focus of the ministry shifts from worshipping and proclaiming God to worshipping human leaders, methods, or successes, the minister is no longer conducting a true ministry but is creating the minister as an idol.
We are to let God be God. We don’t begin worship of Him according to ourselves. What the Scriptures reveal, we reveal. What The Scriptures reveal, we do not soften. We leave the sharp edges intact. The sharp edges expose us for what we are. It is only Christ that brings the dead back to life. He alone can kill and make alive, condemn and justify.
