Dewayne Bryant's Blog, page 16

A New Podcast: “Light From the Past”

I would like to invite everyone to tune in to my new podcast, “Light from the Past.” Join me every Tuesday for a tour of archaeology and ancient history. We will look at fascinating discoveries and get a feel for life in the biblical world. This show is going to dig into the past to find spiritual wisdom for the present.

Yes. That’s archaeology humor, folks.

Please check it out, courtesy of my friends over at The Light Network. I will send out an update after it becomes available on iTunes. For those who will be attending Polishing the Pulpit next week, please stop by the booth to say hello and see the great things TLN is doing.

Thanks so much for your support!

Whatever Happened to Integrity?

A couple of years ago I followed the story of a politician that had been guilty of sexting a number of women and sending them lewd photos of himself. His behavior would have been inappropriate enough if he had not been married. Despite the negative attention, his wife remained loyal to him throughout the ordeal.

When we see politicians in these kinds of scandals, we usually hear the same mantra: “I’m not going to resign, because my actions didn’t interfere with the execution of the duties of my office.” That may be absolutely true. Regardless of our dislike for their activities, they may have been done on personal time. Nevertheless, this attitude toward sin does three devastating things.

It compartmentalizes morals. Advocates for public figures caught in scandals may argue that a person’s behavior on his own time is personal and therefore has nothing to do with his job as a public servant. How often do you see a heartfelt apology from these public figures? Sometimes you do – but it’s often little more than one component of their message. Sometimes the first thing said is, “I’m sorry for what I’ve done, but it did not, in any way, interfere with my duties.” That isn’t good enough. Personal shortcomings are rarely confined to one area of a person’s life. We cannot be moral in our careers but not our private lives, or vice versa.

It cheapens commitment. Surely public figures in such scandals made vows to their spouses when they married. Commitment to another person in marriage is not the same as a casual friendship or business partnership. It is a binding covenant to enjoin two lives in a way that can never be shared with anyone else. God chose to use the language of marriage when he described his relationship with his people (Hosea 1-4). Sadly, people marry today for many reasons, some of them temporary in nature. This was not God’s plan for humanity (Matthew 19:3-9).

It devalues women. Some politicians have had a terrible track record when it comes to infidelity. In many cases, their wives sit next to them, offering support to their fallen husbands. But we naturally ask ourselves whether the message sent is that women should just welcome their disgraced husbands with open arms. Repentance is not just important – it is vital. Is the offender just sorry he got caught? Or is he truly sorry for embarrassing his wife and rupturing their relationship? Through his actions, the habitually unfaithful husband tells his wife that she simply isn’t enough for him. It cheapens her, when he should value her as one of the most precious things on earth.

I certainly don’t mean to paint all politicians with the same brush. I’m sure that most of them are moral people who want to do right by their fellow man and improve the lives of their neighbors. Some, however, aren’t quite so inclined. They view politics as a means of attaining wealth and power. They seem to aspire to public office for what they can get out of it rather than what they can give to others.

We need public figures to carry out the responsibilities of leadership positions that others may not be able to perform. But just because we need someone doesn’t mean we should settle for anyone.

Image courtesy of xedos4 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What Kind of Worldview

I saw a news report this morning in which Kevin Sorbo was interviewed. He briefly discussed his role in the movie “God’s Not Dead,” in which he plays a university professor who opposes a

Christian student. He noted that the movie has been immensely popular, and that the end credits include recent court cases in which legal action has been taken to protect believers from discrimination by secular peers and colleagues.

I started thinking about the portrayal of believers by militant secularists. This picture is often grossly inaccurate and should border on, if not actually cross over into, libel. For instance, taking the work of the new atheists as a reference point (which does not represent the opinions of all unbelievers), we may define Christianity as the following:

A religious worldview in which participants have been infected by a mind virus. Because of their commitment to a fanciful, fictitious, and bloodthirsty deity, adherents are inherently intolerant, divisive, violent, and delusional. Such a perspective naturally appeals only to those of limited intelligence and deficient analytical abilities. Because of the anti-intellectual and anti-scientific tendencies of these people, their beliefs must be eliminated if mankind is going to continue to make technological, medical, and scientific progress. Those members who attempt to advocate the violence inherent in religion may even need to be terminated by lethal force for the sake of humanity.

Anyone familiar with works of the new atheists can immediately think of prominent passages in their works on which statements in the above paragraph are based. Some of them seem extreme – so much so that those unfamiliar with the works of the more militant unbelievers are simply misrepresented. I assure you, they are not. In his book God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens frequently uses the word “stupid” to refer to Christianity and anything connected to it. Sam Harris and seems to prefer the term “ignorant.” Dawkins is notorious for his statement that anyone questioning evolution is “ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”  Elsewhere he has said that such individuals are “pig-ignorant.” Then again, the title of his book The God Delusion pretty much says it all. In his book The End of Faith, Harris infamously made the statement that we should ask the question whether anyone promoting violence should be silenced – forcibly, if need be (for which he received criticism not only from believers but from fellow atheists as well).

Let’s assume for a moment that the new atheists are right and that the description of Christianity above is indeed accurate. Is this really the kind of worldview that would be responsible for the beautiful music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn, and Igor Stravinsky? For the great literary works of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Bunyan, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkein? For the great scientific achievements of Coppernicus, Galileo, Blaise Paschal, Robert Boyle, and Werner Heisenberg?

Furthermore, if Christianity advocates slavery, why did Anglican William Wilberforce and others crusade to end it? If believers are so intolerant that they should be willing to murder those who disagree (as Dawkins once said in a lecture at the Salt Institute), why are there so many Christian pacifists? If America is so massively Christian, and Christianity is anti-intellectual and anti-scientific, why is the United States not among the most backward nations on the planet? Or any of the European nations, for that matter? If Christianity is so misogynistic, how was it able to elevate the status of women in the Roman Empire and beyond? And finally, if Christianity is so intolerant, why does the Bible include such things as the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus deliberately selects a hero that will confront the bigoted ethnic beliefs of his audience?

Our militant neighbors really haven’t done a very good job of reading the Bible or understanding the basics of Christianity. In truth, Christians oppose the same Christianity that the new atheists do. They both denounce the same God. They agree that the Bible that Dawkins and other decry is a dangerous book indeed.

The problem is that the new atheists have presented a caricature of the things they oppose without taking the time to learn much about them. They seem to have little interest in entering into dialogue with their religious counterparts. I wish they would. I think everyone would profit.

The Cult of Dawkins

I ran across two articles in the last couple of days that demonstrate different aspects of what is wrong with the new atheism. The first was an article entitled, “The Bizarre – and Costly – Cult of Richard Dawkins.” It highlighted “The Dawkins Circle,” a kind of fan-club for the famed atheist – albeit a relatively expensive one (you can check out the rates of various membership levels here) Bargain basement membership in the “Reason Circle” starts out at a paltry $85 a month, with rates going as high as $100,000-$500,000 for the “Magic of Reality Circle.” Yes, you read that correctly. The highest level starts at a price of about two and a half times what the average family in America makes a year – all for benefits such as tickets to events where Dawkins will speak and a private meal with the man. This makes me think of a passage at the beginning of Dawkins’ The God Delusion where he condemns televangelists fleecing people of their money.

The other article I ran across was one that pointed to a study on non-belief by researchers at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. It identified six different types of atheists. This itself is helpful, especially when we read in the militant atheist literature that they define their positions as simply “no belief in a god.” Let’s be honest – that’s disingenuous. You cannot tell people that you subscribe to a passive disbelief in the divine but go out and actively lambaste, ridicule, and mock religious folk as Dawkins encouraged attendees at the Reason Rally to do.

The type of atheist we’re interested in are the anti-theists, the group into which the new atheists would fall. In the study, this group scored the highest in the categories for narcissism, dogmatism, and anger. The researchers argued that one possible explanation is that some in this group had recently left religion—perhaps because they had been hurt—so they would naturally be severely opposed to faith in general. The new atheists, as judged by their own statements in their published works, do not fall into the category of the recently deconverted. They are very angry, dogmatic, and remarkably closed-minded, demonstrating the very qualities they condemn most in their religious opponents. Could we call this the secular equivalent of hypocrisy?

It would be unfair to lump all unbelievers into the same category as Dawkins. I’ve know a number of atheists, and a few of them have been very close friends of mine. But Dawkins embodies a unique blend of inconsistency, intolerance, anger, and bigotry. There are many reasonable unbelievers out there. I just wish that Dawkins and his devotees would imitate the charity and diplomacy prized by their more respectful peers.

Image courtesy of patrisyu / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Lessons I Learned From a Friend

I said goodbye to a friend today. Mitzi Gore had struggled with myeloma for well over a decade. The doctors initially caught it in its last stages and gave her no more than two years to live. She lived another twelve. Since she constructed the illusion of a tough, prickly exterior, she might have joked that her own survival was due to pure meanness. But everyone knows she had a heart of gold.

Although Mitzi could be tough, she was one of the best teachers I ever had. Not in all my years in university and graduate school, but in the school of life.

Mitzi taught me how to make others feel comfortable. People tend to complain. A lot. Society seems to value being rewarded just for complaining enough. You can get free or discounted goods and services for the slightest inconvenience if you complain loudly enough to the right people. We like to talk about themselves, and we don’t mind complaining about our illnesses. In older days of polite society such a thing would have been viewed as crass and uncivilized. Now it seems routine, as if by simply enduring the natural difficulties of life we earn the right to solicit the empathy of others.

Mitzi never complained about her illnesses. Whenever I visited her in the hospital, she rarely mentioned her health problems. The most she ever said was, “Yeah, it’s this or that,” or “It’s just my myeloma kicking in again.” Then she moved on to other things. She asked about my wife, my children. How school was going, how people treated me at work. It’s almost as if she didn’t want me to feel uncomfortable coming to visit her when in reality she was locked into mortal combat with a microscopic killer. Fighting myeloma and regular occurrences of pneumonia. Fighting for another sunrise. But she didn’t want to reveal her struggle because it cause someone else unease.

I learned to make the most of the time we have. In her last week on earth, I visited Mitzi almost every day. Each day I said I would see her the next. It was on a Thursday that I went in to visit her again. We talked for a while, and she made a joke about getting her Bible so she could stump me with some difficult questions. I said that I was looking forward to it. I told her that I would see her in the morning, but some other commitments got in the way and I failed to get to the hospital. That Saturday she slipped into a coma from which she would never awaken. I had made a promise that life did not allow me to keep.

The next time I saw Mitzi, she was unconscious and hooked up to various machines. Barely out of my first year in ministry, I had already seen quite a bit. I’ve seen people hurting. I’ve seen them close to death. But I’d never seen anything like this. Movies on the Lifetime and Hallmark channels always portray people on life support in a sterile, white, and strangely comfortable environment. Reality is much more grim. Mitzi was clawing for life, as she had done for more than a decade. But now she was sedated and intubated. It wouldn’t be long.

When I think about it, it makes me angry. Jesus said that Satan was a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). In a society that sees the devil as a clever little man with goatee and a pitchfork interested only in mischief and mayhem, it’s easy to import our views into the text. Satan isn’t a deviant cherub. His very first plan was to murder Adam and Eve by playing upon their pride and goading them into disobeying God’s commands.

We often think of Genesis 3 as a sad story. It is much more. It is a tragic tale of deception and death, of a vicious fiend who hates God with such passion that he would destroy everything made in his image. This cunning engineer of illusion would kill not only our first parents, but the whole human race. Everyone who dies does so because of his villainous hatred of the good. He has killed you and me. Our friends. Our spouses and children. Every cemetery, every tombstone, every graveside service is a monument to his putrescent success. As a murderer he is not only the oldest, but the ablest. As monstrous as we know Hitler and Stalin to have been, they were never anything more than two examples of his more accomplished apprentices. The devil has had a long time to practice his craft.

I looked down at Mitzi, still struggling to hold on. I had no illusions of delivering a golden-mouthed goodbye. I simply spoke from the heart, which is all anyone wants to hear anyway, truth be told. I told her that we’d miss her, and that we loved her. I said that the next time we met, it would be in a far better place than this. Then I said, “Goodbye, my friend.” Goodbyes don’t have to be long and eloquent. Sometimes they are short and simple. The heart knows the difference, and it doesn’t mind.

Goodbyes like this are hard, but they make us grow. Part of me wanted to see the whole scene as one of despair. One life lived with love and loss, finally consumed in the oblivion of death. Part of me wanted to quit ministry altogether. But that it precisely how the Ernest Hemmingways and the Friedrich Nietzsches and all the other prophets of despair would want us to see it: life as a grand but meaningless frustration, born from nothingness and predestined for the abyss. That may be a tale fit for a philosopher of doom, but it isn’t reality.

I had a friend who was taken into the custody of Christ today. She laid her heavy burdens behind her, and she will enjoy the eternal fruits of a life well-lived to the glory of God.

August 20, 2011

Image courtesy of Michelle Meiklejohn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Praying for ISIS

A number of Christian sites have reported the horrors that are occurring in ISIS-controlled areas in the Middle East. One such report coming out of Iraq is that members of ISIS have marked Christian homes with the Arabic letter n, standing for “Nazarene.” The message sent tells believers to flee or face death.

The tragedy of the situation is indeed shocking. The inhabitants of the 1600-year-old Syriac Catholic monastery of Mar Behnam near Mosul were told to vacate. The monks there had to leave everything behind, taking—literally—only the shirts on their backs. Militants refused to allow the monks to take anything else with them. And 1800-year-old church in Mosul and its library have been destroyed, and most of the city’s Christian population have fled. Believers were given the options of paying a jizya (a fee) or face the sword. One estimates put the number of Christians in Iraq at just under half a million, down over fifty percent from 2003.

We could ask why world governments why are allowing this outrage to continue. We might question our more peaceful and liberally-minded Muslim neighbors why they do not openly denounce the activities of these extremists. But I say we pray for ISIS. This may sound strange. Please allow me to explain.

The extremists in ISIS have been duped by a false prophet offering empty promises of pristine virgins and salvation by death. They consider themselves crusaders of righteousness when they are in fact victims of the Enemy. They have been fooled into thinking that violence and terror–rather than peace and love–are the means to achieving the future.

I pray that these fighters come to understand the nature of their deeds and repudiate them. I hope they turn to the God who raises the dead instead of one that raises the sword. They are not struggling in pursuit of the truth, but in opposition to it.

Why I’m Thankful for Bart Ehrman

For some Christians, Bart Ehrman is a kind of bogeyman. He marches in with a Ph.D. from Princeton, claiming that the biblical writers were mistaken about parts of Jesus’ life. He says that some of the books of the New Testament were deliberately forged in the names of apostles like Paul and Peter. He offers numerous reasons why the text of the New Testament is suspect. He even implies that there may be unscrupulous reasons why seminary-trained ministers keep promoting the doctrine of inerrancy when they know that the Bible contains mistakes. So why am I thankful for Bart Ehrman?

He Shows Us That We Have Gotten Lazy. Ehrman challenges us to look at the biblical text more closely than many of us do. If recent polls are remotely accurate, the average Christian barely opens his or her Bible during the week. If he or she opens it at all, it’s on Sunday morning – assuming it wasn’t left in the car or at home. Many of us carry a Bible just for show, or as little more than an accessory for our Sunday attire. The basic lack of familiarity many Christians have with the Bible—the very book they claim is the Word of God—is appalling.

He Forces Us to Think Through the Evidence. Ehrman’s conclusions aren’t always correct – that’s why we have to think. Some of his work is very helpful, particularly his book Did Jesus Exist? in which he defends the historicity of Jesus. But he has written extensively on the supposed errors—reaching into the tens if not hundreds of thousands—found in biblical manuscripts. This means that we must understand the objections raised against the reliability of the biblical text, and know how to answer them. Ehrman’s objections aren’t unanswerable; in fact, many highly-qualified scholars have answered them repeatedly. It’s up to us to be familiar with these points when our skeptical neighbors ask important questions.

He Defends the Historicity of Jesus. In Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, Ehrman does a respectable job of presenting the evidence for a historical Jesus. Although there are some errors in the book, he capably explains historical method. He also shows why the claims that Jesus was merely a myth are, at the end of the day, fairly silly. This book even inspired two rebuttals from a number of these mythicists, such as Earl Doherty’s The End of an Illusion: How Bart Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist” Has Laid the Case for an Historical Jesus to Rest and Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus (by multiple authors). (I have not read these books, mainly because (1) I refuse to spend good money on the intellectually vacuous and evidentially bereft material I can get free of charge from any number of mythicist blogs and websites, and (2) I’ve already read this kind of stuff elsewhere, and it isn’t impressive. Mythicists have a habit of rehashing the same material even after it’s been irrefutably answered.)

Human beings tend to be reactionary creatures. We tend to attack what we dislike, which includes those who disagree with us. We see challenges as something to conquer rather than something from which we can learn. Many people see Ehrman this way. I don’t. (I happen to like the guy. I briefly met him at a lecture at Middle Tennessee State University a couple of years ago) I prefer to see him as someone who can help me think through my faith—and the evidence supporting it—even though I powerfully disagree with some of his positions.

The Problem of Assumptions

Some years ago in Nashville, TN, my parents knew a preacher who received a Saturday night phone call from a woman who wanted to be baptized. She had been attending church and wanted to become a Christian. She also happened to be staying in a motel in a bad part of town. The preacher, thinking more about the woman’s soul than anything else, went to the motel and baptized her.

Later, the preacher wondered what would have happened if anyone had seen him go to the motel room of a woman late on a Saturday night. And in a part of town he and the members of the congregation would not ordinarily visit, no less. To be honest, visiting a seedy motel in order to baptize the woman wouldn’t have sounded like a plausible excuse. While it was indeed the truth, it could be very easy to make assumptions if a person didn’t have all the details.

Assumptions can be disastrous when they are divorced from the truth. There are several assumptions we might be to make about ourselves, almost on a daily basis. One is that we are our own authority. We live in a society where autonomy and freedom are prized, and nearly worshiped. But the God of the Universe is the ultimate authority. We see that the authority of Jesus is recognized during his ministry on earth (Matthew 8:5-9). We see that even Jesus recognizes the authority of the Father (cf. John 19:11). This makes it especially important to recognize God’s plans for us as well as the church, especially when it comes to worship.

The second assumption we make is that we aren’t all that important. Human relationships are full of uncertainty, and this can and does extend to our relationship with God. Maybe it is the result of a low self-esteem, or just poor treatment by others in general. But God makes it unmistakably clear that humanity is important to him (Genesis 1:26, 31). He enters into a covenant with his people and expresses his wish that they remain faithful and enjoy life as a result (Deuteronomy 30:19).

The third assumption we have is that God is distant. Some of this is our own fault. We allow a myriad of concerns and activities to crowd our schedule so that there is little time for Bible study or prayer. In his book The Case for Faith, Lee Stroebel interviews Sir John Marks Templeton, a billionaire investor who established the Templeton Prize. The prize is awarded annually to one person who has worked to bring together science and religion. Templeton was a member of the Presbyterian church who later left the faith. When Stroebel’s interview turned to discussing Jesus, Templeton admitted, “I miss him!” And then he wept. But it was Templeton who moved, not God. We have to be careful that we do not go and do likewise.

In the case of each of these three assumptions, there is a deficiency in how we view God. When we assume that we are the authority, we put ourselves above God. When we assume that we aren’t important to God, we show that we don’t trust his promises. When we assume that he is distant, we are denying his clear professions of love and concern for his people. Our job is not only to avoid these potential pitfalls, but help others to the same.

The Richer Life

The French philosopher Blaise Paschal said that a human being is a creature of both the highest grandeur and the lowest misery. Our grandeur comes from our ability to contemplate and reflect. We look up at the stars and we wonder, “Where did I come from? Why am I here? What does life really mean?” We think about our origin, our destiny, and what will happen when this earthly life is over. That is what sets us apart from the animal kingdom. But this ability to reflect upon our own significance is also the root of our most profound misery. This is because each one of us has the ability to contemplate an existence that is far better than the one we currently enjoy.

The media feeds our ability to dream about a better existence. Any given night on television, programs feature other people who are realizing their dreams. Whether it is losing weight, receiving a new house, winning the lottery, or just living in the lap of luxury, these shows excite our imaginations. We think to ourselves, “What would I do if I were in those contestants’ shoes? How would my life be different if I was where those people are? What if I had as much money, fame, power, or recognition as they do?” In this way we provide the example for Paschal’s argument, imagining so much more but having to settle for so much less.

Despite the adverse circumstances in which the apostle Paul often found himself, he knew how to be satisfied. He tells the church at Philippi, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need (Philippians 4:11-12). In tough times, it can be tempting to let our minds wander. Part of the curse of prosperity is that the more we have, the more we think we need. And as our tastes become more refined, our level of expectation rises. This causes us to lose sight of the true riches that we have in Christ.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the parable of the rich fool. He introduces it by saying, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). He proceeds to tell the parable:

The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God (Luke 12:16-21)

True wealth does not lie in the houses we own, the cars we drive, or the clothes we wear. True wealth can only be found in Christ. His are the only riches that can survive the grave. Will we be like Paul, whose joy was in Christ always despite his circumstances? Or will we be like the rich fool, blinded by an obsession with material gain? That’s a decision we must make. Paschal noted that we can be creatures of profound misery. The Gospel of Christ gives us every reason not to be.

A Fire for Preaching

The books of Genesis and Exodus are some of my favorite in the Bible. I suppose part of it is my love of the ancient Near East in general and of Egypt specifically. The first dozen chapters of Exodus pique my interest in Egyptian religion. It feeds my love of Egypt, but it also breaks my heart.

We all know the story. God commissions Moses to command pharaoh to release the Hebrews from bondage. Knowing what life was like in the Egyptian court, Moses is understandably reticent. Pharaoh is a god among men, and surely those at court remember Moses’ murder of the Egyptian taskmaster. God finally convinces his reluctant prophet to go with his brother Aaron. They are not well received.

Clearly, the king was uninterested in watching a large percentage of his workforce get up and leave the country. But there was something else: his arrogance would not permit him to take orders from a foreign god or from anyone else. He was a god. Called “the Living Horus,” the king of Egypt was the only member of Egyptian society made in the divine image. As the beloved of the gods, he was entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining peace and harmony in the land.

Pharaoh walked above the company of mortal men. Goddesses protected him. Everyone praised him. No one disobeyed him. No one.

Because of his arrogant refusal to heed God’s command, one plague after another ravages the land of Egypt. People and animals cry out under the weight of the devastation. Still the pharaoh will not budge. Finally, in the tenth plague, the destroyer comes. The angel of the Lord enters the homes of those who do not have the blood of a lamb on their doorposts. Thousands of sons of Egypt drew their last breath that night, all because of the arrogance and stupidity of a man who thought himself a god.

There are millions who do not have the blood of the Lamb today. If we genuinely belong to God’s people, our hearts should dread what will befall them on the day of judgment. Let’s consider the following:

The Word Of God Should Motivate Us. We should be a people divinely compelled. The prophet Jeremiah said, “If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:9). Keeping quiet about the gospel should be like trying to contain a forest fire within our chests.
The Word Of God Must Be Handled Carefully. The author of Hebrews states, “For the word of God is living and active, sharer than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). The New Testament has several warnings for those who would teach, underscoring the importance of handling the word faithfully. We do not merely preach, but preach with requisite care and precision.
The Word Of God Demands That We Preach And Teach It In It Entirety. Prophets often prefaced their words with “Thus says the Lord” – an indication that the message they were to give was unalterable regardless of how difficult it was to preach, or how hard for their audiences to hear. Paul told the Ephesian elders, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:26). We are not free to alter it, because it is not our word to alter.

The bread of life is in our hands. There is plenty enough for everyone. Many people are starving. How eager are we to share?