Miroslav Volf recently posted a quote - "Mere flatterers they all are: preachers, politicians, business owners, preachers, artists who give people only what people want." --Socrates
Sometimes we as people want to be told off by our preachers only to reinforce the desire to avoid telling it to ourselves. It's easier to return weekly to hear what we should do from an external source than to daily cultivate internal disciplines which provide us with who we should be. Failing to break out of this dynamic causes arrested development and we forfeit our contribution to the world's need for wisdom with meandering obedience - a process that we actually desire in order to avoid growing up.
When it comes to transforming the world into what God had originally desired, it would seem he wants wisdom more than obedience. Wisdom is not without obedience, but obedience cannot be a final telos for one to arrive at. Rather it is the ritual practice of pre-embodied wisdom that plays its part in delivering us to wisdom.
Just because a "preacher" draws large crowds of people whom he/she gives direction to, doesn't mean that they are a successful "pastor." Don't give your glory to another, rather let it be manifested for the betterment of the "other" in our pursuit of wisdom.
"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.
May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." John 17: 20-23
Sometimes we as people want to be told off by our preachers only to reinforce the desire to avoid telling it to ourselves. It's easier to return weekly to hear what we should do from an external source than to daily cultivate internal disciplines which provide us with who we should be. Failing to break out of this dynamic causes arrested development and we forfeit our contribution to the world's need for wisdom with meandering obedience - a process that we actually desire in order to avoid growing up.
When it comes to transforming the world into what God had originally desired, it would seem he wants wisdom more than obedience. Wisdom is not without obedience, but obedience cannot be a final telos for one to arrive at. Rather it is the ritual practice of pre-embodied wisdom that plays its part in delivering us to wisdom.
Just because a "preacher" draws large crowds of people whom he/she gives direction to, doesn't mean that they are a successful "pastor." Don't give your glory to another, rather let it be manifested for the betterment of the "other" in our pursuit of wisdom.
"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.
May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." John 17: 20-23
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