9.05.2003
From the Desk of Gamaliel
To: My Students
RE: Pricking the Conscience
I have a number of young Pharisee pastors on this list and I feel it is time for me to give them some special advice. These youngsters just entering the pastoral ministry face many pitfalls from the emerging church movement and it is important to give them the right tools to combat the deceptive ways of these pretenders. The most important tool at the disposal of the young Pharisee pastor is the tender conscience of his church members. God has made people sensitive to the leading of Spiritual mentors (such as myself) through the use of a carefully crafted instrument, designed to prick the conscience – guilt.
It is the job of the Pharisee pastor to maintain a tender conscience in the hearts of his people. He does this by the frequent application of guilt to keep people sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit in their lives. If it were not for our preaching on spiritual issues of importance in their lives, who knows where these people would be?
In order to be effective, however, the young Pharisee pastor must never use the word “guilt.” This will prepare the listener to harden his heart against the goading of his conscience. Instead, the skilled Pharisee pastor employs such terms as “Christian Living” or “Separated Living” or the old standby, “Sanctification.” The primary purpose of these terms is to bring people to the realization that their spirituality is inadequate or doesn’t measure up to a Biblical standard. Naturally, the question arises, how do we effectively employ guilt to keep people on the “straight and narrow” and out of harm’s way? Here are a few suggestions:
Make them feel guilty about their personal devotions. Your role is to impress them with the inadequate amount of time they spend in devotions and the shallowness of their devotional content. Don’t let them know that your devotional time is, at most, three minutes spent reading “Our Daily Bread” online at www.odb.org. Make sure you don’t let on that you skip the scripture reference since you already know what the Bible says and only read the cute story. You can get them to believe that you spend at least an hour per day in contemplative meditation by dropping hints frequently about your devotional content.
Make them feel guilty for not reading their Bibles enough. Let them know that you consider time in the Word to be the most important thing in their Christian lives. But make sure they never find out that you only read it for sermon preparation. Emphasize that they need to read the Bible all the way through at least once a year even though you only read the interesting parts yourself. So much of the Bible is boring and difficult to get through that there really is no point in reading it all. Besides, the New Testament and a few cautionary, moralistic tales from the Old Testament are all that one really needs to be an effective preacher. Your job is to bring about a profound sense of guilt for not reading through the Bible in a year even though you have never read the whole thing through yourself, let alone done it in a year. This may sound hypocritical on the surface but the fact is, they aren’t going to read much of it either. The point isn’t so much to get them to read the whole Bible (who would ever really do that?) but to make them feel guilty for not reading it enough. You aren’t looking for them to actually read the Bible; but to be sensitive to your leading because you read the Bible a lot more than they do. That’s all that really matters – reading the Bible more than your people. And pray that no one in your church ever does read the whole Bible because there are some parts in there that could lead to some pretty embarrassing questions.
Make them feel guilty for not sharing their faith. They need to do more witnessing and personal evangelism so they should feel justifiably guilty about this. Read to them how God will be ashamed of them in the day of Judgment if they are ashamed of him here on this earth and then challenge them to think of the last time they shared their faith with anyone. As a preacher this is fairly easy for you to do because that clergy bumper sticker on the back of your car is a constant witness. The key is to always talk about witnessing and soul winning and leading the lost to Christ, but never let them see you do it yourself. If they find out how to do this on their own, they may start evangelizing and leading people to Jesus whom we would rather not see in church at all (winos, prostitutes, homosexuals, young people with tattoos, etc.) This is rather easy for most Pharisee pastors. Soul winning occupies so little of a preacher’s time because we are so busy with other, more important matters. One of the most significant ways you can contribute to their guilt is to teach them soul winning by hosting classes, not modeling and mentoring like Jesus did. “The Master Plan of Evangelism” by Robert Coleman, may be a Christian classic, but you are better off keeping it on the bookshelf instead of putting it into practice. Your job is to pontificate and instruct them how to witness, not demonstrate and exhibit good personal evangelism.
Finally, make them feel guilty for not spending nearly enough time and effort in prayer. This is the most potent means of instilling guilt in Christians. What person can ever say they spend enough time in prayer? To make things even easier on the Pharisee pastor, they often ask why their prayers go unanswered. You have a whole list of guilt-laden reasons for their failure:
• They didn’t ask in faith or with enough faith.
• They asked with the wrong motive – self-gratification instead of the glory of the Lord.
• They had unconfessed sin in their lives.
• They didn’t pray long enough or hard enough.
• They have an undiagnosed spiritual defect.
The possible reasons for unanswered prayer are as boundless as your imagination. Best of all, we can cite Biblical examples for most of these reasons as “proof” that we know what we are talking about. Never admit that you have experienced unanswered prayer unless it was some time in the distant past, as if you have outgrown that stage in your spirituality. However, you must always be honest with your church members, so the best way to make sure that you never have unanswered prayers is to never ask God for anything. Well, you can ask for world peace, the triumph of the Kingdom, the relief of the poor and the healing of the sick; but never ask for anything specifically. That way you will never be disappointed by failure. Your role is to make them feel that there is something wrong with them spiritually because they don’t experience the success in prayer that you do.
Gamaliel/RJP
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”
Matthew 23:1-4 (NIV)
To: My Students
RE: Pricking the Conscience
I have a number of young Pharisee pastors on this list and I feel it is time for me to give them some special advice. These youngsters just entering the pastoral ministry face many pitfalls from the emerging church movement and it is important to give them the right tools to combat the deceptive ways of these pretenders. The most important tool at the disposal of the young Pharisee pastor is the tender conscience of his church members. God has made people sensitive to the leading of Spiritual mentors (such as myself) through the use of a carefully crafted instrument, designed to prick the conscience – guilt.
It is the job of the Pharisee pastor to maintain a tender conscience in the hearts of his people. He does this by the frequent application of guilt to keep people sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit in their lives. If it were not for our preaching on spiritual issues of importance in their lives, who knows where these people would be?
In order to be effective, however, the young Pharisee pastor must never use the word “guilt.” This will prepare the listener to harden his heart against the goading of his conscience. Instead, the skilled Pharisee pastor employs such terms as “Christian Living” or “Separated Living” or the old standby, “Sanctification.” The primary purpose of these terms is to bring people to the realization that their spirituality is inadequate or doesn’t measure up to a Biblical standard. Naturally, the question arises, how do we effectively employ guilt to keep people on the “straight and narrow” and out of harm’s way? Here are a few suggestions:
Make them feel guilty about their personal devotions. Your role is to impress them with the inadequate amount of time they spend in devotions and the shallowness of their devotional content. Don’t let them know that your devotional time is, at most, three minutes spent reading “Our Daily Bread” online at www.odb.org. Make sure you don’t let on that you skip the scripture reference since you already know what the Bible says and only read the cute story. You can get them to believe that you spend at least an hour per day in contemplative meditation by dropping hints frequently about your devotional content.
Make them feel guilty for not reading their Bibles enough. Let them know that you consider time in the Word to be the most important thing in their Christian lives. But make sure they never find out that you only read it for sermon preparation. Emphasize that they need to read the Bible all the way through at least once a year even though you only read the interesting parts yourself. So much of the Bible is boring and difficult to get through that there really is no point in reading it all. Besides, the New Testament and a few cautionary, moralistic tales from the Old Testament are all that one really needs to be an effective preacher. Your job is to bring about a profound sense of guilt for not reading through the Bible in a year even though you have never read the whole thing through yourself, let alone done it in a year. This may sound hypocritical on the surface but the fact is, they aren’t going to read much of it either. The point isn’t so much to get them to read the whole Bible (who would ever really do that?) but to make them feel guilty for not reading it enough. You aren’t looking for them to actually read the Bible; but to be sensitive to your leading because you read the Bible a lot more than they do. That’s all that really matters – reading the Bible more than your people. And pray that no one in your church ever does read the whole Bible because there are some parts in there that could lead to some pretty embarrassing questions.
Make them feel guilty for not sharing their faith. They need to do more witnessing and personal evangelism so they should feel justifiably guilty about this. Read to them how God will be ashamed of them in the day of Judgment if they are ashamed of him here on this earth and then challenge them to think of the last time they shared their faith with anyone. As a preacher this is fairly easy for you to do because that clergy bumper sticker on the back of your car is a constant witness. The key is to always talk about witnessing and soul winning and leading the lost to Christ, but never let them see you do it yourself. If they find out how to do this on their own, they may start evangelizing and leading people to Jesus whom we would rather not see in church at all (winos, prostitutes, homosexuals, young people with tattoos, etc.) This is rather easy for most Pharisee pastors. Soul winning occupies so little of a preacher’s time because we are so busy with other, more important matters. One of the most significant ways you can contribute to their guilt is to teach them soul winning by hosting classes, not modeling and mentoring like Jesus did. “The Master Plan of Evangelism” by Robert Coleman, may be a Christian classic, but you are better off keeping it on the bookshelf instead of putting it into practice. Your job is to pontificate and instruct them how to witness, not demonstrate and exhibit good personal evangelism.
Finally, make them feel guilty for not spending nearly enough time and effort in prayer. This is the most potent means of instilling guilt in Christians. What person can ever say they spend enough time in prayer? To make things even easier on the Pharisee pastor, they often ask why their prayers go unanswered. You have a whole list of guilt-laden reasons for their failure:
• They didn’t ask in faith or with enough faith.
• They asked with the wrong motive – self-gratification instead of the glory of the Lord.
• They had unconfessed sin in their lives.
• They didn’t pray long enough or hard enough.
• They have an undiagnosed spiritual defect.
The possible reasons for unanswered prayer are as boundless as your imagination. Best of all, we can cite Biblical examples for most of these reasons as “proof” that we know what we are talking about. Never admit that you have experienced unanswered prayer unless it was some time in the distant past, as if you have outgrown that stage in your spirituality. However, you must always be honest with your church members, so the best way to make sure that you never have unanswered prayers is to never ask God for anything. Well, you can ask for world peace, the triumph of the Kingdom, the relief of the poor and the healing of the sick; but never ask for anything specifically. That way you will never be disappointed by failure. Your role is to make them feel that there is something wrong with them spiritually because they don’t experience the success in prayer that you do.
Gamaliel/RJP
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”
Matthew 23:1-4 (NIV)
