I’ve always thought that preaching against things can be too easy. It can galvanize an emotional response in a congregation by misdirecting emotion against earthly evil instead of directing it toward the love of Christ. It is the rhetoric of every charlatan, alarmist, conspiracy theorist, and rabble-rouser. Further, our political culture is increasingly marked by shrill, frequent denunciation, especially as a major election draws near, and the character of the Church’s public teaching ought to differ in tone and not just in content. Preachers should avoid drawing a congregation along by the cords of its worst self.
But we can go wrong by not preaching against things, too. Most preachers are cowards — and I include myself in that category. Preaching only the positive aspects of the Gospel, ironically, keeps us from committing our whole selves to its clear ramifications in the life of our congregation. We can actually teach moral complacency by the example of our choices in the pulpit. After all, holding up a stark standard of good and bad means that we preachers would need to uphold that same standard in our own behavior — and we prefer to be as morally lazy as anyone else. We choose the broad and well-traveled sermon path of talking about God’s love and letting him sort out the ethics: not a path, interestingly enough, ever chosen by a biblical preacher.
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