Say What You See

“Well, of course we wish you to roar. All the great orators roar before commencing with their speeches. It is the way of things.”

Blackadder the Third E4, ‘Sense and Senility’ (1987)

Somebody's about to make a speech.

The poem I'm about to inflict on you (sorry) is one I wrote a few months ago, and one crucial thing I hasten to assure you of about it is that I had no particular preacher in mind when I wrote it. The object of my criticism is not an individual but a culture, and a culture, moreover, which I too am sometimes guilty of buying into. I harbour a desire to impress people, which is dangerous enough all by itself, but couple it with my gifting to teach and that danger multiplies manifold. Paul wrote specific warnings against emulating human ideas of what impressive teaching and preaching ought to look like in more than one of his letters: he reminded the believers at Corinth that the message of the cross is folly to the dying world and to preach it with words of eloquent wisdom is nothing less than to empty it of its power; he told the Colossian Christians of his hard struggle for the sake of people attaining to greater knowledge of Christ, in whom is all knowledge, precisely in order that nobody might deceive them with plausible arguments or take them captive with philosophy. This stuff does not pull punches. It's not a case of, well, just make sure you're not too snazzily eloquent; on the contrary, there's categorically no room both for the message of the cross and for smart-sounding rhetoric in the same speech. Yet how far does much of the gospel preaching we encounter really differ in its delivery from a talk you'd hear in a worldly context?

If the cross is folly to the world, then preaching that portrays the cross rightly should actually come across to most people as kind of stupid. Right? And if the effect of grasping that all knowledge is contained in Christ is that you're not deceived by plausible arguments, then preaching that makes use of plausible arguments should really set the alarm bells going. Right? If the one who boasts is only to boast in the Lord, then preaching that causes its speaker to come across as worthy of boasting in herself is to be determinedly avoided. We should not be doing anything clever with the scriptures at all, because human cleverness is idiotic beyond belief next to even the least impressive facet of God's wisdom. Good teaching is just opening the Bible and saying, look, it says this. That way God gets all the glory.

I harbour a desire to impress people, but that’s the very last thing I should be aiming to do when I’m supposed to be pointing them to the wisdom of God already revealed in the Bible. And so I put together a few lines of rhyming verse on the subject that are an exhortation as much to myself as to anyone else.

Bro, just open the Bible and tell me a thing.

I don’t need any beautified rhetoricking.

I don’t need three neat points that alliterate well.

Bro, you don’t have to pitch here; you don’t have to sell.

I don’t need your charisma as earth gives the name,

But the gift of the Spirit one might term the same,

‘Cause you’re gifted to teach and, my gosh, that’s enough:

Don’t encumber that gift with mellifluous fluff.

You can use illustrations, analogies, sure,

But don’t let me escape what they’re metaphors for,

As if they were the point and God’s word an aside.

All you need for this, bro, is what he has supplied.

Don’t suppose my attention’s a prize you must win

And retain by your eloquence, reeling me in.

Or did I miss some memo that said we all feel

That the scriptures need something to boost their appeal?

Look, if mere entertainment were all I were after,

The world can supply inspiration or laughter.

Contrarily, I’m after truth, which is never

Enhanced when it’s packaged all shiny and clever.

If I walk off thinking, Wow, what a great speech,

Not, Wow, what a great God, something’s wrong. I beseech

You, don’t siphon off glory from who set you free:

Bro, just open the Bible and say what you see.