stuff I think about – Page 5

What is knowledge?

I’ve heard two different definitions of the spiritual gift of knowledge from Paul’s letter to Corinth (1 Cor 12.8), and one of them just doesn’t make sense. I saw it again yesterday in a post from Mark Driscoll.

Mark defines this spiritual gift as “the ability to research, remember, and make effective use of a variety of information on a number of diverse subjects”. He then gives examples of where he sees this gift in operation in various Bible characters, including Jesus.

Mark points out that Jesus studied and memorized the Old Testament, saying this is an example of the gift of knowledge in operation. If this is the case, though, then didn’t the majority of Jesus’ peers also have this gift? The memorization of the Torah was a common feat among the scribes and Pharisees of his day, and even his own disciples had memorized large portions of Scripture. To say that memorizing a huge text is an example of this gift seems to be a reading into the phrase “word of knowledge”. (Oh, and did Jesus have knowledge of “a number of diverse subjects”, as in Mark’s definition? If so, he apparently kept it to himself, and focused on a few narrow subjects, namely Israel and his own role.)

Mark had a couple of other examples in the Bible. He points out Timothy because of a line in Paul’s letter to him (2 Tim 2.15). To state that “rightly handling the word of truth” is an example of the spiritual gift of knowledge is a stretch I cannot make.

The alternative definition of this gift is something like this: information revealed to a person by the Holy Spirit, which the person would not otherwise know. This is more palatable to me for a couple of reasons. The first is that Paul is describing spiritual gifts, which I take to be abilities given by the Holy Spirit. They aren’t enhanced natural abilities, and they aren’t commonly seen in people who do not have the Spirit. (Again, if the ability to memorize and make use of large amounts of Scripture is indicative of this gift, then my atheist religion professors in college were all gifted by the Holy Spirit.)

The second reason I prefer this definition is that it helps explain what we already have seen in the Bible. There are a number of times when Jesus or someone else knows things that they have no earthly way of knowing (Jn 1.47-48, Lk 11.17, Acts 8.20-23, etc).

The third reason I prefer this definition is it makes more sense with the rest of the gifts listed in the Corinthian letter. If we go with Mark’s definition, for consistency it would seem to me that the gifts of healing that Paul mentions must refer to physicians, and tongues must mean those who excel in learning foreign languages.

Not to knock the people who love knowledge, researching, learning and sharing new things (I am one of them), but this desire and ability doesn’t strike me as a spiritual gift…at least not the one mentioned by Paul.

The Fight of Our Lives

At my company, we are launching a major initiative to compete against a significant market threat. The rhetoric for this initiative is pretty dramatic: one executive said it was “the fight of our lives!”

I immediately thought of a friend who lost his sister to cancer recently. The challenges for her children and family could well be described as the fight of their lives.

Perhaps my company’s executive meant, “the fight of our corporate lives”, or something like that. I have a hard time thinking that my company’s competitive pressure compares with the dramatic life struggles going on all around us.

The Grand Illusion

So I preached last Sunday, and I really tried not to pull any punches. The talk was on the parable of the “rich fool”, and the punchline was that we don’t really trust God, even though we say we do. We fall for the “grand illusion” that one of my favorite bands, Styx, sang about in the early 80s:

But don’t be fooled by the radio / The tv or the magazines / They show you photographs of how your life should be / But they’re just someone else’s fantasy / So if you think your life is complete confusion /
Because your neighbors got it made / Just remember that it’s a grand illusion / And deep inside were all the same.

So after I’m done, I get all sorts of people thanking me for the message. One guy said it was the best he’s heard me give. They’re happy that I told them we’re all a bunch of hypocrites who don’t really trust Jesus when he says he’ll take care of us? They’re happy that I said we’re just dupes who fall for the wisdom of the world, which tells us to get more and more stuff for ourselves? Shouldn’t they be mad at me instead, or at least offended?

So maybe the real grand illusion is the one that preachers fall for. We think we need to make our listeners feel happy about the decisions they’ve already made. I think they’re more satisfied when we just tell them the truth.

Pastors deconstructed

Here’s some disturbing information about pastors in America that I read in a book called Pagan Christianity? The premise of the book is that certain traditions we Christians have (among them, a paid pastor who does most — if not all — of the ministry of the church) are rooted in unbiblical sources. True or false, the picture the authors paint of pastors is bleak. Here are some statistics:

94% feel pressured to have an ideal family.
90% work more than forty-six hours per week.
81% say they have insufficient time with their spouses.
80% believe that pastoral ministry affects their family negatively.
70% do not have someone they consider a close friend.
70% have lower self-esteem than when they entered the ministry.
50% feel unable to meet the demands of the job.
80% are discouraged or deal with depression.
More than 40% report that they are suffering from burnout, frantic schedules, and unrealistic expectations.
33% consider pastoral ministry an outright hazard to the family.
33% have seriously considered leaving their position in the past year.
40% of pastoral resignations are due to burnout.

Ok, so this information tells us that many pastors have a horrible job and are on the brink of quitting or having a nervous breakdown — oh, and their families are falling apart. However, compare this with a study from the Barna group (full story here), which says:

At least four out of every five Protestant Senior Pastors said they do an above-average job – defined as either an “excellent” or “good” rating – in three of the 11 aspects of pastoral involvement examined. Nine out of ten said they are above average in preaching and teaching, 85% said they do well in encouraging people, and 82% claimed to be excellent or good in the area of pastoring or shepherding people. Nearly three-fourths (73%) said they do well in providing leadership for their church, while two-thirds said they are above average in motivating people around a vision (68%) and discipling or mentoring (64%). Six out of ten pastors claim they do well in evangelism (60%), while slightly more than half of all Senior Pastors say they are better than most in counseling (54%), administration or management (53%) and developing ministry strategy (53%).

What do these two surveys tell us? Pastors have a hell of a job, but they are doing a hell of a job? Actually, no. I tend to agree with George Barna, who says regarding the above paragraph, “It’s unrealistic for most pastors to claim that they perform at an above-average level in such a large number of disparate ministry duties as those examined in the study.” He suggests that what is needed is an objective evaluation process.

What we have now, apparently, is a bunch of overworked and under-resourced pastors who think that they are doing a great job.

Perhaps we do need to re-examine the traditional role of the pastor. There are 500,000 paid pastors in the US. Every month, 1,400 ministers leave the pastorate. Every month! The average length of a pastorate is just over four years — down from seven years in the 80s. I’m not surprised; who would want the job?

Easy

I was looking through some photos that were taken the last time I went to Mexico. In the pic, I’m having a casual conversation with a good friend of mine, as we sit on a park bench. It’s very unremarkable. But it spoke to me.

What the photo doesn’t show is that we are surrounded by dozens of kids who live in an orphanage just a few miles into Mexico. Our group had just finished feeding them dinner — burgers, chips, a can of soda, and some cookies. Not a very special meal by our standards, but an absolute feast by theirs. They rarely get meat, and to be able to have seconds is unheard of. And of course a whole can of pop to themselves is quite a treat.

So my friend and I were just relaxing as the kids ran and played all around us. I was reminded then, and am again now, of the advice of Jesus: “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.”

None of those kids will ever invite me over to dinner at their house. I’ll never get repaid, and I don’t mind a bit. Jesus was right — I was blessed. It was a privilege to serve them. We escorted the kids through the food line, helped the little ones with their plates, and waited on the tables throughout the meal. It was easy.

Donald Miller wrote, “When you love somebody, you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve.”

So easy.