Bad Theology and Preaching

Bad theology is dangerous. Everyone knows that, intuitively. I am thinking about it today, because I had the occasion to watch a sermon on social media this morning. It was shared with me, and touted by many as one of the “best sermons” they had ever heard. I think we can all understand superlative statements like that, but we also know that they are problematic. I mean there is a lot of subjectivity at play in preaching and hearing. And that subjectivity applies to more than enjoyment: there is the existential situation of the listener, the embodied experience of the gathering, the social and emotional context of the moment…and oh yes, the translation of the Holy Spirit. But let’s set all of the problematics of evaluation aside for the sake of the content of this sermon.

The preacher (whom I do not know, but I have intimate knowledge of the congregation) went on a slowly paced invitation to imagination. He asked the congregation to imagine their heavenly father sitting in heaven watching down on us. Let me say that this sort of anthropomorphizing of God can either be rhetorically effective or it can conjure up some less than helpful theology. Offered in brief doses this sort of rhetoric can be humorous and it can make God approachable, offered as it was as a prolonged, humorless, and sincere point of view it reduced God to creaturely frustration, and possibly induces shame in the hearer. The preacher went on to say that God only ever asked us to love each other…which was supposed to be simple. He even said that God mused something like “hey, I even gave you an example” which was his reference to Christ. He plodded on and on in a slow rhythm which sort of gave the impression that his comments were deep—it was a sort of artificial gravitas on display.

I listened. I felt. I contemplated. Then I wondered, “why did this bother me?” Then I thought, am I to feel shame that loving is challenging for humans to do? I mean, it must be, because we do not do it so well or often enough. What about that, did his sermon probe or read the human experience enough to show how the Gospel helps me do what I am made to do? Well it did by showing me that God must be perplexed by us—that our inabilities or failings poses some confusion to God. At best I just felt ashamed that I was one of the dunces that could not figure out the most basic of teachings. I guess I am a confusion for God. What does that say about God? I get that it was a rhetoric device (thinly veiled as it was), but ultimately it makes God a very big, and smug version of the preachers identity.

A note on this church. It is large, and it was born out of the a mainline denomination. In fact the church is old, historic even. But over the years it has morphed into the most generic version of evangelicalism. The music is good. The social impact is energetic. And the spirit is very optimistic. But when I hear the preaching, I hear a carbon copy of a carbon copy. It seems like the sermon exist to make the Gospel simple and life changing. But what I miss is nuance, and real life. I feel no sense of how the holy texts can grapple with the reality of human nature and drama. I hear nothing of the challenging bits of scripture that can only be taught when a community wrestles through them. And I certainly never witness uncertain messaging or messages of struggle like: doubt, lament, sorrow, persistence and so on.

The world is hard. Maybe we should meet the world with a challenging message. Maybe we should elevate rather than tone down.

I still stand behind the notion: bad theology hurts. I think anthropomorphizing God for the sake of rhetoric better be done with great discretion and care—otherwise someone might walk away thinking that God is not able to understand us….and isnt the whole point of the incarnation that God radically identifies with us: “
God became mankind so that mankind could become God” is a line from our faith written so long ago!