Being a Good Critic

Lately i've been listening to a few different pastors through online sources, such as their websites, vodcasts, and podcasts. there's quite a few pretty cool teachers out there that love Jesus, serve him faithfully, and are blessed with spiritual and physical growth, and i enjoy listening to people like that. at the end of the day, we all need good teaching and preaching, and though i am bery much satisfied with the teaching at my church, i like to listen to other people while i'm out and about, or around the house.

Now a funny thing i've noticed is that the more influence that these guys are blessed with, it seems like they're blessed with twice as much criticism. every time they get a new insight that they bring to their church, bloggers, and even other church leaders, micero analyze and criticise them. now as i listen to and relisten to these sermons, i've realised a few funny things. first, once in a while these guys say something that's wrong. plain and simply, once in a while, in a one hour sermon, they'll say something that's not completely correct because they're human. once in a while, when i teach sunday school or say something in small group, i realise that i also do the same thing. lesson number one would be that we're all wrong.

the question with being taught and litening becomes how to react to what you suspect to be incorrect teaching, and i would submit to you that you should react to what you think is incorrect the same way you react to what you would assume to be correct. you double check. eveything. true and infallible teaching comes from the bible and from God, and we're blessed with awesome pastors who do a great job, and whom my aim is not to insult, but we as Christians should be growing and learning to feed ourselves. 98.99 percent of the time, our pastors are correct, and honestly, the leftover is dismissable, but it is not God's wish that we would be 98.99 percent correct, but that we be 100 percent correct. if we fear something to be correct, then we should, with humility and grace, approach the bible, see what it says, because sometimes we are wrong. and then humbly approach our pastors, seek out clarification and understanding.

we are not to be self-righteous, even in the things which are righteous, for in this we betray God's truth with our own attempt at correction. and so the message of this confusing story is: read your bible, listen to God, and seek correctness