This morning I learned that it is dangerous for a pastor’s career aspirations to publicly record his convictions on a website. It seems that once people know what you believe it will limit the options for career moves that one might have otherwise had if they had not foolishly placarded their convictions for the world to see.
I’m not sure why a minister would want a pulpit that they gained by hiding their convictions but apparently that is what a wise person does these days. I guess that maybe it’s something like a political candidate running for a political office. A candidate may have their convictions but the last thing in the world they want to do is allow those convictions to be widely known for if they are widely known then the people who don’t have those convictions will be against them. Better to run a campaign where you keep everybody guessing about what you really believe, for in such a way you theoretically garner more votes. I think they call it being a ‘stealth candidate.’
Zoinks Batman… what has it come to when ministers are thinking of their careers in the way that politicians think about their campaigns?
Bret,
There is a difference between “hiding” and knowing how, when, to whom and how to speak…whoa, that sounds a lot like a conversation one might hear betwen a theonomist and a W2Ker. There is a time to speak and a time to be silent. You seem more taken with the American notion of wearing things on the sleeve than the confessional ethic that knows a thing or two about wisdom.
LOL
Meaning that the opposite of the confessional ethic is a lack of wisdom such as what I portray?
Still, I quite agree that there is a time and a place for honesty and a time and a place for misdirection by silence.
BUT, one can misdirect through both silence and by not being silent.
Food for thought,
Bret
p.s. — thanks for visiting.
I have not found myself agreeing with you but I like the way you think. It challenges me.
“For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time. Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.” Amos 5:12-14
But if I say, “I will not mention him
or speak any more in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot.
Jeremiah 20:9
A time to keep silence
And a time to speak
Ecclesiastes 5:7
God give us wisdom to determine the times. Grant us to not to avoid speaking because we are cowards. Grant us to not to speak because we are blow hards.
Give us wisdom when we should be like Amos and when we should be like Jeremiah.
Give us wisdom when we should be like Amos and when we should be like Jeremiah.
And the wisdom, when appropriate, to be like Elija when he told ’em, “Could you just step a little closer to the pile? Yes that’s it, thanks.”
To funny.