{"id":178,"date":"2022-06-25T07:27:12","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T19:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/?p=178"},"modified":"2022-06-25T07:27:12","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T19:27:12","slug":"fire-or-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/2022\/06\/25\/fire-or-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire or Ice?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not a theologian, not even close, but I have thought and read a lot about God, Salvation, Creation, Hell and more, as you can probably tell from my book “Big Questions<\/em><\/strong><\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Recently, my wife pointed out to me that I was becoming arrogant about my theology knowledge, and expected others to see things from my perspective, because I thought I had everything figured out. Everything, that is, except my own arrogance and pride!<\/p>\n

This happened during a discussion about pastoral styles. She pointed out that I looked down on people who didn’t read theological books or listen to podcasts. The question being discussed was:<\/p>\n

Is it better for a church pastor to be strongly theological or be an enthusiastic person?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was knocked back on my heels because I hadn’t seen the plank in my own eye (to quote the Biblical verse).\u00a0 I have long known that I am not a natural leader in that I don’t inspire people to follow me, but I had never really confronted my intrinsic bias against enthusiastic leaders. I viewed them as sales people, trying to win the hearts of the congregation by eloquence and emotion.<\/p>\n

I realised that I had created a false binary where there were only two options – fire or ice. I had poisoned my own well due to my intrinsic bias by labeling one right and the other wrong, instead of recognising that it is a continuum, where we all stand at different places on the line.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned earlier, I couldn’t inspire a group of people to follow me because I am not the type of person who draws others around me, so why would I expect the leader of a church to be more academic than enthusiastic? Enthusiasm is more attractive and life-giving than academic knowledge, and I know that I would rather be in a group that is full of life rather than a group that is full of knowledge, so why would I expect anything else for a church congregation?<\/p>\n

For more information on intrinsic biases, listen to Brian McLaren’s podcast<\/a> series on the topic “Learning How To See<\/em>“, and read chapter 20 in my book “Big Questions<\/strong><\/em>”<\/p>\n

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I am not a theologian, not even close, but I have thought and read a lot about God, Salvation, Creation, Hell and more, as you can probably tell from my book “Big Questions“. Recently, my wife pointed out to me …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[20,16],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-practice","tag-intrinsic-bias","tag-theology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faithandpractice.nz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}