Judgmentalism

The Plagiarism Trap

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One day, as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders came up and said to him, “Tell us by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you this authority.” He answered them, “I also will ask you a question. Now tell me, Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?” And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ all the people will stone us to death, for they are convinced that John was a prophet.” So they answered that they did not know where it came from. And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
—Luke 20:1-8 ESV

Last week, The Wall Street Journal—my personal newspaper of record—ran a front page article discussing the issue of plagiarizing sermons (“That Sermon You Heard on Sunday May Be From the Web“). Some churches and pastors think nothing of using a message already delivered, while others grow livid at the very idea. I’ve followed the issue across several blogs (Challies.com had the most extensive discussion), but it appears to me, now that the dust has settled, that the discussion danced around core issues no one confronted.

Ultimately, the issue of plagiarizing sermons sets multiple traps.

Consider the Luke passage above. Jesus sets up a fork for the Jewish leaders, forcing them down two roads, neither of which they wish to commit to.

To discuss plagiarizing sermons, we must begin with the ultimate source of a sermon message: Does our preaching ultimately have its source in men or in God? 

The Bible makes it crystal clear that our preaching comes from God:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

…

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
—1 Corinthians 2:1-5, 12-16 ESV

Plagiarism argues the source of the words is wronged by their taking and should seek redress. It also states the plagiarizer deceitfully passes off the words he speaks as his own.

But if anyone reading now can make a case that anything you or I own has its final source not in God, but humankind, I’d love to hear that argument!

This brings us to the other fork. If we don’t fully believe that God is the one who owns the words that come out of a preacher’s mouth, then those words are merely words of clever men. If that’s the case, then God have mercy on us because we’ve removed Christ from our preaching. Evangelist Billy SundayThe Jewish leaders fell into this problem with the source of John’s baptism, and we merely repeat it.

The converse of this is that an avowed atheist could stand up in a church pulpit and read from the Bible with an actor’s passion, yet would anyone define that as pastoral preaching of the word, especially by the standard some insisting upon in their attacks on sermon plagiarism?

When we discuss this issue, this is the major dilemma we face. We can get all riled up about preaching the word, but then we shoot ourselves by insisting that somehow we’re the true source of that word.

But we aren’t.

Here’s what truly makes me shake my head: The people arguing most fiercely for punishing plagiarism are the same folks who uphold a high view of preaching. Yet by their very arguments, if they make a claim on a message, they strip out God and ascribe it to men. If they insist they’re not doing that, then they agree that God is still speaking.

God is still speaking? Wow, that sounds a lot like what those nutty charismatics believe! Yet you’d be hardpressed to get many of the folks who would argue that sermons aren’t messages that originate solely with men to buy that logical outcome.

If the primary issue here comes down to whether or not the Gospel is preached, does it matter if the person delivering the message was the first person to deliver it? If we humans can’t improve on the Scriptures already delivered to us, then what is being added to an exposition of those Scriptures that makes it rooted to one church on one Sunday, delivered by one human being?

Many argue against re-using a message, but that’s illogical if the message is inspired by God. Did the sermon get preached once and then no longer apply anywhere? Does God’s message return void after it’s been spoken once? It seems the same people who are arguing for stringing up plagiarizers hold a pretty low view of the Gospel, if they believe it only has a specific rendering to one set of people at one time and one place.

What’s worse is the logic that traps them—again. If the message were that specific to only one group of people, then it takes on a prophetic utterance that calls the closed canon of Scripture into question. (At least by their own arguments against an open canon, it would.)

One of the arguments against one person using a sermon delivered by another plays up the pastoral component. Aren’t we paying our pastors to preach the word?

The trap here wonders at what point a sermon no longer becomes relevant because someone else preached it previously. Isn’t a sermon someone else preached still the the word if God is behind it?

What about giving credit to the originator of the message? Well, isn’t the originator God? If you take a look at the sermons delivered in Acts, they bear an uncanny resemblance to each other, laying out God’s redemptive plan in a similar way, yet no one ascribed any authorship to anyone else.

Traps, traps, traps no matter where one turns if one pursues the plagiarism punishment angle.

Perhaps the better case is to forget making the use of someone else’s sermon a crime in the Church, ascribed or not.

What if we did? What if all we’ve done by stigmatizing the corporate use of preaching the word is to merely lift up the reputation of some preachers over others? I don’t think we ever consider that reality. Do we rate a minister of the Gospel solely by his talent for preaching? If so, many solid Christian men would be disqualified from the ministry. If we believe that preaching the word is a true spiritual gift, then every pastor in this country has that gift. Does anyone reading this believe that? One hundred percent? All the time? If not, then shouldn’t those pastors who may not have that supernatural gift operating at all times have access to the messages of those men who do have it?

Personally, I find the selling of sermons more reprehensible than any supposed plagiarism, especially because I believe God inspires those messages we hear. If it’s only to recover the cost of distribution, I can see some justification for that. Even then, freely we have received, so freely we give.

I offer all this as food for thought. I’m not fully decided on this issue myself. What bothers me is our failure to frame our terms correctly and to get to their roots. Unless we do that, we fall into worthless arguments based on the laws of men and not on the truths of God.

I’ve read all the arguments upholding the idea of punishing plagiarism of sermons, yet if followed to their natural conclusions they always lead to the same trap: the exaltation of men over God. John Piper (who’s written on plagiarism himself) wrote a book with the title Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. But don’t we act like professionals when we get defensive on this topic of plagiarism? Doesn’t it seem like we’re protecting a celebrity status for pastors by arguing for the punishment of “plagiarizers”? We may insist that using a message preached elsewhere is deceitful, but perhaps the entire premise is flawed. As I’ve laid out here, the reasons we may consider it deceitful may have more to do with the self-glorying of men than God’s honor.

Paul said that the important thing was not whether Christ was preached for envious reasons, just that the message of Christ got out (Phil. 1:15-18). If we keep that in mind, isn’t everything else spurious?

{Image: Evangelist Billy Sunday, whose own ministry was rocked by accusations of plagiarism}

Strong Man, Weak Man

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I’ve been wanting to write this post for some time, but never found a perfect time to do so. In light of the Ted Haggard scandal, with so many advocating a greater honesty, more openness, and a greater reliance on personal confession (myself included), I wish to discuss one enormous barrier to that advice.

Two months from now will mark the 30th anniversary of my conversion to Christ. I’ve witnessed plenty of trends in the American Church during that time, but only in recent years has the Lord opened my eyes to one of the more intractable prejudices.

We Christian men have a serious disconnect concerning honesty, openness, and personal confession. We may claim that those things are good for the soul, but God help any man who truly practices those disciplines.

How so?

While I’m speaking solely from what my own eyes have seen, men who consistently share their personal failings will eventually get a cold shoulder from other men in the church. Men who talk about their mistakes, who are unafraid to communicate with others, get treated like wimps, pansies, wusses and any other unmasculine name you can think of.  Strong man, weak manOther men will start spending less time with them, choosing instead to huddle up with the group of guys who prefer to talk about last night’s football game—the same group of guys that never lets their inner demons be known.

At a time when Christian men are sucking up men’s books featuring tough-as-nails guys who hunt bear with a pointy stick, the man who weeps over his own sin gets relegated to the quilting bee. How we ever ended up with that sort of thinking is beyond me, but I’ve seen it. Better to be the strong silent type and laugh at a ribald joke on occasion than to communicate one’s failure.

I’d like to think this misperception’s only been around since churches started mimicking the “win-at-all-cost” propaganda of the business world, but I’m not so certain. Perhaps we’ve always cast a negative glance at the man who talks just a bit too much about his failings. Nothing kills more men in their hearts than to have someone think them soft. And nothing is softer than to talk about one’s own sin.

Is it any wonder then that so many men flameout in spectacular ways? And it’s usually the man’s man, not the confessional guy, who winds up incinerated. Why the enormous pressure? Are we that performance driven in the man’s world that we can’t handle a little personal confession?

We’ve got to stop the denigration. We can talk all we want about communicating our own failings and sins, but if we’re still equating that kind of openness with being a wimp, we’ll never get anywhere. I don’t care if it’s fear, pride, or self-loathing that’s driving that shunning, we’ve got to convince Christian men that living a life of honest confession won’t wither their cojones.

Community,Politics, and Pastoral Shenanigans

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Election Day is only days away and news breaks of the Ted Haggard scandal, conveniently timed (as the whistleblower himself notes) to cause the most political fallout. 

Ugh.

We've been talking about community here lately, and while this post isn't part of the "Being the Body" series we're in, it's close. It's a tale about what happens when folks are removed from real community.

For the less media inclined, Ted Haggard, now the ex-leader of the National Association of Evangelicals and the ex-pastor of a huge Colorado megachurch, has fallen in some sort of scandal, causing him to resign both those roles. The allegations that brought Haggard down are unseemly, and I don't want to go into them here. But Haggard claims that some parts of them are true and, for the purposes of this post, that's enough.

The Godblogosphere is loaded with commentary on the Haggard situation. Everyone is weighing in with the reasons why this happened, but the analysis is the same tired lament focused on the usual suspects.

Recently, I reviewed a book by David Fitch called The Great Giveaway. One of the chapters dealt with pastoral sin, pointing the finger not so much at the pastors, but at the system we've created in our churches that sets the pastor apart as some kind of CEO, celebrity, or otherwordly figure with no ties to the rest of the church body. I believe that Fitch's analysis is far more accurate than what we're seeing discussed on the Godblogs.

A few points:

1. We've created a cult of celebrity around our most noted pastors. That kind of proto-idolatry only sets them up for failure because we no longer allow them grace to fail in the small things before they become larger.

2. Failure and sin are natural parts of the human condition. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, as we know. This includes our pastors, but we act as if it doesn't. Our mental disconnect sets up pastors for further failure.

3. Because of these factors, pastors find themselves separated from healing community. They cease to be fellow brothers within our church communities.

4. God institutes community for correction, even of leaders, yet our cult of pastoral celebrity destroys the natural workings of the correction. This places pastors outside the community and outside of the community's ministry TO them.

So once again, we see what happens when we do not allow the natural workings of godly community to police, protect, and encourage—even the pastorate.

While I do not condone what Haggard appears to have done, I'm not outraged. If anything, I feel sorry for what our kingmaker attitude has done to the pastorate. Unless we reform our communities, stop treating pastors as superhuman, get off our judgmental attitudes, and get back to recognizing that ALL the sheep have gone astray (not just some), we'll continue to see more high-profile pastors fall. We've got to be grace-filled communities that recognize the sin in our own leaders and allow them to receive grace from us, rather than blackballing them, stripping them of their ordination, and so on. With the constant threat of the "laity" turning on them like a pack of vicious dogs, pastors are all too likely to go into "coverup mode." No wonder the small sins wind up turning into monstrosities.

And don't believe that it can't be your favorite big-name pastor. I'm seeing a lot of people claiming their man is immune, all the while dancing on the ashes of Haggard's ministry. That's sickening, frankly. And unless we get wise to the fact our crippled views on community are what make stories like Haggard's possible, we'll continue to treat these pastors like they're a ruling class, rather than as sinful brothers in need of grace, just like we are.

We don't talk politics on this blog, but I wanted to drop that for one second to talk about this Tuesday's election.

I live in a state racked with pain. Ohio is in serious trouble. Our current Republican administration in this state is rife with malfeasance and failed agendas. The Republican governor has been an unmitigated disaster. His failures have resulted in Ohio being anathema to businesses of all sizes, driving many out of the state and attracting nothing to take their place. Now Ohio, the birthplace of more presidents than any other state, is in dire condition economically. We're the number one state for job losses, one of the worst of the worst signs of trouble.

I've noted in recent months through one of the series I did that I'm what they term a Crunchy Conservative. While much of what I believe politically sounds Republican, I oppose the Republican Party on many environmental, employment, and social issues.

This political season has underscored for me that we're drastically in need of some kind of reform in government. The Republicans don't represent the average family when they put big business ahead of the environment and small businesses. They don't represent the average family when they make all sorts of claims about supporting the family, but their final interest only comes down to supporting the richest one percent of families out there.

The Democrats, on the other hand, mouth some sort of allegiance to the little guy, but their party is responsible for supporting nearly every social evil imaginable.

And in the end, it seems like they're all liars anyway.

I believe that the same problem of making kings out of our pastors has soiled our politics. While politicians say they're part of the community, the community they're a part must only be millionaires and hedonists. I'm divulging no new truth here when I say that most people aren't like that. But the demographic on Capitol Hill doesn't reflect the common man out struggling to live in America 2006. It represents CEOs and loud-mouthed deviants.

My current rep is gung-ho about putting a nuclear waste site in a poorer area of the state not far from my home. Remember, I live in OHIO, not the Sonora Desert. She claims to be a part of my community, but I've got to wonder how any sane person would consider putting nuclear waste in a populated area with a high water table upstream from a major American city. I've got to wonder what PAC got to her and for how much. Isn't that sad?

She's a Republican. I don't know how I can vote for her, though. Her Democratic opponent supports a number of grievous moral sins. I can't vote for the opponent, either.

In short, no one represents most of the people I know in this district. Though they would vehemently protest my assessment, the candidates in this election aren't really part of our community. They're a part of some other class of people entirely who don't get us as much as we don't get them.

Sounds like some of the pastors in our churches, doesn't it?

I'm not sure what we can do about the problems in politics, but we can start doing a better job in our churches of allowing our pastors to fail in our community just as we ourselves are (or should be) allowed to. We need pastors who are like us, too, not outsider glamour boys who seem more attuned to politics than pulpits.