The greatest difficulty for the pastor stems from his theology. He knows all there is to be known about sin and forgiveness. He knows what the faith is and he talks about it so much that he winds up no longer living in faith but in thinking about faith. He even knows that his non faith is the right form of faith: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief”. Knowledge reveals his daimonism. It drives him further and further into factual unbelief. We can then have no experience of faith. Our only experience is reflection on the faith. The problem is exacerbated by our constant preaching. We have to say things we have not experientially discovered. Such “misuse” of the Word must bother us very deeply. Indeed it is our singular mission not to preach our experience but to preach from Scripture. That can be proven and justified on the best theological grounds. Everything indeed depends on the Word. But it’s a sorry state of affairs if we are not bothered that our experience lags so far behind the Word, or if we strike the pose of a martyr who, renouncing his own experience, subjected himself for the sake of proclaiming a strange Word. The peak of theological craftiness is to conceal necessary and wholesome unrest under such self-justification.
I think he’s right. But it’s pretty scary stuff.
