PRIVILEGING THE HYPOTHESIS

I've started reading Alchemy by Rory Sutherland. If you're not familiar with Rory and you are interested in human psychology and behavioral science, you can find him in a lot of YouTube videos. He is vice chairman of the prominent British marketing agency, Ogilvy. 

And he knows his stuff.

Anyway, the subtitle of the book is "The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life". 

This book is an example of the stuff I think seminary students should be required to study. Maybe the class would be called Human Psychology and Behavior - Deal with It.  

Here's a snippet I find relevant to church life: "The single worst thing that can happen in a criminal investigation is for everyone involved to become fixated on the same theory, because one false assumption shared by everyone can undermine the entire investigation. There's a name for this - it's called 'privileging the hypothesis'." (p.14)

While Sutherland is talking criminal investigations here, the same holds for theology: it is dangerous when everyone grabs hold of the same false assumption.

It has happened repeatedly throughout church history, beginning with the pharisees who did this bit of logical reasoning:

Premise 1: It is against God's law to work on the sabbath.

Premise 2: No Messiah would ever break God's law.

Premise 3: Healing a person is work.

Premise 4: Jesus healed a man on the sabbath.

Conclusion: Jesus worked on a sabbath and therefore cannot be the Messiah.

This airtight logic was impenetrable by even acknowledged miraculous works performed by Jesus: Because we know He cannot be the Messiah, He must be doing these works by the power of the Devil!

No further investigation was needed. They all agreed that their hypothesis was correct and so it must stand at all costs. 

The pharisees are long gone, but how many hypotheses do modern believers hold as privileged just because "everyone agrees"? 

Why are Bereans in such short supply?

Acts 17:11 - Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

What Paul was teaching went contrary to the Bereans' assumptions, but they did not reject his teaching outright. Instead, they studied the Scriptures FOR THEMSELVES.

THE MIST

"A mist in the pulpit will result in a fog in the pew." 

This truism, attributed to Charles Spurgeon (among others), is why I don't think I would have made a very good preacher even 5 years ago. 

Now, one of the great blessings of my position as pastor at Sardinia Baptist Church is the opportunity week by week to blow away the mist in my own understanding of the Christian faith.

It gets me excited every time. 

And I'm not talking about Bible trivia - it's big picture stuff. And how everything fits together. 

I'm coming to see that over the years I've swallowed a whole lot of "biblical doctrines" without examining the Scriptural basis for myself. And then I wondered why my beliefs felt so disjointed. 

I was not alone in this. I think this is a great weakness of the modern church in general. If the pastors and teachers have never applied critical thinking skills to their own presuppositions, the congregation is going to be left in a fog.

And if a congregation is in the fog, there's not going to be a lot of forward movement for that church. 

The average church doesn't need to be berated as much as it needs to be educated.

But there's too much mist up front.