confessing sin?… seriously?
Note (10/12/2009): I have added closing remarks in red, in hopes of clarifying the intentionality of this blogpost.
There have already have been a few blogposts about the weird reaction to the opening of John Piper’s message to the AACC (American Association of Christian Counselors) in Nashville, TN on September, 16th. Jonathan Parnell at Reading To Walk, makes observations about the God given miracle of communication. Justin Taylor, with his new blog home at the Gospel Coalition, comments on how millions of church members across America have been trained to laugh at sermons. As these bloggers interpreted a very strange phenomena taking place at the AACC lecture, there was something else that I thought was needful to point out. At the risk of redundant over-blogging to ad infinitum, I hope this will be helpful.
First, If you haven’t already, I encourage you to listen to the first five minutes of Dr. Piper’s “lecture” here. Dr. Piper was being sincere, and it doesn’t appear that he made a single statement that was intended to provoke laughter. Yet for some reason, people just couldn’t take him seriously.
Here is a man, transparently confessing sin, and a multitude of people who had no idea what to do with it…
Let’s imagine ourselves, sitting at this association conference with numerous other, well educated people. Some of those in attendance have written more books and journal articles than the average person reads in a lifetime. We are getting ready to hear a lecture from the esteemed Dr. Piper, and he is about to contribute something to the conversation of how we, as Christian counselors, can assist in bringing about health to inner-workings of the human psyche.
Dr. Piper takes the stage, and he begins to confess sin. Seriously? He confesses his inadequacies, his self-consciousness, and his own need for Christian counseling during difficult periods in his marriage… and none of us think he is serious. We laugh. Why? Because confession of sin is the opposite of what would be expected at a conference like this. All of us are naturally, self-conscious, wanting to contribute something to conversation – thinking we have something to give, but we know that we must earn the necessary clout so our words might be counted as weighty. We have to prove ourselves to those around us, and we expect the key note speaker to do the same… “Go ahead, prove to me that I should listen to you,” we think. “The only reason Dr. Piper could be opening with a confession, is to end it with some kind of punch line, to break the ice, to really dazzle his audience with clever prose,” we think, in our clout-proving posture – in our proclivity towards self-glorification.
But not when we walk according to the spirit. And not this man, at least not on this occasion. This man was graced, at this moment, with authenticity. He was modeling the attitude that we are always to have.
We need to remember that not all of those present at the AACC conference are represented by those who we hear laughing on the audio recording. We also must be careful not to mar the perception of the AACC (or Christian Counseling as a whole) because of an error that any one of us could have been guilty of in different circumstances. The type of sin described in this post is not restricted to the members of the AACC who laughed on the audio recording. I recognize, that had I not been so familiar with Dr. Piper’s preaching, and had I been present at this conference, I could have very well been among those laughing.
Psalm 51:3 – “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.”
God give me grace to be authentic. Give me grace to fight self-consciousness with a radical yielding to the truth of my inadequacies and sin, and let me find refuge in your perfection and grace, rather than in my accomplishment – which is none without you. Make this kind of authenticity and confession far more common and far less alien in your Church.
Jeff,
Thanks for your thoughtful take here.
I plan to bring this us at Table Talk. I thought he handled it well, despite being very ‘perplexed.’ I think there are some good things to learn here.
Grace to you in Christ!
It was unreal listening to that. Let us know what Pastor John says, I’m really curious what his thoughts are.
Wow….I honestly hesitated to listen to the clip for sheer embarrassment on the part of pastor John; having listened to it makes my heart ache (alongside some admittedly bitter feelings toward the crowd) for a culture that does not know how to respond to authentic confession.
Thank you for your prayer at the end Jeff; it brought my heart to where it should be (repentance and burden) rather than somewhere it ought not to be (full of self-righteous wrath and bitterness). Amen. GOD help us all.
I was at the conference. Pastor Piper was the keynote speaker. The only speaker before him was Dr. Tim Clinton and his brief message was quite serious. So I don’t see that the AACC conference trained anyone to expect laughter and levity.
Pastor Piper did start with some ironic quips to which the crowd responded with natural laughter. Though the tape and Dr. Piper’s comments might make it seem like all 6,000 people were laughing, this is far from the case. Many people “got it” and understood that John had switched to serious mode. Many people were “with John” in thinking it odd that some people didn’t get the switch to serious. I spoke to many people directly after the message who were saddened that the laughter by some continued. But those people were not judgmental of the rest of the audience.
In comments on blogs across the country (as this has been picked up over and over again), some folks are really taking the audience to task with a stereotype that “obviously these Christian counselors just don’t get sin.” I take issue with that. The AACC World Conference has over 40 pre-conference sessions and they deal with the issue of sin from the perspective of the sufficiency of Scripture to deal with sin and with suffering. The same is true of the over 150 track presentations.
Personally, I think there is a good deal of overreaction going on to this tape…listened to out of context. It is easy to judge others from a clip of a tape, or a page of a book, or a section of a blog. That strikes me as more of a “Corinthian” attitude than a “Berean” attitude, in my humble opinion.
Perhaps we could blog and interact about the “reaction to the reaction.” In the comments on various blogs, there seems to be some “us against them” attitudes expressed here, even when it is “us and our brothers and sisters in Christ.” There also seems, perhaps, to be a bit of arrogance, “we get sin better than you get sin.” And, there seems at times in some of the comments about this to be an attitude of “pastors against Christian counselors” (I’m both) that communicates, “Pastors get sin better than Christian counselors.” Not to mention some “we ‘biblical counselors’ get sin better than those ‘Christian counselors.’”
This has taken on a life of its own in the blogosphere—a life that demonstrates just how easy it is to take pot shots at our brothers and sisters in Christ—without even inviting our brothers and sisters to enter the conversation and share their perspective. I don’t think the bloggers have been guilty of this, but I do sense that many of those who leave comments have.
Bob Kellemen,
Thank you for taking the time to interact on this blog. I want to make clear, that I did not intend to paint members of the AACC as any more susceptible to this kind of misunderstanding than anyone else. Rather, this is just a recent witness of how alien a public display of authentic transparency is to many of us in the church… and this particular manifestation is crystallized for us in audio format, to critique and learn from. I esteem Christian counselors. I almost entered into a Master of Arts in counseling program myself, and I plan to apprentice under a counselor at some point in my preparation for pastoral ministry.
Concerning the assessment in my blog, I was not present at the meeting, and admittedly my perspective is greatly limited because of this. However, from the audio recording, it does seem like there were many people present who are not accustomed to a confession of sin like that, in that kind of setting. To be transparent, I am not accustomed to the confession of sin in that kind of setting either. Moreover, had I not been so familiar with Dr. Piper’s preaching, I could have very well been one of those laughing. Still, I see this as a byproduct of my, all too common, “clout-proving posture” in my “proclivity towards self glorification.”
I think this same kind of thing could have happened in an ETS or SBL presentation, or even a pastors conference. I think that I, and those who have commented on this post, need to heed your word of caution. We must be careful not to mar our perception of the AACC (or Christian Counseling as a whole) as a result of an error that any one of us could have been guilty of in different circumstances. Likewise, we need to remember that not all of those present at the AACC conference are represented by those who we hear laughing on the audio recording.
I am sorry, as I was not intending to bring the AACC in disrepute and I probably could have gone to greater lengths to ensure this. Again, I thank you for your comment, I have indeed learned from it. I will make the appropriate notations on this blogpost, in red type.
Jeff,
I appreciate your humble and helpful spirit. Thank you very much.
Bob
I listened to a radio station by Janet Mefferd today and she was talking about this issue and how ridiculous it was that Christian counselors were laughing at Piper confessing sin. I was sooo frustrated that this was even brought up and I felt like she was fishing to say something derogatory toward Christians for entertainment purposes or to cause an arousal. I appreciate Bob Kellemen saying what he did b/c that is along the same exact thinking I had got from the situation. It sounds like people in the audience just innocently didn’t get Piper’s non-verbals of switching to a serious mode and he did have a little bit of smirking going on while talking. I just want there to be grace given to those people that laughed b/c it was probably just a simple misunderstanding with no wickedness in their heart. Maybe there was some conditioning to laugh during sermons that made that more possible but I am absolutely positive that no one in that audience was laughing at Piper’s genuine confession of sin. If you just step back and think about that for a second it doesn’t even make sense. These are people committed to the faith and committed to the souls of man seeking to get further training as to help people further. It embarrasses me that other Christians are just looking for other Christians to bash. Does it really coming down to this to have something to talk about!?? Instead of jumping to the conclusion that these people were in sin give your fellow brothers and sisters the benefit of the doubt that they were of pure or innocent motive in this situation and that it could have been as simply put: a misunderstanding.