Church Wipe Your Feet
Once again this week, Christian media is exploding with stories, articles, and social media posts about what a Christian speaker or author said. It must be a day ending in “Y”. A celebrity pastor said something shocking. A best-selling author came out with another outrageous book. You know the stories. If you’re plugged into the digital world of Christianity, you can’t avoid it. Your favorite ministries and pastors are speaking out about it. Memes are flying left and right on social media. Your Christian friends are sharing the links to video clips or articles about it all over social media.
One of the more interesting phenomena of these events is to look in the comments section. You get people defending the subject of criticism, pointing out that just because it has sharp teeth and pointy ears that it isn’t necessarily a wolf. After all, look at all that fluffy white wool! But you also get a large subsection of people basically asking, “Who is this? I’ve never heard of them before?” Or, “What did they do now? I haven’t heard of them in a while.” And there’s my problem.
It’s a good thing for the church to call out false teachers. It’s a good thing for the church to point out that the latest best-selling book is, in fact, utterly dangerous to people’s souls. It’s a good thing for the church to speak out against false teaching, even when it comes from celebrity pastors, singers, or writers. But (and I swore this wasn’t going to be yet another post praising the local church, but…) these are all good things for the CHURCH to do.
What We Notice Seems Important
Do you know what happens when a major ministry writes a blog post detailing why the latest best-selling book is not really Christian? The book’s publishers high-five each other. They follow the number of people that have viewed the article more slavishly than the authors themselves. They count up all the social media posts about the book as though they were praising the book as the next Pilgrim’s Progress. Do you know why? Because as the old saying goes, no press is bad press.
The worst possible thing that can happen to a book is for it to be ignored. The worst thing to happen to a celebrity preacher or false teacher is for them to be forgotten. We humans are wired this way. What we notice seems to be more important to us. God designed us this way to help keep us from getting eaten by bears. Noticing a bear is important, so we attach some significance to it when we see one. Anything we notice more than once has MORE significance to us.
What We Notice We Come to Like
In fact, as we become more familiar with something, we tend to like it more. The music industry knows this, that’s why literally EVERYWHERE you go, you will hear the newest song by the latest hit artist. Odds are you might not like that song the first time you hear it, but they’re counting on the fact that by the 50th time you hear it, you’ll find yourself humming along. And it works!
So guess what, every time you see the celebrity in your news feed, you see the comments defending him/her, you attach a little more importance to them. You see some author/authoress lighting up your favorite ministry blogs, and you attach more importance to their books. It takes concerted effort to avoid that effect and may work even when you are aware of what’s happening.
What Gets Noticed Creates Attention
Beyond that, every social media mention, every mention in a post online, every search engine query about them or their books just drives them up the search engine rankings. So even if you aren’t interested in what they have to say, you make it more likely that other people will see them in a search result just by the fact that you clicked on something about them. That’s how the digital world works. And that’s why publishers love to have even negative press because exposure is more valuable than diamonds to them.
A Better Solution (Yes, it’s the Church Again)
But don’t we need to counter these false teachers, need to expose these authors as spitting out false doctrine, need to call out celebrity preachers for endorsing false teaching. Yes, yes we do. If only God had thought of that when writing the Bible, he could have given some instructions along those lines.
Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them… And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. (Acts 20:28–32 ESV)
The shepherds are charged with keeping watch over the flock. Which means they need to know what their flock is reading, who they’re listening to, and what they believe. And even among the flock, we can build each other up, as Paul commends us to the Word of God. When you see a sheep starting to follow after false teaching, it’s time to bleet! Make some noise, warn them, warn a shepherd, call out to the Chief Shepherd! Don’t let your fellow sheep just wander off into danger.
And you know what happens when this takes place in the local church? People are warned. People are made aware of the false doctrine, false teaching, bad books to stay away from. And it doesn’t help the publishers, the celebrities, the purveyors of false doctrine one little bit. They get no publicity. They get no boost in search rankings. They get ignored. And things that are ignored aren’t very important. Ignored people don’t get book deals, don’t get the limelight. Let’s handle this in the local church and stop building up the false teachers we’re trying to take down.
