If the Word is Not Preached Directly to the People . . .
Excerpt from Chapter Six of the Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church
Introduction to the sixth chapter of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church. (< click to order.)
Pseudocyesis is false pregnancy, the condition of thinking that you are expecting a baby when you really are not. Women with pseudocyesis have many, if not all, the symptoms of pregnancy, even the distended abdomen – but no actual baby. The psyche isn’t able to produce one of those. They so want a child that their mind fools their body that they have one until it comes time to deliver and there’s no baby.
I guess many (probably most) women with that condition in developed countries eventually accept what pregnancy tests and ultra-sounds show is the truth. So they don’t have to wait until they aren’t able to give birth. Unless, of course, they purposely avoid those tests, not wanting to know the truth.
I became aware of this condition over a decade ago when a member of our church repeatedly thought she was pregnant when she wasn’t. When one of our mature women informally counseled her, the mature lady told me that the other member (probably with pseudocyesis) had a lot of psychological issues. She left us soon after, of course. I say, “of course,” because I’ve found on several occasions that it is the people with the most problems — spiritual or psychological — who don’t want their problems exposed or dealt with. On several occasions when it became clear that a person needs some kind of professional counseling, it is exactly at that moment that they leave.
Jason barrowed down into slanderous hysteria. He was so hysterical because something in the church was not done his way. He broke his repeated commitments when it was convenient, finding church leaders guilty without any inquiry, refusing to obey 1 Tim. 5:19, Mt. 18:15f. He have often couched his accusations in rash, inflammatory rhetoric (e.g. calling his pastor “stubborn,” “incompetent”, “demented tyrant”, etc.; and taking unto himself the right to issue a “final warning”, etc., (what 1 Cor. 5:11 calls being a “reviler”). I suggested we pay for his counseling. Instead, he left amid a flurry of false accusations. He then went on to become the “pastor of discipleship” at, what to him, must have been an enabling Eden, like he was born in Oz (or Os?).
Rodney showed himself to be so duplicitous — his actual life was so different than his words — that I recommended that he see a counselor who specialized in “reality therapy.” Reality therapy means making the patient deal with reality. Reality therapy would challenge the duplicitous member about the disparity between what he said and how he really lived.
We looked at him earlier in Beware of the Infection of Hypocrisy (<click to read the article at Theopolis:
Rodney told me he was sorry that the church had to cut my salary to make the budget; he preached on giving and claimed to support his church, while he and his wife were fully employed, regularly buying new vehicles, annually taking pilgrimages to Disney World and splurging on such indulgences as annual passes to the Biltmore estate and elaborate tattoos, all the while he gave a mite, about one percent of his income. Such a shamelessly two-faced man is a “hypocrite.” But usually hypocrisy is more subtle. Are you infected?
When his hypocrisy became obvious, he left too. Of course.
One of the symptoms of some spiritual diseases is not wanting it exposed by diagnosis.
Perhaps one of the biggest differences between treating people with physical health needs – medicine – and people with psychological and spiritual health needs, is that the psychologically and spiritually sick often don’t want help. Indeed, one of the symptoms of some psychological or spiritual diseases is not wanting it dealt with; not wanting it exposed by diagnosis; not wanting it treated. Most people, as soon as they get physically sick, want it treated and cured but people with spiritual problems often run from treatment. They will especially dislike someone with authority who will speak the truth to them.
The People of the Lie
The psychiatrist M. Scott Peck wrote an interesting book entitled People of the Lie. In it, he notes this very dynamic: that often the neediest, the evil people, the most malicious and troubled, rarely seek professional help. He writes,
Since they will do almost anything to avoid the particular pain that comes from self-examination, under ordinary circumstances the evil are the last people who would ever come to psychotherapy. The evil hate the light — the light of goodness that shows them up, the light of scrutiny that exposes them, the light of truth that penetrates their deception.
Peck says that such people are masters of disguise, of covering up their needs, their sins, the reality of who they are. But, if they would rather do anything than be where they could be exposed, Dr. Peck says that they are often attracted to a place where now, their disguise will remain intact: the church. In a footnote, probably a much over-looked passage, he writes,
Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places where evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one’s evil from oneself, as well as from others, than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture. . . . Evil people tend to gravitate toward piety for the disguise and concealment it can offer them. (p. 76.)
In other words, if church leaders are not careful and fearless, churches can easily turn into havens for evil people. If the Word is not clearly preached and applied to the people in it, and church disciplined isn’t practiced, the church can turn into a “sin club.”
Without the clear preaching of the Word, it’s application to the people, and church discipline, the church becomes place to hide one’s sin. If church leaders can be intimidated, bullied, bribed or flattered into not preaching the Word to the people, particularly applying it to their needs, then the church enables people to stay in their sin; it comforts them in their, rather than reproves, rebukes and exhorts with all authority (2 Timothy 4:2). When the Word is not allowed to be spoken to the sin of the people, churches become “sin clubs.”
But one of the pillars of a biblical church is that the pastor, the elders, preach the Word to the needs of the people; that the light shines into the darkness.
If church leaders are not careful and fearless, churches can easily turn into havens for evil people.
To prevent churches from becoming places where evil people hide, pastors cannot just give lectures on abstract Bible knowledge detached from the life of the people in front of them. They must apply it to the people in front of them. They don’t only comfort the afflicted; they sometimes afflict the comfortable. The Biblical pastor speaks the truth in love for the specific purpose of the Body growing up.
John B. Carpenter, Ph.D., is pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, VA. and the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022).