If I tell you that a particular man likes to go off in the desert for four or five hours several times a week to read the Bible and pray, what do you think of him?
I suppose most of us would initially envy his devotion and wish we could emulate his practice. But I’m not so sure. There’s a whiff of something here I don’t like, and if my sniffer is right, we should literally be praying for this man rather than praying like him.
See, I immediately want to know how much time he spends with other Christians discussing the things he learns in the wilderness because one of the irreplaceable benefits of other mature believers is their tendency to keep us from our own misguided exuberances. Just as a spouse tends to moderate our eccentricities, the fellowship of other healthy people keeps our dangerous intellectual impulses pruned back.
So while I admire this man’s devotion, I know that his solitude needs a community to guide his development in a healthy direction. The Bereans indeed searched the Scriptures daily. But they also compared notes with each other afterward.
No comments:
Post a Comment