The media recently highlighted the story of a church where the pastor teaches his congregation that in order to increase their faith they should, among other things, eat grass. Sadly, the congregation seemingly happily complied. While this seems ludicrous, I suspect that this kind of spiritual manipulation is more commonplace than we care to admit.
Let’s assess our own situation; church or ministry. I’d like to suggest that anytime your spiritual leader or pastor preaches ministry, ministry and getting involved with church activities Monday to Sunday, you are possibly in a similar position to those grass-eating congregants.
I’d like to suggest that anytime you accept your pastor’s or spiritual leader’s teaching unwaveringly, you’re putting his words above that of God’s Word. Again, you are possibly in a similar position to those grass eating congregants. In the words of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, “Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.”
Let me suggest a few things to consider to help ensure that you don’t get spiritually manipulated:
- Read the Bible for yourself
- Study the Bible for yourself
- Spend personal time in prayer with God
- Make sure your pastor or leader’s teaching is biblically and doctrinally sound.
- Be sure that your church, your ministry and your pastor or spiritual leader are committed to building God’s kingdom as opposed to their own.
- Don’t put them on a pedestal.
The problem with ignorance is that you’ll just lap up anything and everything from these so called men and women of God, purely based on the fact that they’re using the right language. Martin Luther King Jr. made the following statement: “nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”. As children of God, let us not stand accused of sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
