Why You Should Be Happy Your Pastor Preaches Things You Don’t Like

The time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. — 2 Timothy 4:3-4

As a pastor, I know how to build a big church.

I know how to pack a sanctuary, fill it with people, and keep filling it with people every Sunday, too.

It’s honestly not that hard.

All you do, at least as a pastor, is pick a few culturally sensitive topics; take a strong, polarizing stand on them; and then preach it over and over, finding ways to worm it into every text and sermon you preach. Throw in a few tweaks to the worship style (for instance, dim the lights, add a fog machine or two, and get a worship director with an affinity for ripped jeans), and you can build a pretty good-sized church. You can get people in the door. And you can get ’em to keep coming in the door, too.

Again, it’s not hard. It’s not some secret formula. It’s something megachurches around the world do every Sunday.

And that’s because, like everything else in our consumeristic culture, to build a big church all you’ve got to do is give people what they want, what they like, and what they already think and believe.

To put it the way the Apostle Paul does in 2 Timothy 4:3-4, you’ve just got to give them “what their itching ears want to hear.”

Giving People What They Want

That’s what some churches do these days.

Not all. In fact, I don’t think it’s the majority.

But certainly there are some pastors, preachers, and churches that do exactly what Paul warns about in that passage. They preach to people’s “itching” ears, give them what they like rather than what they need, which (like it is for all of us) is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You Should Be Happy that Your Pastor Makes You Unhappy

The truth, though, is that you should be happy if your pastor occasionally preaches things that your itching ears don’t want to hear, that you don’t like, and that maybe even make you unhappy, angry, or frustrated.

You should be happy if your pastor does that because that means he’s preaching the full Word of God to you; she’s preaching the whole counsel of Scripture. They aren’t just preaching the parts of the Bible that you (or they) like, but rather the whole Bible and the whole gospel, as inconvenient as it sometimes is for us fallible, sinful people.

The Bible and Politics

I’ll give you an example.

I grew up in a politically conservative area in the south suburbs of Chicago, Ill. I was raised in a politically conservative family. I attended a politically conservative church. And I went to a pair of politically conservative Christian schools. As a result, I spent the first half of my life as a political conservative myself.

That changed, however, when I started reading the Bible. During my first year in seminary, the church I attended at the time challenged our congregation to do a read-the-Bible-in-a-year plan. While I’d been a Christian all my life and had “read” the Bible (at least here and there) for years, I’d never read it all the way through. So I decided to do it. I read the Bible cover to cover. And as I read, I started realizing there were some inconsistencies between what the Bible said and what I’d grown up hearing and believing.

First, I realized there was a lot in the Bible that my home community had never talked about or taught me. Second, I realized there was a lot that wasn’t in the Bible that my home community had talked about and taught me. Third, I realized there were some things in the Bible that directly contradicted what my home community had talked about and taught me. And finally, I realized that many of those differences seemed to be due to the fact that the Bible didn’t always line up with my home community’s preferred conservative political perspective.

Now, it’s not that the Bible is liberal (and neither am I, by the way; I’m one of those politically homeless people who can’t stand either major American political party anymore). It’s just that it’s not the sort of black-and-white conservative textbook I grew up believing it was.

That’s because the Bible and the gospel it teaches, the true gospel, cut both ways. There will be times in a gospel-centered church when political conservatives will be happy. That’s because they’re going to be hearing what their “itching ears” want to hear. But there also should be times when they won’t be happy, and when their itching ears aren’t going to hear what they want to hear. And the same is true for liberals. The same is true for independents. And the same is true for every other category or classification we could put ourselves in.

The gospel cuts both ways. At times it soothes and scratches the itch for one group. At times it soothes and scratches the itch for another. At times it soothes and scratches the itch for both. And, at times, it soothes and scratches the itch for neither.

The Word of God

How could it not?

After all, if the Bible is truly what we say it is (the divinely inspired, infallible, authoritative Word of God himself), then how could it not at times offend us?

I’ll be honest: that’s what it’s done for me. Put simply, there are all sorts of things that I used to believe, used to think, and used to hitch my wagon to that I no longer do. And it’s because of the Bible. It’s because the Bible says something different, pushes back on what I believe as a fallible human being, and has forced me to come to terms with the fact that as much as I might want to think or believe one thing, God says different.

So you should be happy when your pastor occasionally preaches things you don’t like. You should be happy, because it means your pastor is doing his or her job, not just preaching the things you like or agree with, but rather the full Word of God.

If that offends you, just know that they’ve probably been offended by the Bible too. I know I have. But that’s the Word of God doing its work in me.