“Piper Is Too Intellectual”
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Here's another question from the Passion Conference
00:00:07.200 | we received from a podcast listener.
00:00:09.240 | Pastor John, I was at the Passion Conference
00:00:11.480 | where you spoke.
00:00:12.520 | I heard many people, college students mostly,
00:00:14.720 | say things such as, "Piper just talks right over my head,"
00:00:17.720 | or, "He is too hard to understand."
00:00:20.640 | Why do you think so many people
00:00:22.160 | respond that way to your teaching?
00:00:24.520 | - Oh dear.
00:00:26.040 | Well, let's just be honest.
00:00:27.200 | It could be that I'm confusing.
00:00:29.440 | It could be that I'm muddle-headed.
00:00:32.840 | I don't really know what I mean.
00:00:34.000 | I mean, people can't help others understand what they mean
00:00:36.680 | if they don't know what they mean.
00:00:39.320 | It could be that I don't take the time necessary
00:00:42.080 | to make things as simple and understandable
00:00:43.960 | as they ought to be, that I'm unprepared, unclear.
00:00:47.600 | So yeah, that's possible.
00:00:50.200 | I will let others be the judge.
00:00:53.900 | I certainly work hard to be clear and to be cogent.
00:00:59.140 | And to be interesting.
00:01:00.460 | I don't aim to be hard to understand.
00:01:02.740 | That's not one of my goals.
00:01:04.260 | (laughs)
00:01:05.100 | That would be a bad goal.
00:01:07.300 | I wanna be hard to understand.
00:01:09.220 | Get a reputation of being unintelligible.
00:01:12.020 | No, that's not what I'm after.
00:01:15.300 | But here's another possible explanation.
00:01:18.660 | And it's probably a combination.
00:01:20.820 | I think the main reason is that the educational bar
00:01:27.660 | has been set so low for children in elementary school
00:01:32.260 | and high school and at home,
00:01:34.680 | there's no great premium put on thinking.
00:01:40.660 | Thinking is work.
00:01:43.260 | It really is.
00:01:44.540 | In a sense, the mind is a muscle.
00:01:48.620 | Like the biceps are a muscle.
00:01:52.100 | Your arm will just lie there, right?
00:01:55.100 | Just lie there in your lap.
00:01:57.080 | Until you make the mental effort to say,
00:02:02.080 | "Bicep, lift my arm."
00:02:05.100 | And then the bicep does what you say.
00:02:07.900 | Isn't that amazing?
00:02:09.020 | It does.
00:02:09.860 | But you have to make this effort.
00:02:11.780 | Now that's a small effort.
00:02:13.420 | There are other things that require large effort.
00:02:16.020 | Like if you've got a 50 pound weight in your hand
00:02:18.500 | and you say, "Bicep, lift it."
00:02:20.860 | Then that's gonna be a little more difficult.
00:02:23.300 | It's the same with your mind.
00:02:25.100 | It just lies there until you make the effort
00:02:28.160 | to set it to thinking.
00:02:30.160 | And most people's minds just lie there
00:02:32.960 | and passively receive stimuli from television
00:02:36.040 | or entertaining speakers.
00:02:38.400 | But if someone comes along
00:02:39.840 | and they start weaving an argument,
00:02:42.240 | and what they say at one point is required
00:02:44.440 | for understanding what they say at the next point
00:02:46.240 | is required for what they say at the next point,
00:02:49.320 | then the mind has to be told, "Hey, get up.
00:02:53.760 | Wake up, work, listen.
00:02:56.020 | Gotta put this together, put the pieces.
00:02:57.780 | He's building something here.
00:02:59.420 | If you miss the first two,
00:03:01.520 | the third one will dangle in the air.
00:03:03.980 | Follow this chain of reasoning."
00:03:06.380 | And most people are not accustomed to doing that.
00:03:10.300 | And they don't want to make the effort.
00:03:13.260 | We're all by nature mentally lazy.
00:03:17.220 | Children need to be taught the joy
00:03:20.820 | and the great benefits of overcoming this laziness
00:03:25.400 | and making the discoveries that only thinking can make.
00:03:30.400 | So someone might say, "Well, given this reality then
00:03:35.080 | in your audience, why don't you adjust
00:03:38.800 | and change your way of speaking
00:03:41.560 | so that more understanding can happen?
00:03:44.120 | And here are my reasons
00:03:46.040 | for not adjusting any more than I do.
00:03:48.960 | And I don't claim to have the adjustment perfect,
00:03:51.220 | but here are the reasons.
00:03:52.900 | Number one, the Bible reasons.
00:03:56.640 | I would be untrue to the Bible
00:04:00.340 | if I did not create the lines of reasoning in the Bible.
00:04:05.340 | The Bible is a demanding book, really demanding.
00:04:10.180 | Even the parts that are simple at one level
00:04:13.820 | are profoundly challenging at another level.
00:04:16.820 | If I were to constantly communicate to the people,
00:04:20.140 | you don't need to make an effort
00:04:22.020 | in order to understand the truth.
00:04:23.260 | I would lie to them about what's required
00:04:26.040 | in reading the book of Romans or the book of John
00:04:28.680 | or the book of Isaiah or the Psalms.
00:04:31.740 | It is a demanding book.
00:04:33.580 | You must ask about the relationships
00:04:35.900 | of one clause to the next.
00:04:37.760 | Otherwise you will miss the meaning.
00:04:40.820 | Number two, I think God has called me
00:04:44.540 | to lift the level of thinking about God,
00:04:47.420 | not simply to adjust to how low it is.
00:04:51.100 | And number three, the Bible itself demands
00:04:56.020 | that we think when it comes to discerning
00:04:58.300 | the meaning of God's word.
00:04:59.900 | For example, 2 Timothy 2:7,
00:05:01.940 | "Think over what I say,
00:05:04.540 | for the Lord will give you understanding."
00:05:06.740 | It doesn't say, "You don't need to think
00:05:08.460 | because the Lord will give you understanding."
00:05:10.460 | It says, "Think because the Lord,
00:05:12.860 | through your thinking, will give understanding."
00:05:15.100 | Or 1 Corinthians 14, 20,
00:05:16.960 | "Be infants in evil, but in your thinking, be matures."
00:05:21.960 | That's what I wanna say to this generation.
00:05:23.980 | In your thinking, don't be babies.
00:05:26.340 | They just wait for mama's breast
00:05:28.340 | and then they suck as though
00:05:29.820 | no effort were required to think.
00:05:32.380 | No, you are now grownups.
00:05:34.780 | You must think.
00:05:36.540 | And here's a fourth thing that comes to mind.
00:05:40.200 | The people who are willing to make the effort
00:05:43.340 | to follow a train of thought
00:05:45.540 | are generally the kind of people
00:05:47.420 | who will be leaders someday.
00:05:49.940 | They are the people I am most eager to persuade.
00:05:54.020 | They will be the influencers.
00:05:56.820 | People who mentally coast
00:05:59.180 | and don't put out the effort to think things through
00:06:02.420 | are generally followers.
00:06:04.280 | That's what they are by nature
00:06:05.580 | because they want other people to think for them.
00:06:08.660 | They don't want to do it for themselves.
00:06:10.780 | They want others to think
00:06:12.620 | and then provide them conclusions.
00:06:15.300 | And those won't be leaders.
00:06:16.860 | That's just the definition of leader
00:06:18.740 | is you outthink the people that are following you.
00:06:22.420 | I'm eager to win over thinkers
00:06:25.340 | because they will be the leaders.
00:06:27.660 | So I'll always keep working.
00:06:30.700 | I'm gonna try.
00:06:31.700 | I'm gonna try.
00:06:32.540 | I want people to understand what I'm saying.
00:06:35.880 | I wanna be as understandable,
00:06:37.340 | intelligible as possible,
00:06:39.740 | but not at the cost of losing the depth and richness
00:06:44.420 | that come from following the lines of thought in the Bible.
00:06:48.620 | - That's good, Pastor John.
00:06:49.460 | So to paraphrase Peter,
00:06:50.740 | there are just some things in Piper
00:06:52.140 | that are hard to understand.
00:06:54.300 | - I'm glad to be associated with Paul.
00:06:55.860 | I wouldn't presume that.
00:06:57.820 | - All right, excellent.
00:06:59.340 | Another episode on this topic
00:07:00.500 | is one titled Childlike, Not Childish,
00:07:02.940 | where you explain how intellectual development
00:07:05.060 | should work to make us increasingly more childlike
00:07:08.460 | in our faith.
00:07:09.580 | That's episode 135.
00:07:11.140 | We'll be back tomorrow to answer the question,
00:07:12.660 | is it possible for a husband to lust after his own wife?
00:07:16.740 | It's never boring around here.
00:07:18.180 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:07:19.100 | See you tomorrow.
00:07:19.940 | (upbeat music)
00:07:22.520 | (upbeat music)
00:07:25.100 | [BLANK_AUDIO]