Most Dangerous

Erik Raymond is a church planter with a blog site called ‘Ordinary Pastor’. I don’t know much about him but a few weeks ago he posted - ‘Who Is The Most Dangerous Guy In Your Church?’

That’s a pretty intriguing title, enough that I had to check it out. Here’s a quote:

“Sure, we all can spot the unbeliever who doesn’t fluently speak the language of Zion, we can identify the person from doctrinally anemic backgrounds because they keep cutting themselves with the sharp knives in the theology drawer, and of course any Calvinist can sniff out an Arminian within 20 seconds. But I submit that these types of people are not the most dangerous people that attend your church. At least, they are not in my experience.”

Last time I checked the post has 87 comments so that says something. I’m certainly not the only one looking for the answer to that question. But it might not be what you think. Here is his take on the answer:

“This is the guy who seems to have a lot of biblical knowledge. He can drop the 30 lb. words and effectively argue his point. Very often he is quite involved and appears to have things together. However, he is dangerous because of the reason you would not think, he is un-teachable.”

This really resonated with me. Not necessarily the ‘most dangerous guy’ thing, but just the whole sense of disaster when we allow an un-teachable attitude to become ours. When we start to think that we don’t need to listen anymore, that is when we stop learning, and honestly, none of us can afford to stop learning – NONE of us.

Everyone has something they can teach me. I have to always remind myself that my perspective is singular and somewhat limited. No matter how much learning I accomplish or how wise I might become, in the end I see only a slice and someone else sees things I don’t. I’m not suggesting that truth is all subjective. Nor am I suggesting that we should simply accept anything that anyone says they believe as true simply because they see it as true. But I am suggesting that no matter how much I learn, I still have more to learn and my knowledge will always be limited and my mind will always be subject to err. And therefore, I must always be humble enough to consider that I don’t have it all figured out and someone, anyone, might see something that just hasn’t been on my radar.

In many way, humility really is the mother of all virtues.