As I type this I am absolutely flabbergasted and really do not know what to say (or type).
Recently, John Piper spoke at the American Association of Christian Counselors and began his message confessing the reality of his own sinfulness and his insecurities. To my shock (and to Piper’s) the audience burst into laughter again and again. When I played the clip to my wife it took much convincing for her to finally accept that this wasn’t an edited clip.
You can listen to the recording here, or you can read some further reflections and quotations supplied by Justin Taylor.
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Tagged as // John Piper, Sin
Filed in // General
Comments [4]
Wow. The audience comes across as either ridiculously disrespectful or ridiculously lost. Listening to this, I was completely perplexed myself as to why the audience found any of this humorous. I don’t think anything John Piper had to say in his message was even “unintentionally funny.”
I absolutely hate to say I couldn’t tell he wasn’t trying to be ironic right up until he said he was boggled by their reaction. Then I felt really bad for feeling that way. It would be like someone giving a speech before a room full of psychologist and starting out, “Let me tell you how I feel about my mother…”I think the crowd of counselors couldn’t tell the irony was unintentional.
Brother Nathan, Shocking indeed! It is an indication of where we are today. Some of the criticism of modern Calvinists we have heard is true. Teaching puritan doctrine with a flippant, post modern lifestyle, and sometimes even in worship, communication from the pulpit that is inappropriate., etc. Check out this article by Peter Masters of Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. We may not agree with every jot and tittle of Master’s views, but have to admit that he is on to something. Calvinists need to aspire to holiness.,,,God bless you, Charles/hombreviejo. http://the-highway.com/articleOct09.html
I was at the conference. Pastor Piper was the keynote speaker. The only speaker before him was Dr. Tim Clinton and his brief message was quite serious. So I don’t see that the AACC conference trained anyone to expect laughter and levity. Pastor Piper did start with some ironic quips to which the crowd responded with natural laughter. Though the tape and Dr. Piper’s comments might make it seem like all 6,000 people were laughing, this is far from the case. Many people “got it” and understood that John had switched to serious mode. Many people were “with John” in thinking it odd that some people didn’t get the switch to serious. I spoke to many people directly after the message who were saddened that the laughter by some continued. But those people were not judgmental of the rest of the audience. In comments in this blog, at the Nine Marks blog, and over at Aaron Taylor’s blog, some folks are really taking the audience to task with a stereotype that “obviously these Christian counselors just don’t get sin.” I take issue with that. The AACC World Conference has over 40 pre-conference sessions and they deal with the issue of sin from the perspective of the sufficiency of Scripture to deal with sin and with suffering. The same is true of the over 150 track presentations. Personally, I think there is a good deal of overreaction going on to this tape…listened to out of context. It is easy to judge others from a clip of a tape, or a page of a book, or a section of a blog. That strikes me as more of a “Corinthian” attitude than a “Berean” attitude, in my humble opinion.