Blogging in Christ — Issue 18

Errors That Empty the Work

A piece can be finished, formatted, and published, and still be empty. The sentences may be smooth, the quotations plentiful, the argument sound. Yet nothing in it came from the text itself, or nothing in it survived contact with the text. The errors that empty a piece are worth naming plainly, because they are not accidents of craft. They are decisions, made quietly at the desk, each trading the witness for something easier to carry.

The first error is softening. The writer feels the sharp edge of a passage and files it down before he lets the reader touch it. A judgment becomes a warning in general. A command becomes a suggestion. A hard word about sin becomes a word about struggle, and the reader is comforted where the text meant to convict. "They have healed also the hurt of my people superficially, saying, 'Peace, peace!' when there is no peace." (Jer 6:14) The same appetite speaks in Isaiah: "who tell the seers, 'Don't see!' and the prophets, 'Don't prophesy to us right things. Tell us pleasant things. Prophesy deceits.'" (Isa 30:10) Pleasant things are not hard to write. They are hard to defend.

Softening feels like kindness. It is not. It leaves the reader with a peace the text never offered, and the writer with a piece he can no longer stand behind. The apostle names the audience that rewards this work, and the reward is the danger: "For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn away to fables." (2 Tim 4:3-4) A writer who softens in order to be heard will be heard, and the hearing will cost him the truth entrusted to him. Against that bargain stands a single standard for the herald's speech: "But even as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News, so we speak—not as pleasing men, but God, who tests our hearts." (1 Thess 2:4) The heart is tested, not the audience. The piece is judged by its fidelity, not by its reception.

The second error is inventing connections. The writer sees two passages that share a word or a pleasing resemblance, and joins them as if Scripture itself had joined them. Or he takes a universal word, spoken to all, and narrows it to a particular person the author never named. The Lord's charge against such prophets is direct: "Yahweh of Armies says, 'Don't listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They teach you vanity. They speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of Yahweh.'" (Jer 23:16) And again: "I didn't send these prophets, yet they ran. I didn't speak to them, yet they prophesied." (Jer 23:21) 

The safeguard is a first principle, not a refinement: "knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation." (2 Pet 1:20) Where the canon itself establishes a relationship, the writer may follow it. Where no such relationship stands, he must say nothing, however attractive the resemblance. For the alternative is named without softening: "as also in all of his letters, speaking in them of these things. In those, there are some things that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unsettled twist, as they also do to the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." (2 Pet 3:16) 

The third error is quoting from memory. The writer is sure he knows the verse. He writes it as he remembers it, without opening the text. Sometimes the memory is nearly right, and nearly right is the most dangerous form of wrong, because it passes unnoticed. A word is softened, a condition dropped, a promise widened, and the quotation now says what the writer meant rather than what was written. The command that forbids this is older than any method: "You shall not add to the word which I command you, neither shall you take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of Yahweh your God which I command you." (Deut 4:2) 

The proverb states the consequence in one line: "Don't you add to his words, lest he reprove you, and you be found a liar." (Prov 30:6) And the canon closes with the same boundary, drawn at its widest: "I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book. If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book." (Rev 22:18-19) A writer who quotes from memory gambles against that boundary to save a minute. The remedy costs only that minute: open the text, verify the words, and let the quotation stand exactly as written. "Give diligence to present yourself approved by God, a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed, properly handling the Word of Truth." (2 Tim 2:15) Proper handling begins with the simple refusal to trust memory where the text can be checked.

The fourth error is tradition as authority. The writer inherits a reading from his teachers, his church, or his own earlier work, and treats the inheritance as if it were the text. When the passage pushes against the inheritance, the inheritance wins, quietly, without a contest ever declared. The Lord names this exchange with precision: "For you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men—the washing of pitchers and cups, and you do many other such things." (Mark 7:8) And again: "Full well do you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition." (Mark 7:9) 

The letters warn against the same displacement: "Be careful that you don't let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elemental spirits of the world, and not after Christ." (Col 2:8) A reading is not true because it is old, familiar, or held by respected men. It is true because the text says it. The writer who cannot show his reading from the passage itself has not written a piece. He has repeated one, and repetition is not proclamation.

These four errors share one root. Each substitutes something of the writer's for something of God's: a softer word for a hard one, a pleasing connection for a given one, a remembered word for a written one, a received opinion for a commandment. The substitution feels like craft, kindness, efficiency, or respect. But the piece is emptied at the center, because the authority that made it worth writing has been replaced by the writer's own judgment. And such a piece does not merely fail to help. It teaches its readers to accept the substitute, and to call the substitute the Word.

The counterweight is not a method but a refusal. Refuse to please men with the message. Refuse the connection the text did not make. Refuse the quotation the text was not opened to verify. Refuse the tradition that cannot show itself in the passage. Then the piece that remains may be shorter, plainer, and less applauded, but it will be full, because nothing in it stands on the writer's authority. The apostle sets the standard for such speech, and the standard is not eloquence: "My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith wouldn't stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." (1 Cor 2:4-5) 

The herald's work is not to avoid every mistake. Mistakes will be made, and correction received. The work is to avoid the mistakes that empty the work at its root: the softening that comforts falsely, the invention that speaks without sending, the memory that adds and takes away, the tradition that displaces the commandment. A piece that keeps the hard word hard, the connection given, the quotation exact, and the text above tradition will not be large, nor praised by every hearer. It will be true. And a true piece, however small, is one God can use, because it carries His word, not the writer's.

Let the final warning stand over the whole craft: "But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any 'good news' other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed." (Gal 1:8)