The Curse of Motivational Speaking | A Repost by Conrad Mbewe

The Curse Of Motivational Speaking

Last Sunday, a young man came to see me after our church service. He is the kind of guy who shows up at church once in a while and then disappears for a season. My guess is that he goes around churches sampling sermons and looking for answers. On this visit, he asked that I help him to overcome a failure in his life, and it was a failure to progress. He said that his greatest problem is that he does not believe in himself. Could I help him believe in himself so that he could become successful?

I asked him whether he was a Christian. His answer was, “Do I really need to be a Christian in order to be successful? Are you telling me that all those successful people out there are Christians? Aren’t there general principles that I can apply to my life—whether I am a Christian or not—that can catapult me to success?” I challenged him to answer that question himself. After all, I was sure he had done enough rounds among motivational speakers to have the answer.

“That is the problem,” he said, “I have been told that such principles exist and I have tried them. They seem to work for a while and then I am back to my old self again. I want you to help me find that formula that will help me go forward and never slide back to the place where I do not believe in myself.” To cut the long story short, I finally persuaded him of the need for reconciliation with God before anyone can break free from the frustrating rut that God locks unreconciled sinners in.

I gave him a booklet to read, entitled, What is a Biblical Christian? When we met the following day, he was honest enough to tell me that he was disappointed with what he read because it was not telling him what he wanted to hear. “What I want to know is how I can be successful. This booklet did not say anything about that.” I repeated what I told him earlier. What he needed was not belief in himself but belief in a Saviour sent from heaven. He needed forgiveness as a foundation for his life.

Yesterday, a church member told me that he met the young man in the local market. He had two booklets in his hands. The first was the one I had given him and the second one was by Joel Osteen. He told our member, “Pastor Mbewe gave me this book but I don’t like it because it makes me feel guilty. I prefer this one by Joel Osteen because it lifts me up. It motivates me.” I am very concerned about this and so I decided to put some thoughts together about the curse of motivational speaking.

Sadly, motivational speaking has become the staple diet of many evangelical pulpits. The message being heard is, “God has put the potential in you and all you need to do is believe in yourself to unlock that potential. Have a grand vision and live out that vision. You must be a man or woman of destiny and the sky will be the limit for you. Don’t let your past failures get in your way of success. Look beyond them, as Jesus looked beyond the cross and thus overcame it. You are the head and not the tail. ”

In the light of the plethora of motivational speaking, it begs the question, “Is this how Old Testament and New Testament preachers preached?” If I summarise the preaching of Noah, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jonah, Paul, Peter, etc., in the Bible, is this the kind of message that I will find there? I do not think so. Granted, motivational speakers borrow words from these men, but borrowing someone’s words is not the same thing as saying what he is saying. “A text without a context is a pretext.”

My chief quarrel with motivational speaking is that it reduces God to a means rather than an end. Men and women are not made to see that the nature of SIN lies in the letter “I” in the middle of the word. Instead, motivational speaking feeds that same ego and points to God as the one who can spoil it to the point of intoxication. That is a lie! It is God alone who must be at the centre of our lives. Christianity demands a dying to self, a taking up of one’s cross, and a following after a suffering Saviour.

Whenever I listen to motivational speaking, I seem to hear the message, “Peace, peace,” where there is no peace. It sounds to me like a doctor assuring a patient who has terminal cancer in its final stages that he should not worry because all will be okay if he only believes in himself. The guy is dying, man, for crying out loud! It is the height of insincerity if a preacher knows that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and instead makes those heading for the slaughterhouse feel nice.

Motivational speaking makes people feel good, whereas the gospel first makes people feel bad—until they find their all in Christ. True preaching must make people face the fact that they are living in rebellion against God and that they need to repent or they will perish. It is only as people recognise this and cry out, “What shall we do to be saved?” (Acts 2:37, 16:30) that true preaching gives them the good news, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).

Motivational speaking is an attempt at trying to kill a charging lion with a pea-gun, using freshly cooked peas, spiced with the most aromatic seasonings. The aroma may be tantalizing to the taste buds, but it is totally useless in bringing down that ferocious beast. Men and women outside Christ are DEAD in trespasses and sins. Exciting their senses with nice-sounding platitudes will not give them life. They need the law to kill their fallen egos and the gospel of Jesus Christ to give them life.

I know that motivational speaking is filling up our church buildings until they look like football stadiums. In this world of misery and gloom, we can all do with some encouragement. But is that all that we were called to do as preachers? What good is it if men feel inspired and motivated, and then go back home to live a life of sin and selfishness? Sadly this is the norm in so many evangelical churches. The churches are filled to capacity with people determined to drink sin like water the whole week.

Motivational speaking is not biblical preaching. It is a blight on the landscape of true evangelicalism. It is filling the churches with dead people who are being told to live as if they are alive. We need to return to the good old gospel that truly gives life to the dead and sets men and women free. Like Paul of old, every truly evangelical pulpit must sound out the clear message of “repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). Let us get rid of this curse of motivational speaking!

Posted by Conrad Mbewe at 8:30 AM

20 June, 2012

THIS is the problem with the Canadian Charter of Rights: "Reasonable Limits" (a repost from the National Post)

“. . . and guess who gets to determine “reasonable!”

Karen Selick: The language police come to Ontario

Karen Selick Jun 20, 2012 – 7:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 19, 2012 3:38 PM ET

Blair Gable/Reuters

The wish of some Ontario francophones to live in a fantasy world regarding the importance of the French language outweighs their neighbours’ Charter right to freedom of expression — according to the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Okay, okay — that’s not quite how the court put it. But that is nevertheless the essence of last week’s decision in the case of Jean-Serge Brisson and Howard Galganov against Russell Township.

Four years ago, 70% of the commercial signs outside businesses in Russell Township (a municipality of about 15,000 people near Ottawa) were bilingual. For a group of francophone zealots, 70% wasn’t enough. They entreated town council to make bilingual signs mandatory for all businesses.

The proposal was highly controversial among both anglophones and francophones. Two local chambers of commerce opposed it. A committee struck by council recommended against it. Nevertheless, council passed the by-law by a 3-2 vote, requiring all new exterior commercial signs to be bilingual, with the dimension and style of lettering being identical in French and English.

Jean-Serge Brisson owns a radiator repair shop in Russell. Despite being fully bilingual, Brisson erected a non-compliant sign, with his business name solely in English and his services listed solely in French. Brisson then challenged the by-law, together with bilingual anglophone Howard Galganov (who had posted a sign written entirely in English).

The two were slapped down by Justice Métivier of the Superior Court of Justice in a 2010 judgment that I described in an article back then as “disturbingly illogical”. Unfortunately, last week’s decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal was not much better.

The Court of Appeal did at least correct one error made by the lower court: It correctly held that the bylaw violated citizens’ rights to freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of expression includes the right not to express oneself in a particular language. “Freedom consists in an absence of compulsion,” they wrote, quoting the Supreme Court of Canada.

But then, astonishingly, they said the violation was justified under Section 1 of the Charter — the section that allows governments to violate fundamental freedoms if the violations are “reasonable limits … demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

The appellate court seemed completely hoodwinked by evidence that confused the behaviour of free citizens acting voluntarily with the behaviour of dragooned citizens acting under state coercion. For instance, the court accepted the expert opinion of a bureaucrat with the Eastern Ontario French School Board to the effect that “the by-law indicates that the French language has value in the community outside of schools and family life.”

Nonsense. When the francophones of Russell henceforth see business signs in both official languages, they will no longer know whether anyone inside can actually talk to them in French. They will no longer know whether the “bienvenue” genuinely welcomes them, or is merely an artifact of coercion forced upon an unwilling — and possibly resentful — anglophone or allophone. Anyone who accepts this as an indication that French is either valued by the sign’s proprietor or valuable in communicating with him is accepting an illusion — a fraud — manufactured by Russell’s town council. The inference that French is valued by businesses could not validly be drawn unless businesses chose voluntarily to use that language.

Another expert gave his opinion that the by-law is a “symbolic recognition of the equality of the French and English languages and cultures.” Symbolic indeed. Symbolic and false.

The truth is — and the court had these facts before them — that the use of the French language at home in Eastern Ontario decreased from 23.8% of the population in 1971, to a mere 15.6% in 2006. If the francophone population themselves lack the motivation or wherewithal to keep their numbers up, why should other people be coerced into maintaining the illusion of parity for them? Is phony symbolism really an important enough objective to override a freedom so important to Canadians that it is enshrined in our constitution?

Also absent from the decision was any explanation of how the by-law, which would force Brisson to add English to his mostly French sign, achieves the goal of promoting or preserving the French language. Charter jurisprudence requires that Section 1 overrides be rationally connected to their objective, but this connection can only be described as irrational.

The decision contains other leaps of illogic too numerous to discuss here. One can only hope that Brisson and Galganov will be able to mount an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, and that the SCC will place greater value on a constitutional freedom than on a charade designed to mollify some busybodies’ wounded pride.

National Post

Karen Selick is the litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which intervened in this case to support freedom of expression.

17 June, 2012

Thankfully, the Tide is Turning for Life | A National Post Re-post.

Kelly McParland: No court is too clogged to prevent the pursuit of an elderly woman and her abortion pamphlets

Kelly McParland Jun 15, 2012 – 9:43 AM ET

As a three-part series in the National Post demonstrated, the judicial system in Ontario is so clogged with backlogs and delays that it threatens to grind to a halt. But prosecutors are never so weighed down with work that they can’t find time to pursue another charge against 63-year-old grandmother Linda Gibbons for the crime of handing out pamphlets.

Gibbons has already spent nine years in jail over two decades and is before a judge once again, thanks to the zeal of the crown attorney’s office to stamp out elderly ladies and pamphlets. Ms. Gibbons’ crime is that her protest is against abortion, and she carries it out where women seeking to terminate a pregnancy can see her.

In Canada, your right to march through the streets, shaking your fist or offering Nazi salutes to the police will be upheld as a fundamental expression of free speech. You can agitate to join a Pride parade carrying a banner accusing Israel of being an apartheid state, and sympathetic “progressives” will argue on your behalf while municipal leaders look the other way. But stand on a public sidewalk near an abortion clinic, holding a poster with the image of a baby on it, and the forces of justice come down on you with both feet.

Ms. Gibbons lost a case before the Supreme Court last week in which she argued she shouldn’t face criminal charges for defying a civil order to stay away from abortion clinics. The crown decided to drop that case even though it won, since she’d already been in jail for six months. But she’s still awaiting a judgment on another case, for handing out pamphlets depicting fetuses.

Crown attorney Andrew Cappell told Judge William Wolski Thursday that Ms. Gibbons’ pamphlets were “disturbing” to clients of the clinic. It was also a “nuisance” and interfered with the clients’ right to get their abortion.

“By doing this in front of the clinic, it is intimidating people into not having these abortions performed … intimidating them into not executing a legal right that they have,” Mr. Cappell said.

Cigarette packages in Ontario carry graphic depictions of cancer that are also disturbing – in fact, they’re intended to be so, and anti-smoking organizations want to make them even more so. Cigarettes can be purchased at any variety store. And Toronto regularly creates a nuisance to people trying to go about their business. The city core is frequently jammed with marches, protests, demonstrations or charity run-a-thons and bike-a-thons that prevent non-participants from going conveniently about their tasks. The two main highways into the city are regularly closed so some group or other can raise some money. Everyone is OK with that, but to have Linda Gibbons hand out a pamphlet 30 feet from the door of a clinic is intolerable and has to be stopped.

Daniel Santoro, Ms. Gibbons lawyer, noted that her actions are peaceful, and no more intimidating than an animal rights advocate distributing photos of baby seals near a fur store.

“That’s a totally lawful course of action, and constitutionally protected. What’s the difference here?” he asked the court. “It may be disturbing, but she’s allowed to do that.”

“She is not locking the door, harassing the staff, shining bright lights in the windows to disrupt them … nothing she is doing is disturbing the function of the clinic. If she persuades someone not to go in, so be it,” Mr. Santoro said.

That’s not good enough for the Crown, though. Baby seals are evidently more worthy of protection than baby children. A woman’s right to an abortion is sacrosanct; another woman’s right to protest is a violation of the law. The case against Ms. Gibbons will proceed.

National Post