Giving Advice as a Form of Judgmentalism

(Our kitchen - I tool the photo of the damselfly)

(I re-post this periodically.)

Unasked-for advice is often received as criticism.

Imagine I come to you and say, "Did you know there are some really nice shirts on sale at Kohls today?" 

The thought comes to you: "He doesn't like my clothes." 

This "friendly advice" is received as a form of criticism and judgmentalism.

Often (but not entirely), people give unasked-for advice in an attempt to change people. 

If you want to advise someone because you see they are having a problem, and you've got the answer, try asking their permission: "May I suggest something?" Or, I may ask you "What is a good restaurant to eat at?" Then, you give me your thoughts on this.

Or: "I advise you not to drive down Telegraph Road today. There's major construction going on." To which I say, "Thank you."

That's cool. But a lot of advice-giving is about control and manipulation. It produces anger and bitterness. Who likes a controlling person who is out to change them? 

Linda and I ask each other for lots of advice. We give each other permission to speak into our lives. When this happens, we don't feel criticized, because we don't criticize each other.

Sometimes, giving advice comes out of a person who is angry (frustrated, irritated). A person who advises you with a smile on their face may be upset with you. Not always. But this is common. 

On changing other people: you cannot do it. Period. You can force people to do something. You can threaten them, imprison them, and guilt-manipulate them. But the human heart, the human spirit, cannot be changed by other people. 

The human heart is influenced by other people. That's different. Many people have influenced me. One now comes to mind. 

He was in my church. I was privileged to be in a small group with him and his wife that met weekly. He was a great scholar, which I admired. He spoke when asked, and never advised when not asked. I found this intriguing because he was a psychologist, and psychologists (so I thought) were there to give advice. His character and demeanor, humility and Christ-in-him were compelling. So much so that, eventually, I sought him out to advise me about some things. Which he did, with wisdom and love.

Instead of advising others whether they ask for it or not, focus on connecting with Jesus, and allow Jesus to work on the stuff inside of you that he knows about and is able to change.

I need to be continually rescued from my own self. You, "the other," cannot do this. You are not my Savior. But if you remain connected to Jesus and allow him to change your heart about things, the chances increase that God will use you to effect real heart-change in me.

The life goal is to know Christ, not advise others. God can use the brokenness effected in you to bring breakthrough to the people around you.

***
SEE ALSO:

The Vicious Circularity of Judgmentalism

Judgmentalism Is a Form of Violence

Judgmentalism and Making Judgments

Judgment Grows In the Soil of Forgetfulness

How I Prepare for a Sermon

 

                                                             (On Mackinac Island)

(I am re-posting this to keep it in play.)

1.  I print out the biblical text and carry it with me throughout the week.

2.   I meditate on the text. I read it over and over and over. I let it get into me. As I am doing this, God speaks to me. I write down what God says to me.

3.   I ask these questions:

a.   What is the text saying?

b.   What is the text saying to me?

c.   What will this text say to our people?

d. Will my message be understandable to our people? 

4.   I study the text.

a.   I use biblical commentaries.

b.   The rule is: not just any commentary will do. Find trusted Jesus-following scholars who have invested their lives in studying the text. I have a list of trusted names. For suggestions, see 

bestcommentaries.com.

c.   When God speaks to me while I am studying the commentaries, I write it down.

d.   I take notes on the commentaries. These notes appear in my sermon notes.

e. I especially value the NIV Application Commentary Series, and how it understands the biblical context and the peoples' context and bridges the gap between the two.

5.   As I am doing these two things – meditation on the text, and study of the text – I type out the sermon, often word-for-word, that God wants to speak through me.

6.   I take these notes and walk with them…, reading them over and over…  take drives in the car with them…  go to the state park overlooking Lake Erie and preach them. It always happens that, while doing this, God preaches to me. This gets emotional for me. I feel passion building towards the text, and what God has said, and what God is saying to me, and what God is going to say on Sunday morning.

7.   When I preach on Sunday morning, I want to know that I have given my entire self to preparing for this message. I never step up to preach without having given it my all. Average sermon preparation time each week is 10-20 hours. (Because, I cannot get away from it. It consumes me!)

8.   I feel a holy responsibility in preaching. I do not want to lead my people in the wrong direction. Therefore I study long and hard. And, I pray the text,

9.   I always have the expectation that God is going to show up, and make my mere human words into words from Him, for us all.

10.               With my focus on meditating on the text, and studying the text, and praying the text, my belief is that God, in the sermon, will give me and my people words from Him that are rooted in Scripture but provide extrabiblical revelation – viz., “now-words from God.”

11.               As I preach, I give God the right to lead me, even into things that I have not yet thought of. Usually, God does a fair amount of slicing and dicing my message into His message.

12.               If my people are spoken to by God, rather than being impressed with some “great sermon,” then I know the real thing has happened.

13.               I assume and expect God will do something through the preached Word. I am alert and attuned to this. Sometimes, even while preaching the message, I don’t know what God will do when the message is done. At other times I have a strong sense of what God wants to do, and I lead my people in this. The preached word is going to bear fruit in people’s lives, immediately. The preacher needs to respond to this, and lead their people. 

The Wise Are a Tree of Life

(Redeemer)

I am in Proverbs chapter 11.

Forget speed-reading Proverbs!

11.30 counsels me. 

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, 

and the one who is wise saves lives.

I write it on a card, to carry with me and guide me through this day. This will be my meditative focus.

Here I am told that my life (yours too) can bear life-giving fruit that will nourish and vitalize others. Even, saving lives.

This is wisdom, which, again, is to be sought after, and stored up in one's heart and mind.

John Walton writes:

"The immediate background of this image is the tree of life in the Garden of Eden (Ge 2). Those who embrace wisdom are like those who embrace the tree of life; i.e., wisdom is the source of life in all its fullness."

Zondervan,. NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, eBook (Kindle Locations 140525-140529). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. 

Technology and Spiritual Formation - Bibliography (in process)

(The Lutheran Home, in Monroe, MI)

(I'll be giving a 90-minute seminar on April 11, 2026, 11 AM EST. “Christian Integrity and Discernment with Social Media.”  $5. Register HERE.)

Here are books I have used to help me better understand the relationship between technology, culture, and Christian spiritual formation. 

A note: Linda and I watched "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix. Helpful. Well done. Concerning. Frightening.

Adam Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.

Aiken, Mary, The Cyber Effect: An Expert in Cyberpsychology Explains How Technology is Shaping Our Children, Our Behavior, and Our Valuers, and What We Can Do About It. 

Mark Bauerlein, ed. The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking

Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future

David Baggett and Jerry Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning

James Barrat, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

Albert Borgmann, Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology

Danah Boyd, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

John Brockman, ed. Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI

John Brockman, ed. What to Think About Machines that Think

Harold I. Brown, Perception, Theory and Commitment: The New Philosophy of Science

Alan Burdick, Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation

Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Heidi Campbell, Networked Theology: Negotiating Faith in Digital Culture 

Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: How Our Computers are Changing Us

Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

John Cheney-Lippold, We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves.

William Davies, The Happiness Industry

Craig Detweiler, iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives

Jacques Ellul, Presence in the Modern World: A New Translation

Ellul, The Technological Society

Amitai Etzioni, Happiness is the Wrong Metric: A Liberal Communitarian Response to Populism

Franklin Foer, World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech

Donna Freitas, The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost

Howard Gardner and Katie Davis, The App Generation

Craig Gay, Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal

Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukionoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. 

Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays 

James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky, Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality

Don Ihde, Philosophy and Technology: An Introduction

David Kaplan, ed. Readings in the Philosophy of Technology

Larson, Eric. The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think the Way We Do.

John Lennox, 2084 and the AI Revolution

Tim Lewens, The Meaning of Science: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science

Raymond Martin. The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity

Adam McHugh, The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction

Carl Mitcham, Philosophy and Technology: Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Technology

Moreland, J.P., Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology. 

Richard Muller, Now: The Physics of Time

H. Richard Neibuhr, Christ and Culture.

Newport, Cal, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life In a Noisy World. 

Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters

Pellegrino, Edmund. Human Dignity and Bioethics. 

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business 

Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

Powers, William, Hamlet's Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age

Tony Reinke, 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You

Christine Rosen, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human In a Disembodied World

Schuurman, Derek. Shaping a Digital World: Faith, Culture and Computer Technology 

Jacob Shatzer, Transhumanism and the Image of God: Today's Technology and the Future of Christian Discipleship

Roger Scruton, On Human Nature

Christian Smith, What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up

Mari Swingle, i-Minds: How and Why Constant Connectivity Is Rewiring Our Brains and What to Do About It

Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity

Taylor, The Secular Age

Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

Jean Twenge, iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy - and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood - and What That Means for the Rest of Us

Twenge, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement

Jose van Dyck, The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media

***

My Books

 Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

The Great Invasion: 31 Days of Christmas

My Leadership Book Is...

 

Needed: Pastors as Spiritual Directors

Detroit

What is a "pastor?" Eugene Peterson says a pastor is, essentially, a spiritual director. One who guides and leads his flock into the life of God's kingdom. A pastor is not to be understood as a CEO, religious shop-keeper, Bible expositor, apostolic entrepreneur, or counselor.

One book that has shaped my understanding of "pastor" is Eugene Peterson's The Contemplative Pastor. I've read this book at least three times. I place it on my Top Ten Best Books Ever Read list.

Today my attention is again drawn to Peterson via Scot McKnight's revisiting of him here.

Adjectives that would describe a pastor include: "unbusy," "subversive," and "apocalyptic." We don't see that in a lot of pastors. Peterson has said:

“If you listen to a Solzhenitsyn or Bishop Tutu, or university students from Africa or South America, they don’t see a Christian land. They see something almost the reverse of a Christian land. … They see a lot of greed and arrogance. And they see a Christian community that has almost none of the virtues of the biblical Christian community, which have to do with a sacrificial life and conspicuous love. Rather, they see indulgence in feelings and emotions, and an avaricious quest for gratification.”

Uh-huh.

As George Barna discovered, ongoing spiritual formation into Christlikeness is almost nonexistent in the American church. McKnight writes: 

"The assumption was that the reception of correct doctrine by people who sat “under the Word” would automatically create the expression of correct, Christ-following lives. “Preach the Word in season and out…” “Preach the whole counsel of God!” It was as if the Great Commission was “Preach the Word” not “Make disciples of all nations.” The church-at-large had become horribly ingrown and self-seeking."

McKnight once attended a Q&A session with Peterson in New York City. He writes:

"Peterson and his wife, Jan, were the main guests of Gabe Lyons’ Q-ideas sessions in New York City. Through the generosity of good friends, I was able to attend. I was struck by the attendance of many young, enthusiastic leaders who affirmed the steadfast vision that Eugene offered for the pastor. I was one of the older attendees. Peterson has weathered the storm of much contentious push-back on his vision of pastor, but his gracious, persistent voice is still strong and magnetic, kind and discerning. Eugene is now the pastors’ pastor."

Though I've never met him, Eugene is certainly one of my pastors.

See:

The Calling of a Pastor

Counsel to the Pastors of America

Real Pastors are Servant Leaders

"Church" As a Colony of Heaven In a Country of Death

The Pastor: A Memoir, by EHP

The Absurdity of Christianity Without the Resurrection

 

                           (Redeemer sanctuary, awaiting Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday)

Perhaps, one day, someone will invent a car without an engine. But, at least for now, and far into the foreseeable future, if it doesn't have an engine that converts energy into motion, then it's not a car.

The same goes for the resurrection of Jesus. Liberal Christianity has invented a religion without a historical resurrection. For a description of how this has happened, see Tim Keller, Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter, chapter 1. 

Keller writes:

"Liberal Christianity has taught that it doesn’t matter whether these events in the story of Jesus’s life actually happened. All that matters is that Christians be good, ethical people who love others and make the world a better place. This is an effort to create a non-historical faith, one that isn’t grounded in what God has actually done in history, but only in what we do and how we live. Liberal Christianity even tries to read itself back into history as the original, true Christianity. It claims that the original Jesus was simply a human teacher of justice and love.

...This narrative, however, is not actually an updated version of Christianity. Rather, it is the creation of a different religion altogether...

...The stark difference between liberal Christianity and the original faith was put famously by H. Richard Niebuhr. He described liberalism thus: 

“A God without wrath 

brought men without sin 

into a Kingdom without judgment 

through the ministrations of 

Christ without a Cross.” 

And, he could have added, "without a resurrection." (pp. 3-4. I have read, over the decades, several liberal theologians who have created alternative religions and called it 'Christianity'.)

If it does not have the historical resurrection, then it's not Christianity. The apostle Paul knew this, as he wrote, in 1 Corinthians 15:13 ff.

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 

14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless 

and so is your faith. 

15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, 

for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. 

But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 

16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 

17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; 

you are still in your sins. 

18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 

19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, 

we are of all people most to be pitied.

Keller quotes a poem by John Updike, to illustrate the absurdity of Christianity  without the resurrection.

Make no mistake: 

if He rose at all 

It was as His body; 

If the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the 

molecule reknit, 

the amino acids rekindle, 

the Church will fall. 

It was not as the flowers, 

each soft spring recurrent; 

it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and 

fuddled eyes of the 

eleven apostles; 

it was as His flesh; ours. 

The same hinged thumbs and toes, 

the same valved heart 

that—pierced—died, withered, paused, 

and then regathered 

out of enduring Might 

new strength to enclose. 

Let us not mock God with metaphor, 

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence, 

making of the event a parable, a sign 

painted in the faded 

credulity of earlier ages: 

let us walk through the door. 

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché 

not a stone in a story, 

but the vast rock of materiality that in 

the slow grinding of 

time will eclipse for each of us 

the wide light of day. 

And if we have an angel at the tomb, 

make it a real angel, 

weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, 

vivid with hair, 

opaque in the dawn light, 

robed in real linen 

spun on a definite loom. 

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, 

for our own convenience, 

our own sense of beauty, 

lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, 

we are embarrassed by the miracle, 

and crushed by remonstrance.

Keller, Hope in Times of Fear (pp. 4-5)