There are so many people who are governed entirely by their feelings and they do not want to use their minds and their brains. Even in a religious service they just want happiness and enjoyment. They want to have a good time, as they call it, to get excited, to work themselves up by singing hymns and songs and choruses, and to keep on repeating and repeating until they are in a state of mental intoxication. They do not want to be made to think. Life is hard enough as it is, they say, without having to struggle with this thought and that, so let us have more singing and less preaching and so on. Feelings! Just a riot of enjoyment — that is a foolish person. Do you see the relevance of all this to the state of the church today? It does not matter how crowded your churches are in whatever country you belong to. What I want to know is, what happens when the crowd gets there? How is the time spent? And, alas, one sees and hears more and more music and entertainment and less and less of teaching and doctrine and true understanding. That is one of the characteristics of folly.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17,” pg. 145
Actually, my husband and I have found something sort of opposite to this to be true. Pastors we've encountered don't seem to like believers who think, who actually use their minds and brains, instead of just "going along to get along".
ReplyDeleteWe use our minds anyhow.
-Carolyn