Randy Alcorn on Balanced Statements
I really enjoyed reading this from C. J. Mahaney’s interview with Randy Alcorn:
What single piece of counsel (or constructive criticism) has most improved your preaching?
“It is impossible to make a balanced statement.”
You can spend all day qualifying what you’re saying and removing the punch from it. Jesus made many statements that have to be clarified by others (e.g. plucking out your eye and cutting off your hand, and hating your family). But it is a mistake to strip such statements of their power by immediately modifying them and saying what they don’t mean instead of what they do. I think we are free to make prophetic statements without always qualifying them.
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True. But I couldn’t help but think as I read this of the excuse of “prophetic rhetoric” that emerging folks frequently hide behind to spew controversial half-truths and not fully qualify them.
What’s the difference? When is an unqualified exaggeration acceptable (as it must be in Jesus’ case), and just plain provocative for the sake of making a scene?