Preaching to the choir

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Did anyone notice that oftentimes pastors preach on something that most people in the audience would agree with? As in, if they didn't agree, they won't show up? But the pastor would say "go ahead, do X, Y, Z, and see how God will punish you". But wait a second, is there anyone in the audience who wants to do X, Y, Z on the first place?

I am Christian by the way, so I am not criticizing Christian faith. I am just criticizing the way some sermons are done.

It's even worse.

The pastor likely knows X, Y, Z cannot be the "sins" of masterbation, pornography, and immoral thoughts, because most of the congregation are likely guilty.

So, lets make it a X, Y, Z that few or none are likely guilty of

This is pretty common, no? Rush Limbaugh would say what he figured his audience wanted to hear. BreadTubers say what they feel their audience wants to hear.

If pastors (or rabbis, priests or imams) say things that challenge or offend too much of their congregation the flock finds a new place to congregate.

Yes, exactly. If it was against pornography or masturbation, that would actually make sense. But they usually preach against something thats not even a temptation -- not to the church members that is.

Oh by the way I wasn't referring to preaching against homosexuality, if that is what you were alluding to. Let me give you a couple of examples of what I WAS thinking about:

a) 15 years ago I was at a Bible study at college. The Bible study was led by a pastor but they had a couple of students that were overseers. In any case, in one of the sermons the pastor talked about the fact that getting away from humans won't save you from accountability before God. So, as a rhetoric argument, he said "so suppose you decide to kill these two student overseers, God would still hold you accountable". And I thought to myself, wait a second, is there anyone in the audience who has any kind of conflict with those particular students? I don't think so, they are all rather good friends. So the whole thing was like a big roleplay. And, besides, in that imaginary situation that he was talking about, why would that supposed student be going to the Bible studies on the first place? And why would that student want to kill them as opposed to simply stopping going or something?

b) I watched on youtube a sermon by pastor Hagee. Now, to those of you who don't know, Pastor Hagee is very huge pro-Israel, pro-Jewish, etc. So he was preaching a sermon on how the Jews are "apple in God's eyes". And he was saying "you want to hate Jews? You are hating the apple in God's eyes. Go head mess with the apple in God's eyes, and you will get God's undivided attention". And I thought to myself "wait a second, is there anyone in his audience who actually hates Jews?" I mean its true there are some Christians who hate Jews (Eastern Orthodox church is a good example). But those Christians won't come to Pastor Hagee's church, since they know they disagree with everything he teaches. So whom exactly was he talking to?

Last edited by QFT on 07 Mar 2021, 1:57 am, edited 2 times in total.

That is true too. But what I talked about in OP goes way beyond that. If the pastor knows they want to hear "don't do X", then why doesn't he tell them "you are great people, you don't do X, be proud of yourself". But no, he instead tells them off for supposedly wanting to do X. So do those people want to be told off for supposedly wanting to do something they actually know they don't want to do? Is it a type of a role play?

There are more than 31,000 verses in the Christian Bible - about 23,000 in the Old Testament and about 8,000 in the New Testament. Many of these verses contain vague and/or contradictory statements on the same subject.

Through careful selection of situationally expedient verses (=cherry picking) a preacher can thus quite easily tailor his/her sermon to fit the pre-existing views and opinions of the congregation.

That's probably a reasonable explanation. It stokes one's ego in the same way that knowing you're innocent and therefore not being yelled at while the whole class is being chewed out.

When a pastor preaches his or her people to not do things they wouldn't do anyway, the people can feel like they're good people since they don't do these things that someone they (probably) consider to somehow be morally above them tells them not to do. Also, if the pastor took the risk of preaching about something else than the safe topics, they would risk losing followers, for it's possible that not everyone present would agree with all the new stuff.

Now, this is simply my assumption, but I think the reason that pastors don't preach "you don't do this, so you're good people" is that it could make the people proud of themselves, or the pastor proud of their people. And pride is one the seven deadly sins of Christianity, so according to the religion's rules, that'd be no good, right?