By now the whole world knows about Paul the psychic octopus. In the recent World Cup, he predicted correctly the winner of every game that involved the German team. He even predicted correctly that Spain would beat Holland in the finals. I am not sure of the statistical probability of this happening but I am impressed. What has confused me however is the hatred that Paul the octopus has received. The number of people online who hate Paul and want to calamarify him is incredible. But why hate the messenger? He only tells the truth. It reminded me afresh that people do not want to hear the truth. They want to hear things that reinforce their choices and desires. (And there is no evidence that Paul is in cahoots with betting syndicates.)
Any student of the biblical prophets would recognise this phenomenon. Remember the prophet Jeremiah?
Lord, you coerced me into being a prophet,
and I allowed you to do it.
You overcame my resistance and prevailed over me.
Now I have become a constant laughingstock.
Everyone ridicules me.
For whenever I prophesy, I must cry out,
“Violence and destruction are coming!”
This message from the Lord has made me
an object of continual insults and derision.
(Jeremiah 20:7-8 NET)
Like every true prophet Jeremiah had to be true to the Lord and to the Word he had received. But he was a “bad news” prophet. He had to tell the people that judgement was coming because of their sins. That was the truth but people did not want to hear it. They thought that they could continue to sin against the Lord and get away with it. But that made Jeremiah very unpopular. He was mocked, hated and persecuted because he spoke the truth. Jeremiah would have empathised with Paul the psychic octopus. Is there a lesson here for the church? I believe there is.
The gospel is first bad news before it is good news.
. . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (Romans 3;23-24 NET)
Indeed the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be appreciated and welcomed without the bad news of our desperate need. Following Christ is the path to life but it is also a narrow road, one that requires carrying one’s cross. There are easier religious belief systems out there. Although our salvation is freely given, it is a decision that requires our all and makes us misfits in this world. We follow Christ because ” . . . there is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12b NET) In our evangelism we cannot hide the “why”of the gospel or the cost of discipleship.
We need to let people know that God loves them by word and by deed. But we must never water down the gospel. In our desire to get a hearing for the gospel we must not hide the bad news that is part of the good news. The apostle Paul understood this.
For you yourselves know, brothers and sisters, about our coming to you – it has not proven to be purposeless. But although we suffered earlier and were mistreated in Philippi, as you know, we had the courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of much opposition. For the appeal we make does not come from error or impurity or with deceit, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we declare it, not to please people but God, who examines our hearts. For we never appeared with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed — God is our witness — nor to seek glory from people, either from you or from others . . . (1Thessalonians 2:6 NET)
Apparently Paul’s honest approach did not jeopardise his evangelistic efforts.
And so we too constantly thank God that when you received God’s message that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human message, but as it truly is, God’s message, which is at work among you who believe. For you became imitators, brothers and sisters, of God’s churches in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, because you too suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they in fact did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and persecuted us severely. (1Thessalonians 2: 13-15a NET)
Conversion is a miracle and a mystery but clearly, by not watering down the gospel, Paul did not discourage people from following Christ. Indeed by telling the Thessalonians the truth, Paul was used by the Lord to win many to Christ, in conversions that resulted in a robust discipleship — the believers in Thessalonica were willing to suffer for the name of Christ.
We often hear complaints about the commitment levels of Christians today. While many profess to be followers of Jesus, we don’t often see the kind of radical discipleship that allowed the early church to turn the world upside down. I wonder if that is partly due to the fact that we have watered down the gospel in our anxiety to see more people won to the the Lord? If we truly love God and if we truly love the lost we must speak the truth in love. We might be ridiculed and rejected, or we might be instrumental in seeing people truly transformed by the true gospel.
I hear that the Spanish government is willing to send in a team to protect Paul the psychic octopus. Christians might want to consider joining the team.