Is Preaching Ever the Right Thing to Do?

When does preaching become teaching – and vis-versa?

‘Preaching’ is variously defined as

• ‘the delivery of a sermon or religious address to an assembled group of people, typically in church.’ – Oxford Languages (Google’s English dictionary)
• ‘the giving of moral advice in a pompously self-righteous way.’ – Oxford Languages
• ‘to give unwanted advice, especially about moral matters, in a boring way’ – Cambridge Dictionary
• to exhort in an officious or tiresome manner’ Merriam-Webster

While definitions help with understanding many things, many important things that defy definition are all too obvious when we encounter them. Take intelligence. What is it? How do we define it? But it’s usually obvious when we come across an intelligent person – or a stupid one. And then there’s goodness. Tricky to define, but good at making itself apparent.

Ditto preaching.

Looking at the opposite of something can help us known, and define, what that something is. Take left. Left helps us know what right is; and up, down; red, blue; and big, small etc. Let’s consider teaching to be the opposite of preaching to learn something about both.

Teachers teach stuff that has been proven, or which is considered factual in nature because it seems cogent and rational. Stuff that is empirically verified is taught, and never preached. Stuff like plate tectonics and why things fall at the same rate no matter their mass. Preachers preach stuff that typically can’t be measured. Things like mores and morals. What is right action? Ask Kant. Ask Bentham. Would they have taught their answers or preached them? They would have thought they were teaching, but it may have sounded preachy to some.

So, is the difference between teaching and preaching just one of tone and delivery? No, though teachers can sound preachy, and preachers can sound like they are teaching.

Ask any parent: from whom and where people hear stuff influences their sense of its validity. From this perceived validity we imply a sense of veracity that may not be deserved. A Harvard professor, say, can profess Utilitarianism brilliantly, and we pupils will dilate in the face of such academic status. It will feel like teaching. But Bentham’s primary principle can’t be measured. It isn’t a fact. And that brings us to theories. Like evolution, General Relativity is a theory; and like evolution it’s verified by evidence. Relativity is measurable as it happens, too, rather than leaving a trace. Relativity can be represented by maths, and we call that maths Information Theory. That’s a theory too, and it’s mighty useful. But we digress.

Measurable things tend to be taught; but where does that leave, say, tort? Law teachers teach tort law and preachers don’t; but that doesn’t mean tort law is measurable. And it could be taught in a preachy way by someone who fancied themselves to be the bee’s knees. Interestingly, if it was, it would become less persuasive. Interesting that the way something is presented to us influences the way we receive and perceive it. So, this essay could seem preachy, and you might be less persuaded by it if it was. So, I won’t make it so.

Does this mean that the way we perceive everything defines everything? Yes, but not entirely. Sunny days are measurably sunny days. So are train wrecks. Some things are things in themselves. Indeed, everything is (apart from consciousness). This per se quality is called the noumenon in Kantian philosophy. A noumenon is ‘a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes’. Why mention this? Because we are trying to see a thing by looking slightly to one side of it, as we might a bright point of light amid dark. Context and contrast can be illuminating in the extreme.

We can say that teachers tend to talk more about noumenon, whereas preachers tend to talk more about subjective assertions that are hard to represent with information. We tend to call the former facts and the latter assertions (although one can assert facts).

I say above ‘We can say …’ because what we say about things is often what we end up thinking they are; but more than that: one can come at any quibble or discussion about things in so many ways that it almost makes the saying of anything redundant.

Now we are into the power of persuasion, and that takes us to courts of law in which people who are trained to be persuasive try to persuade people (12 of them) who aren’t trained in legal procedure at all that one very important thing, or another, is true or false. John is guilty. John is not guilty. Yes, there is likely evidence re the case, but the way we process evidence is subjective and open to the persuasive power (or the opposite) of the situation we are in and the pressure we are under. Some call this the madness of the jury system.

Hence the insanity of democracy. But that’s another conversation.

Do barristers preach? That may be a useful consideration. You may say they do, and I may say they don’t. Or the other way around. Point being: I might, if clever, if only, be able to persuade you that we should never preach, and that teaching is much better. That’s what I feel, but it isn’t what I know. We must be careful to know the difference between feeling and knowing. When we mistake feelings for facts we can end up with dogma, and bullets are the syllables of dogma. As I suggest that teaching is ‘better’ than preaching (because we can definitely learn from teaching but not so from preaching), I suggest that research is much ‘better’ then believing. Indeed believing is something we tend to do in the absence of fact, aka reality. In this way we can invalidate opinions: they are just reiterated conditioning. They aren’t based on fact. But when I say I think child trafficking is wrong, that’s an opinion, so …

It’s complicated.

In truth (a place to whence we should all try to travel, no matter how stony the road), when we focus on things we take for granted – things we haven’t deconstructed and assessed objectively or in fine detail – we find that they are too complex and contingent to throw our ropes of description around them and moor them. Because moor them we need to. This binding gives us the security we need to live our lives, safe in assumptions; otherwise we’d all stumble around in a state of stupefaction and awe. The awe bit it good, but the stumbling … This is the curse of those who are preoccupied by truth, and that is their blessing.

How is all this helping to ascertain whether we should preach or teach, or do a bit of both? By enabling us to sketch a world that is tricky to pin down in sentences. It’s showing us that sentences can often seem indubitable, when in fact they are just gateways to more discussion, and that discussion just leads us into new landscapes of healthy doubt.

Because always doubt the doubtless, right?

So … teach or preach, or waffle somewhere between the two? I think definitely waffle.

Consider the genius of Fuzzy Logic. Fuzzy Logic demonstrates that reality is rarely binary. On or off. Yes or no. Is or isn’t. Up or down. Reality tends to be some shade of grey in between absolutes. Reality is interstitial. Revealing it is wonderful exercise for our brains – those things that give rise to mind. But the revelation is imbued with healthy doubt. I’m saying this to sound preachy so as to make the case for teaching. Even if I was qualified (whatever that means) to do so, I couldn’t teach you that teaching is better than preaching. I could only confer and compare and fail to unweave the rainbows of our assumptions and biases.

As we come forward in time from deep history to the present, we move away from preaching and towards teaching. This is no coincidence. We now live in a world that is, to those privileged to have access to it, more research-based than previous epochs. Ironically, research-based states of mind can be less prone to dogma than belief-based ones. Research based principles tend to be Bayesian, namely: they tend to be updated according to evidence. Beliefs, which tend to be preached, do little of the kind – though the Vatican now acknowledges a Copernican cosmos the Theory of Evolution. Not so more entrenched and typically fundamentalist religious credos that tend to be preached.

When we preach, we are trying to persuade others. In this, there is a degree of arrogance. When we teach, reality is the didact, so the teacher need not try to be so persuasive. Reality teaches us humility. If we try to persuade others, as preachers often do, we must be unfeasibly certain that what we believe is worthy of evangelism. Such certainly is not wise because wisdom is inherently uncertain. We cannot quote old books as prove of our convictions, because such books just contain the guesswork, biases and tribal needs of others now deceased. Such books, mostly preached, must be considered with the healthy scepticism of minds made rational by provable reality. Yes, some aspects of such books can be taught. Many contain moral edicts and they can be taught, even if by preachers.

Where does evangelism end and propaganda begin? There is no such location.

Is preaching ever the right thing to do? Rarely. Teaching comes out on top for me by a country mile. Teaching enables us to learn. Preaching can teach us things such as moral codes – typically things that can’t be measured; but it is more usually done to share dogma. In this, preaching is an outdated and dubious things to do that should cede to teaching.

If all preaching stopped, the world would not worsen. If all teaching stopped, disaster would follow. In this realisation we can get a good sense of the value of both, and their utility; because ultimately things must be useful or become redundant over human time.