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Message from Pastor Peter Marty

Expertise

By Pastor Peter W. Marty

Think of something at which you are good. I mean really good. Perhaps you have formal training that sets you apart in a field — teaching, medicine, advertising, or car repair. Or, you happen to be an individual with extensive informal training, a lot of experience, and a brilliant knack for common sense. It could be that you grow the best tomatoes in the neighborhood, hands down.

Whatever it is, you are something of an expert. At least, people look up to you as someone who knows what he or she is doing. You are proficient, and your proficiency has brought you a measure of self-confidence. As we all know, a certain degree of self-confidence is indispensable for navigating life.

But what happens when self-confidence becomes over-confidence? It’s actually a pretty common phenomenon of which we all must be aware. The popular writer, Malcolm Gladwell, argues that when a field of work is brand new to us, we don’t trust our judgment. Our skills and confidence grow, however, eventually allowing us to leave the word novice behind. We have some success. We begin to feel surer of ourselves. “Finally, we get to the top of our game,” writes Gladwell, “and we succumb to the trap of thinking that there’s nothing we can’t master.” The older we get, and the more experienced we become, the greater our tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our judgments.

This is when valuable self-confidence quietly morphs into over-confidence — a trait we never intended to acquire. It happens in the world of sports, when a lead runner or race car driver relaxes too much in his or her expertise. It happens in real estate and the construction industry when excessive speculating and overbuilding take over. It happens in the financial world, where over-confidence among a few individuals can bring down a storied, 85-year-old investment firm on Wall Street.

In the spiritual world, we are no less prone to over-confidence. We can easily over-estimate our rightness. Our knowledge about a few things can create a comfort zone that is unhealthy. At times, our confidence in important faith claims can clash with our desire to be open and transformed.

It is helpful to adopt a confessional demeanor within our lives. Reflective prayer time with God can help us notice where our confidence has spilled into over-confidence. Where have we grown presumptuous in our comfort with Christianity? Where does our spiritual behavior indicate that we have succumbed to the trap of thinking there is nothing we cannot master?

The Pharisee in the synagogue, while extremely confident of his own righteousness, was probably something other than a complete jerk (Luke 18). His gratitude to God for making him different (and more generous) than those around him may have been nothing more than early devotion and faithfulness gone awry. A bit too much “spiritual expertise” in an otherwise devout believer claims another victim.

There is something we can do about this peril of spiritual over-confidence. We can walk back into our faith “as if for the first time.” In waking to each new day, we can treat life less as a been-there-done-that experience and more as a gift of wonder and surprise. Every time we step into church, we can leave presumption and know-it-all-ism in the trunk of the car, enough so that we can open ourselves to some fresh movement of God’s Spirit.

Confident faith is wonderful. Expertise isn’t all bad either. But when spiritual confidence leads to spiritual expertise, look out. It’s dangerous to the soul.

Pastor Peter Marty,

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