Kruger Quotes

The problem is that the people with the most ridiculous ideas are always the people who are most certain of them." (The Decider, July 21, 2007)

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Confidence is the prize given to the mediocre

those who can’t . . . don’t know they can’t. According to what’s now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, it’s when we lack competence that we’re most likely to be brimming with overconfidence.

Actually, it’s scary. Scarier than Freddy Kruger and Jason put together.

As he satin the tree he looked down at the girl in the floral dress and felt his heart miss a beat.

For your little sister, who was eaten by dogs... Isn't it to get revenge? For your comrades from the restoration, for Dina, for Kruger, we need to keep moving forward to avenge them. Even if you die. Even after you die. This is the story... that you started.

His Infernal Majesty leans towards me confidingly. “You have imposter syndrome,” He says, “but paradoxically, that’s often a sign of competence. Only people who understand their work well enough to be intimidated by it can be terrified by their own ignorance. It’s the opposite of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, where the miserably incompetent think they’re on top of the job because they don’t understand it.

Real life isn't made up of heroes and villains. Just ordinary people making choices they have to live with.

Justification has so dominated the landscape of Christian thought that adoption has been marginalized. We don't hear much about our adoption at all. We hear a lot about forgiveness, but very little about the staggering reality of our inclusion in Jesus' relationship with his Father in the Spirit.

I have no complaints, except for the world.

Like all vain men, he had moments of unreasonable confidence.

...kind of kid who seems to be always shaking hands with trouble.

Many fail to grasp what they have seen, and cannot judge what they have learned, although they tell themselves they know.

I'm some sort of guinea pig in a home economics crash course for werewolves.

As the manager sits before a performance, as the critics wait like hungry dogs to rip apart the performance, they all become entwined in the theatrics of it all.

However, I'm here to tell you dear reader that there is always more than meets the eye.

it doesn’t matter where we are going, or what the future brings and what people might do to us, the past always comes back one way or another.

It was not the Fall of Adam, therefore, that set God’s agenda; it was the decision to share the great dance with us through Jesus. Adam’s plunge certainly threatened God’s dreams for us, but that threat had been anticipated and already strategically overcome in the predestination of the incarnation. Jesus Christ did not become human to fix the fall; he became human to accomplish the eternal purpose of our adoption, and in order to bring our adoption to pass, the Fall had to be called to a halt and undone….Jesus is not a footnote to Adam and his Fall; the Fall, and indeed creation itself, is a footnote to the purpose of God in Jesus Christ.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Dumb people like Trump think they're super smart, because they are so spectacularly stupid, they don't even know how much stuff they don't know. They are so dumb, they don't even know that other people know a lot more about a topic than they do.

Among wilderness survival tips, punching a wild animal in the face probably isn’t on a checklist.

If you have all the knowledge, but no personality, you are a specialist. If you have all the personality, but no knowledge, you are a Kardashian.

Don’t let the Dunning-Kruger effect cast its shadow over you. If you want to be great at something, you have to practice, and then you have to sample the work of people who have been doing it for their whole lives. Compare and contrast and eat some humble

She pushed the revelation about Dr. Kruger into a side pocket of her mind, to be examined more thoroughly another time. Who would ever have suspected that he was shy? That any grownups were, for that matter, and especially a person as important as a doctor?

Your comfort is my silence.

She inches closer so we’re practically sharing the same air. Maybe we are, because I’m light-headed.

The Dunning Kruger Effect: Dumb people like Trump don't know how dumb they are. They don't even know how much stuff they don't know. They don't know that other people know the stuff they don't know that they don't know. Dumb people like Trump believe they know everything there is to know.

Nichols credits a 1999 study by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, research psychologists at Cornell, with driving home this point. Nichols writes, “The lack of metacognition sets up a vicious loop in which people who do not know much about a subject do not know when they’re in over their head . . . and there is no way to educate or inform people who, when in doubt, will make stuff up.

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” This is the famous study by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University in New York mentioned a few chapters ago that launched the new science of what we might call Stupidology. It

If only I could handle my problems like a video-game style battle against a boss. But there are no power-ups in real life. No FTW moment when I can declare total pwnage. I don’t even know who the bad guys are.

There’s a long, uncomfortable silence in which I contemplate what might happen next. Maybe like the villain in a movie, this is where she gives me a long spiel about her hard-up life before she kills me. Not that I totally believe she’s nefarious. Real life isn’t made up of heroes and villains. Just ordinary people making choices they have to live with.

The public has no idea that writing is a disease, and that the writer who publishes is like a beggar who exhibits his sores.

On my first day of kindergarten, I bit a kid. Hard. In my defense, he deserved it.

Girl Don't be dumb Don't be coy Don't be intimidated Don't think it can't happen to you Do safer sex because AIDS kills Don't die for love

Social media has provided an incredible insight into the dark and dismal mind of the dunce

Bax had learned there weren’t many things a dumb guy liked more than to have someone tell him how smart he was.

The doctrine of the Trinity means that relationship, that fellowship, that togetherness and sharing, that self-giving and other-centeredness are not afterthoughts with God, but the deepest truth about the being of God. The Father is not consumed with Himself; He loves the Son and the Spirit. And the Son is not riddled with narcissism; he loves his Father and the Spirit. And the Spirit is not preoccupied with himself and his own glory; the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. Giving, not taking; other-centeredness, not self-centeredness; sharing, not hoarding are what fire the rockets of God and lie at the very center of God’s existence as Father, Son and Spirit.

There is, and there always has been, an unusually high and consistent correlation between the stupidity of a given person and that person’s propensity to be impressed by the measurement of I.Q.

My dreams were always the same I could see myself laughing . I was standing somewhere in a forest a raindrop rolled down a branch and fell on my nose . My hair was a sparkling red color and I was wearing a white flowing ball gown made from silk. I could feel him the one I loved staring at me intensely . His eyes as gold as the sun . I could hear him saying my love Fleur .. you are everything to me. His fingertips lightly shivering as he touched my face beckoning for me to come closer. I don't know what I would do if I lost you . "Are you sure you want to be with me?" My body protested as I fought for him to stay but he never did. As soon as I woke up his presence was gone.

When you start with legal holiness, you have eyes only for the cross, and you never see that in Jesus Christ, nothing less than the eternal trinitarian life of Father, Son and Spirit is being lived out inside human existence. You never really get the staggering meaning of the incarnation.

That is the best picture of what the incarnation means when we look at in its true context. For that is what happened in Jesus Christ from his birth to his resurrection. The Son of God entered into our broken, Fallen, alienated human existence. He took upon himself our fallen flesh. He stood in Adam's shoes, in Israel's shoes, in our shoes, and he steadfastly refused to be Adam, He refused to be Israel. He refused to be what we are.

He doesn’t move a muscle except for his eyes that follow her path as though somehow he can see her contrails. His whole existence revolves around a girl who left his orbit, and he was the one who spun her off her axis.

The Dunning-Kruger effect was proposed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. They found that, if people have limited knowledge on a topic, they tend to be extremely confident in what they’re saying and grossly overestimate their competence to discuss it. Conversely, as people gain more knowledge, they become more shy about expressing it. If we apply this theory to social media conversations, the people who know the least will be commenting the most because they’re over-confident. The Dunning-Kruger effect, combined with empathy destruction, could create an environment where those with the least knowledge are the most vocal, yet are unable to comprehend opposing points of view. At the same time, those with the most knowledge are likely to stay silent. Hence we end up with a cesspool of over-confident ignoramuses yelling at each other. Social media in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen.

My heart slowed to its normal pace as my brain processed my friend’s face and not the face of the Scream dude or Freddy Kruger. “Not seen anyone. Just got here.” “Damn it. She ran off after another argument with the idiot, and her phone’s turned off!” Ah, the idiot. Rachel had a very on/off relationship with her boyfriend, Jack. I never understood that—if you pissed each other off 90 percent of the time, then just call it a day. “We should find her.” Why?

The Christian God is interested in relationship with us, and not just relationship, but union, and not just union, but such a union that everything He is and has—all glory and fullness, all joy and beauty and unbridled life—is to be shared with us and to become as much ours as it is His. The plan from the beginning, in the Christian vision, is that God would give Himself to us, and nothing less, so that we could be filled to overflowing with the divine life.

The cosmos stands amazed at just how dumb Planet Dumb is. With an uncanny talent for error, humanity has at every crossroads taken the wrong path. Humanity is the species guaranteed to choose wrongly. What else would you expect in a Dunning-Kruger world? Ignorance reigns supreme. Everyone is part of the Dumbageddon Conspiracy.

(In case you were unaware, “woke” is a term used by urban teens to describe a mental state in which one believes they are cognizant of how the world really works but instead wouldn’t have a clue if it slapped them in the face. Saying that someone is “woke” is a hip way of saying that they suffer from late-stage Dunning-Kruger effect.)

She goes very still and I can count on one hand all the times we’ve been here before, standing at the precipice of almost and staring down into the abyss of what-if.

In Jesus the performance pendulum stops — both the pride of success and the despair of failure are absorbed by grace.

Ireland is but an island off the coast of Cape Clear.

Cindy Sherman, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Judy Chicago, and Barbara Kruger are just some of the many women who broke old conventions and altered norms in modern art.

Sophie Kruger had worked in a house herself, up in Middle Swan. But now she pretended she was quality. There were none so self-righteous as those who rewrote their past.

the Dunning-Kruger effect, the cognitive bias in which people come to believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is essentially being too stupid to appreciate how stupid you are. That sounds like a pretty good description of the world to me. So

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is basically being too stupid to know how stupid you are. That

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is essentially being too stupid to appreciate how stupid you are.

Why are stupid people so confident and why are smart people so shy? The effect of Dunning-Kruger.

Kruger paused. He glared at the crowd massed before him, he squared his shoulders and, shaking his dusty fist towards them, he growled, “This time, when I say war, it will be war to the bitter end.

She placed a protective arm around him and drew him closer to her. Her expression was pensive, her lips drawn in a tight line and her brow furrowed. Kruger saw the shadow of grief pass briefly over her features.

McCue: Now, Mrs. Margolies, this is Mr. McCue of the City News Bureau— City News Bureau— is it rue, Madame that you were the victim of a peeping tom? Kruger: Ask her if she’s worth peeping at? Wilson: Has she got a friend?

Von der Goltz in excuse for the action of the late President Kruger in 1899: "The Statesman who, knowing his instrument to be ready, and seeing War inevitable, hesitates to strike first is guilty of a crime against his country.

This family dynamic might explain why I am so offended by individuals who exhibit the Dunning-Kruger effect, that is, a self-assuredness and supreme confidence despite one’s idiocy (David Dunning was my professor at Cornell University).

Anything you can tell me would help. I know you’re swamped here. You can’t possibly give Chelsea’s case a hundred percent of your attention. Sharp and Kruger are experienced investigators who can focus solely on finding Chelsea. You don’t have the manpower or the budget.

Reason and logic are a force for unity. People can rally around the objective, absolute Truth. All of these are undermined by the Dunning-Kruger effect, by the rise of irrationalism. Today, the world is full of subjectivists and relativists who actively sneer at the Truth and proclaim that everyone has their own truth. When you start believing your own truth, your own propaganda, your own bullshit, you become a narcissist. You think you are a god, and that no one is allowed to contradict you. After all, who are they to challenge your truth?

Here is the short version of the Kool-Aid Fallacy: Cult … therefore Jim Jones … therefore mass suicide … therefore Kool-Aid. It’s astonishing how much of social media now revolves around simple word association sequences. Absolutely no thought goes into anything. No one ever delivers an actual argument. If they ever do attempt an argument, their punctuation, spelling, grammar, logic and general education are not up to the task, and soon dissolve into meaningless mush. But usually they just hurry on to the insults and ad hominem attacks, which is the part they love. Before long, the Kool-Aid fallacy is eagerly applied. Every argument should have a Dunning-Kruger quotient associated with it. Most people are 100% on the Dunning-Kruger scale. They imagine themselves geniuses, and geniuses dunces. As ever, they have inverted reality.

Nyati Safari would like to show you the best of the African countries. We have handpicked the most exciting destinations in Southern Africa, which can be combined with your safari adventure at Nyati Safari Lodge by Kruger National Park. We can always tailor your holiday according to your special wishes.

I’ll go back. I’ll go back through that Kruger Park. After the war, if there are no bandits any more, our mother may be waiting for us. And maybe when we left our grandfather, he was only left behind, he found his way somehow, slowly, through the Kruger Park, and he’ll be there. They’ll be home, and I’ll remember them.

The world of conspiracy theories is one where stupid people dismiss the expertise of highly qualified people, and attribute to these experts a wicked desire to lie to and gull the masses. In other words, they portray experts as sinister enemies of the people. Conspiracy theories reflect the increasingly prevalent notion that the average, uneducated person is always right – can always see the real truth of a situation – while the educated experts are always wrong because they are deliberately lying to the people to further a conspiracy by the elite against the people. It is increasingly being perceived as a “sin”, a crime, to be smart, to be an expert. Average people do not like smart people, do not trust them, and are happy to regard them as nefarious conspirators. They are constructing a fantasy world where the idiot is always right and honest, and anyone who opposes the idiot always wrong and dishonest. A global Confederacy of Dunces is being established, whose cretinous values are transmitted by bizarre memes that crisscross the internet at a dizzying speed, and which are always accepted uncritically as the finest nuggets of truth. Woe betide anyone who challenges the Confederacy. They will be immediately trolled.

You cannot reason with an IDIOT!"--Tarzan's Greatest Adventure(1959)

Think wolf; be wolf.

The cold reality of what he is ― what I am ― sets in like cement and our former selves have been buried and smothered to death beneath the thick concrete of our separate fates.

... because nobody wants to see a small creature left to suffer or left by itself out in the bushes.

Queen Hippolyta: You know that if you choose to leave, you may never return. Princess Diana: Who will I be if I stay?

When it comes to explaining the formation of the New Testament, we cannot ignore the “elements inherent within itself or its Jewish origins” that gave it birth.

We can only bear the fruit of patience when we have something to be patient about.

My greatest hope is to be a mother who loves Jesus with a deep and abiding affection that joyfully overflows to my children.

To them he’s the slightly less frightening alternative to the grim reaper.

The ones who are lost are not the sinners who are listening to Jesus, but the religious people who have no problems, at least in their own minds.

Uno de los aspectos más dolorosos de nuestros tiempos es que los estúpidos están muy seguros de sí mismos mientras los inteligentes están llenos de dudas

The most powerful thing in life...is our thinking, which has ability to change any situation." Shashank Rayal

Stars are always aligned; it just depends on where you’re standing.

Sometimes supporting the victim means immediately withdrawing support from those who have yet to speak the truth about the abuse and refuse to let the light shine.

Democracy, let’s face it, was never more than a disguised version of moronarchy … rule by morons.

He makes it sound so Zen. Or Jedi. Like some kind of Wolf Yoda. There is no try. And maybe that’s all there is to it. Don’t over-think the shift. Just embrace the form that I want to be in.

You don’t have to have studied the description-experience gap to understand, if you’re truly expert at something, that you need experience to balance out the descriptions. Otherwise, you’re left with the illusion of knowledge—knowledge without substance. You’re an armchair philosopher who thinks that just because she read an article about something she is a sudden expert. (David Dunning, a psychologist at the University of Michigan most famous for being one half of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the more incompetent you are, the less you’re aware of your incompetence—has found that people go quickly from being circumspect beginners, who are perfectly aware of their limitations, to “unconscious incompetents,” people who no longer realize how much they don’t know and instead fancy themselves quite proficient.)

If you get anywhere near her again, I will personally make sure it will be the last time you step foot in this town. Your family will be driven out of here. Your college dream will be dead. I will unleash every ounce of power I have in this town to make sure your lives are a continuous, Freddie-Kruger-style nightmare. Fair warning: I’m very good at nightmares. I’ve lived a different life from yours, and know what you rich kids can survive…and what you cannot.

The Moronarchy is upon us. Welcome to the Dumbocalypse. The Dumbageddon Conspiracy has finally paid off. Freedumb and Dumbocracy have reached their logical conclusion. How did we get here? We can thank the Dunning-Kruger effect, the most powerful and disturbing force in the world today ... the force of human stupidity, the greatest destroyer and wrecker there has ever been. Come and explore the bizarre world of idiots, of the Confederacy of Dunces, of the Dunciad.

The thing about bozos is that bozos don’t know that they’re bozos. Bozos think they’re the shit, which makes them really annoying but also incredibly entertaining, depending on your point of view. Shrinks call this the Dunning-Kruger effect, named after two researchers from Cornell University whose studies found that incompetent people fail to recognize their own lack of skill, grossly overestimate their abilities, and are unable to recognize talent in other people who actually are competent.

The life that God lives as Father, Son and Spirit is not boring and sad and lonely. There is no emptiness in this circle, no depression or fear or angst. The Trinitarian life is a life of unchained fellowship and intimacy, fired by passionate, self-giving love and mutual delight. Such love, giving rise to such togetherness and fellowship, overflows in unbounded joy, in infinite creativity and unimaginable goodness. The gospel begins here with this God and with this divine life, for there is no other. Before time dawned and space was called to be, before the heavens were stretched out and filled with a sea of stars, before the earth was summoned and filled with people and life and endless beauty, before there was anything, there was the Father, Son and Spirit and the great dance of Trinitarian life. The amazing truth is that this Triune God, in staggering and lavish love, determined to open the circle and share the Trinitarian life with others. This is the one, eternal and abiding reason for the existence of the universe and human life within it. There is no other God, no other will of God, no second plan, no hidden agenda for human beings. From the beginning, God is Father, Son and Spirit, and from the beginning, this God has determined not to exist without us.

In sum, a pastor’s words can be either disproportionately encouraging or disproportionately damaging. Pastors effectively have a “pulpit” inside people’s heads. This is precisely why character matters so much when it comes to whether a person is qualified for the ministry

Imagine you are very good at a particular game. Pick anything—chess, Street Fighter, poker—doesn’t matter. You play this game with friends all the time, and you always win. You get so good at it, you start to think you could win a tournament. You get online and find where the next regional tournament is; you pay the entrance fee and get your ass handed to you in the first round. It turns out, you are not so smart. All this time, you thought you were among the best of the best, but you were really just an amateur. This is the DunningKruger effect, and it’s a basic element of human nature

Do you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect?” “Never heard of it,” said Will. “Scientific fact,” said Elise. “Part one: Idiots and incompetents grossly overestimate their intelligence and abilities. In fact, they’re so stupid they’re unable to see what complete morons they really are. So they end up with a false sense of superiority, which in turn creates a false sense of confidence, which perpetuates the cycle that constantly reinforces their fake superiority. Part two: Genuinely smart and skillful people chronically underestimate their own abilities and end up suffering from equally false feelings of self-doubt and inferiority.

The consequences of the regulation regarding the use of footpaths were rather serious for me. I always went out for a walk through President Street to an open plain. President Kruger’s house was in this street – a very modest, unostentatious building, without a garden and not distinguishable from other houses in its neighbourhood. The houses of many of the millionaires in Pretoria were far more pretentious, and were surrounded by gardens. Indeed President Kruger’s simplicity was proverbial. Only the presence of a police patrol before the house indicated that it belonged to some official. I nearly always went along the footpaths past this patrol without the slightest hitch or hindrance. Now the man on duty used to be changed from time to time. Once one of these men, without giving me the slightest warning, without even asking me to leave the footpath, pushed and kicked me into the street. I was dismayed. Before I could question him as to his behaviour, Mr Coates, who happened to be passing the spot on horseback, hailed me and said: ‘Gandhi, I have seen everything. I shall gladly be your witness in court if you proceed against the man. I am very sorry you have been so rudely assaulted.’ ‘You need not be sorry,’ I said. ‘What does the poor man know? All coloured people are the same to him. He no doubt treats Negroes just as he has treated me. I have made it a rule not to go to court in respect of any personal grievance. So I do not intend to proceed against him.’ ‘That is just like you,’ said Mr Coates, ‘but do think it over again. We must teach such men a lesson.’ He then spoke to the policeman and reprimanded him. I could not follow their talk, as it was in Dutch, the policeman being a Boer. But he apologized to me, for which there was no need. I had already forgiven him. But I never again went through this street. There would be other men coming in this man’s place and, ignorant of the incident, they would behave likewise. Why should I unnecessarily court another kick? I therefore selected a different walk. The incident deepened my feeling for the Indian settlers. I discussed with them the advisability of making a test case, if it were found necessary to do so, after having seen the British Agent in the matter of these regulations. I thus made an intimate study of the hard condition of the Indian settlers, not only by reading and hearing about it, but by personal experience. I saw that South Africa was no country for a self-respecting Indian, and my mind became more and more occupied with the question as to how this state of things might be improved.

You cannot have big thoughts if you are constantly doing small things (e.g. always checking your smartphones for the latest micro-updates on your social media of trivia and pointlessness). Using a smartphone makes you dumb. It shortens your attention span and shrinks your intelligence. They should be renamed dumbphones. They don't expand your consciousness, they contract it and make it tiny. Most smartphone users are out of their tiny little minds. Predatory capitalism and its consumer gadgets have been enormously damaging to the intellectual progress of the human race. They have been remarkably successful at dumbing down humanity and promoting the Dunning-Kruger effect.

John slowed and took a deep breath. “Why do you think I started with the Word, instead of the Son?” “A moment ago I thought that perhaps you used Word because you wanted us to know that Jesus is God’s message to us.” “Yes, indeed. Think back to your professor’s favorite quote from Karli.” I could feel his joy in leading me. “I could never forget it; my teacher said it a hundred times. ‘Not God alone, but God and humanity together, constitute the meaning of the Word of God.’” “Now,” he said, his voice quivering in anticipation, “substitute ‘Jesus’ in place of ‘the Word of God,’ and say the quote again.” “Not God alone, but God and humanity together, constitute the meaning of Jesus.” I repeated it several times, my whole body shaking as I did. The apostle watched me with delight, which made me proud. I changed the order of the phrases several times in my mind, then cried out, “Jesus means that God and humanity are together.” The apostle covered his mouth with both hands, leaning back in joy. Then he cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, as if cheering me to continue. But he couldn’t wait, and all but shouted, “What is the opposite of together?” “Separated!” Then it hit me. “Jesus means that God and humanity are not separated but together in union! And this union,” I said, fully aware that I was saying way more than I could possibly understand, “is the Word of God!” “ThatistheGospelAccordingtoSaintJohn!

Yet I cried out, “But what about the Eloi? Didn’t the Father forsake Jesus on the cross as he encountered our sin? That is what I have always been taught.” “Forsake?” he growled, obviously appalled at the thought, anger flashing in his eyes. “Who could think that the Father would ever forsake Jesus? He was with him, in him, through it all.” “Sir, is that not what the psalm says? Matthew and Mark quote, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me.’ And even in your gospel you quote from the same psalm.” “Do your people not know how to read?” John frowned, almost dumbfounded yet not losing his joy. “Jesus could hardly breathe as he hung on that cross, but he was able to speak the first line of that psalm in victory. We all knew it by heart. Read the whole psalm, brother, and you will see. ‘For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard.’” He

I cannot protect my children from my weaknesses. As hard as I may try, at some point my sin will affect their lives. However, the way I deal with my failure can provide an example for them to follow. I am a sinner raising sinners. Each of my children will face the weight and sorrow of his or her own sins. Just as we teach daily hygiene habits like brushing teeth, our children need instruction on how to find cleansing for their souls. By teaching our children about confession and repentance as well as grace and forgiveness, we bless their lives for years to come.

Who can doubt that this is Planet Dumb? Who can deny that this is the dumbest planet in the cosmos? It’s the planet that willfully chose to go Full Retard. Aren’t you sick of being a dumbo, one of the dim legions of dunces? Don’t you want to be on the smart side, the side of intelligent people? This could be a rational, logical world, if we had the will to make it so. Sadly, we seem to lack the desire for sanity and rationality. Humans are a Mythos species. They love their crazy stories. They reject Logos. Humanity will not live happily ever after. Its stupidity will kill it. Ignorance is fatal. Old Humanity chose to go Full Retard. New humanity – HyperHumanity – will go Full Smart.

For the disciples, Jesus is not a mere prophet heralding the latest divine message. Jesus is a revolution. Note the very first verse of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” These three simple statements carry hitherto unknown and inconceivable ideas about God that are destined to change the world. As a good Jew, John certainly knows the first verse in the Hebrew Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”2 But John has met Jesus, and “saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.”3 While John certainly agrees that God created all things, he cannot leave it at that, for he has seen something that has changed his understanding of everything. Note the parallel

In other words, in the long list, most everything is about a leader’s character; only a single characteristic pertains to giftedness (teaching). Depending on how the traits are counted, the ratio is as drastic as twelve to one. There’s nothing on this list about being a strong leader, being able to cast a vision, or being charismatic or dynamic. I am not suggesting those aspects of leadership are irrelevant, but they certainly are not the heart of God’s concern for a pastor. Nor are they ever to trump God’s concern over character. As the Reformer Martin Bucer noted, “It is better to take those who may be lacking in eloquence and learning, but are genuinely concerned with the things of Christ.”33 When this God-given ratio is reversed and churches prefer giftedness over character, churches inevitably begin to overlook a pastor’s character flaws because he’s so successful in other areas. Leadership performance becomes the shield that protects the pastor from criticism. As Michael Jensen observed, “We frequently promote narcissists and psychopaths. Time and time again, we forgive them their arrogance. We bracket out their abuses of their power, because we feel that we need that power to get things done.”34