MP3 Digital Download Teaching Set)
By Jeremy Lopez
Somewhere along the way, a lot of people accepted a role they were never assigned. They became the spiritual hall monitors—self-appointed enforcers of belief, behavior, language, and tone. Watching closely. Correcting quickly. Calling out publicly. All in the name of faith, truth, or being “biblical.” The authority wasn’t given. It was assumed. And the assumption has become normalized.
In today’s culture, especially online, moral and spiritual policing is often framed as courage. If someone says the wrong thing, believes the wrong thing, or asks the wrong question, there’s an almost reflexive need to intervene. Silence is treated as complicity. Restraint is mistaken for weakness. And correction is elevated as proof of conviction.
But the question remains: who decided it was your job?
When we look at the life of Jesus, the pattern is unmistakable. He does not spend His time monitoring behavior from a distance. He does not shame people into transformation. He does not correct for sport or enforce holiness through humiliation. In fact, many of His sharpest words are aimed not at those getting it wrong, but at those convinced it was their responsibility to manage everyone else’s righteousness.
Jesus consistently refuses the role of spiritual hall monitor.
He engages people relationally, not performatively. He tells the truth without turning it into a weapon. He invites repentance without controlling outcomes. His authority never relies on volume, visibility, or public correction. And He seems far more concerned with the condition of the heart than with enforcing compliance.
What often passes for faithfulness today looks very different.
Spiritual policing tends to value control over care. It corrects without relationship and confronts without humility. It confuses accountability with authority and assumes that conviction gives permission. But correction without invitation rarely leads to transformation. Public shaming does not produce holiness. And constant spiritual surveillance creates fear, not faith.
Jesus does not appear interested in fear-based faith.
He trusts that truth can stand without hall monitors guarding it. He trusts that the Spirit can do work that coercion never could. He trusts that transformation unfolds through encounter, not enforcement. His way suggests that if faith has to be constantly policed to survive, something has already gone wrong.
This doesn’t mean truth doesn’t matter. It means not every disagreement is a calling. Not every irritation is a divine assignment. And not every perceived error requires your involvement.
The urge to correct is often less about faithfulness and more about discomfort—discomfort with ambiguity, with difference, with losing influence or control. Calling someone out can feel righteous, but it can also be a way of asserting dominance while avoiding self-examination.
Jesus repeatedly turns the focus inward.
He redirects attention from managing others to tending the self. From monitoring behavior to cultivating love. From enforcing rules to embodying a way of life. His invitation is not to supervise the spiritual growth of others, but to follow Him.
Faith becomes distorted when it is reduced to regulation.
It becomes compelling again when it is lived rather than enforced, practiced rather than policed, modeled rather than monitored. The world does not need more spiritual hall monitors. It needs people who reflect the posture of Jesus—grounded, humble, discerning, and secure enough to trust God with work that was never theirs to do.
Because transformation has never belonged to the monitors.
It belongs to God.
Patrick Carden
