Why Do People Prefer Teachers Who Tell Them What They Want to Hear?

Question 0046.

The phrase itching ears comes from one of the most honest descriptions of human nature in all of Scripture, and Paul saw it coming with painful accuracy. People would gather teachers to suit their itching ears, choosing voices that scratched the spot rather than told the truth. “The time is coming,” he wrote, “when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

The picture of itching ears is striking because it puts the problem in the listener before it puts it in the teacher. We tend to blame false teachers for misleading the crowds, and they bear real guilt. But Paul says the crowds go looking for them. The demand comes first, and the supply rises to meet it. So I want to ask the harder question, not only why bad teachers exist, but why so many of us want them. Let me work through it.

What Itching Ears Really Wants

An itch wants to be scratched, and that is the whole point of the image. Itching ears do not want truth. They want relief, comfort, and the pleasant sensation of being told what they already wish to hear. Paul says people accumulate teachers “to suit their own passions,” which means the desire comes first and the teacher is chosen to serve it. The appetite is in the driving seat, and the message is selected to feed it.

This is why a message of flattery will always draw a bigger crowd than a message of repentance. The flatterer tells me I am fine as I am, that my desires are good, that God exists mainly to bless the life I have already chosen. The faithful teacher tells me I am a sinner in need of grace, that some of my desires must die, that following Jesus will cost me. One scratches the itch. The other lances the wound. It is no mystery which one a crowd with itching ears will prefer.

The Old Pattern Beneath the New Problem

This is not a modern invention. The prophets met itching ears constantly. The people of Israel said to their seers, “Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions” (Isaiah 30:10). Jeremiah watched as the false prophets healed the wound of God’s people lightly, “saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). The hunger for soothing lies in place of hard truth runs all the way through human history. Itching ears are as old as the fall.

The teachers who rose to meet that hunger were popular precisely because they removed the discomfort. They promised blessing without obedience, peace without repentance, a future without judgement. And the people loved them for it, right up to the moment the unheeded truth arrived anyway. The pattern repeats in every age, including ours, because the human heart has not changed. What flatters still gathers a crowd. What confronts still empties a room.

Why the Comfortable Lie Feels So Right

Part of what makes itching ears so dangerous is that the soothing message often feels more loving, more positive, more gracious than the hard one. Who wants the preacher who speaks of sin when another offers nothing but affirmation? But this is a trick of the appetite. A doctor who tells me I am well when I am dying is not kind. He is the cruellest man in the room, however gentle his voice. The teacher who flatters my itching ears is doing me the same deadly favour.

Real love tells the truth even when it stings, because it is aiming at my good and not at my applause. Paul could ask the Galatians, “Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?” (Galatians 4:16). The faithful teacher risks being thought unloving in order to actually love. The flatterer keeps everyone happy and lets them walk on toward the cliff. I have written more on the cost of this drift in what happens when experience is valued over doctrine.

Itching Ears in the Pew and the Pulpit

I must be honest that this temptation runs both ways. Itching ears in the pew create a market, and weak hearts in the pulpit are tempted to supply it. A preacher who craves the approval of his hearers more than the approval of God will slowly trim his message to fit their passions, softening every hard edge until nothing is left that could possibly offend. He may never tell an outright lie. He simply stops saying the things they do not want to hear, and the result is the same.

That is why Paul’s charge to Timothy, set right beside the warning about itching ears, is to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2). The answer to itching ears is not to scratch them better but to preach the word faithfully whether it is welcome or not. The cure for a bad appetite is a steady diet of good food, not a richer supply of sweets.

Keeping My Own Ears Honest

The most uncomfortable application is the one I must make to myself, because I have itching ears too. The question is not only whether the teachers around me are faithful, but whether I am the kind of listener who wants them to be. Do I choose what I listen to because it is true, or because it makes me feel good? Do I bristle when the word convicts me, hunting for a gentler voice, or do I receive the rebuke as a friend? The state of my ears is largely my own responsibility.

The Bereans show me the better way, examining the Scriptures daily to test even an apostle (Acts 17:11). They did not pick teachers to suit their passions. They measured all teaching against the word. If you want to grow in that kind of discernment, I have written on how to detect false teaching. The goal is to become a listener who loves truth more than comfort, which is the surest protection against the teachers who would exploit an itch.

From Itching Ears to a Hungry Heart

The opposite of itching ears is not a grim endurance of dull sermons. It is a genuine hunger for God’s truth, the appetite of the psalmist who found the word sweeter than honey (Psalm 119:103). When I love the truth itself, the soothing lie loses its grip on me, because I am no longer looking to be scratched but to be fed. A heart that hungers for God is far harder to deceive than an ear that only wants to be tickled.

So the long-term cure is not only vigilance against bad teachers but the cultivation of a real appetite for what is true. Feed that appetite, and the flattering voices grow less appealing on their own. Starve it, and itching ears will lead you from one comfortable error to the next. The state of my appetite, in the end, decides what kind of teaching I will tolerate and what kind I will run from.

Guarding the Gathered Church

Because the problem begins in the listener, the answer is not only a matter for preachers. It is the responsibility of the whole gathered church to want the truth and to make room for those who tell it. A congregation that quietly rewards flattery and punishes faithful correction will get the preaching it has asked for, however much it later complains about shallowness. We shape our teachers more than we like to admit, by what we praise and what we will not sit still to hear.

So I would urge any church to build in the safeguards that protect it from its own appetite. Welcome plain preaching that names sin as well as comfort. Honour the faithful man who risks your displeasure to tell you the truth, rather than drifting toward the smoother voice who only ever soothes. Encourage one another to receive correction as a gift, not an insult. A people who do this together are far harder to lead astray than a crowd of individuals each looking to have a private craving fed.

None of this happens by accident, and none of it happens once and stays done. The pull toward the comfortable message is constant, in every generation and in every heart, including the hearts of those who have walked with God for decades. So the guarding is a long, patient work, renewed every week as the church gathers again around the open word, asking God to give it a hunger for what is true rather than a taste for whatever happens to be pleasant to hear.

The Mercy of a Hard Word

I have come to see the hard word as one of God’s kindest gifts, even when it lands like a slap. The friend who tells me the truth about myself is doing me far more good than the crowd of voices that only ever applaud. Scripture says that faithful are the wounds of a friend, while an enemy multiplies kisses (Proverbs 27:6). The kiss feels better in the moment. It is the wound, strangely, that heals.

So when a sermon or a brother says the very thing I least want to hear, I try to thank God rather than reach for the exit. That is not natural to me, and I doubt it is natural to you either. But a heart trained to welcome correction is a heart being kept safe, because the lie that flatters can do far more lasting damage than the truth that stings. I would rather be wounded into life than soothed all the way to ruin.

So, now what?

Before you judge the crowds who run after flattering preachers, turn the warning on yourself, as I have to. Itching ears are not someone else’s problem. They are the default setting of every human heart, including mine, and the first step toward health is admitting that I would rather be soothed than corrected. That honesty is where change begins.

So train your ears to love the truth even when it stings, and to be suspicious of the message that only ever makes you comfortable. Sit under teaching that reproves as well as encourages. Test what you hear against the word like the Bereans did. And when a sermon convicts you, resist the urge to go hunting for a softer voice. Which will you choose the next time the truth makes you wince, the gentle lie or the loving wound?

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.

2 Timothy 4:3 (ESV)