Parts of this article are excerpted from: Healing, Hope or Hype?
A little Bible knowledge is like a little nitroglycerin: dangerous when mishandled.
There’s a subtle deceit and conceit inherent in all fundamental Christianity, Evangelicalism, or whatever one chooses to call it. It’s the belief that mastery of the Scripture is the same as the knowledge of God. The Scriptures may be perfect,[1] but our understanding never will be: not yours and not mine. We can have a biblically accurate understanding of grace, and know nothing of its power in our lives. We can win an argument, splitting hairs over Paul’s doctrine, and know absolutely nothing of Paul’s life. We can know the chronology of Passion Week, and possess nothing of His resurrection life.
We can easily cling more tightly to our understanding of the Scripture, than to the Person whom the Scriptures themselves reveal (John 5:39-42, Luke 24:27). I have learned to cling to Him resolutely, but hold my understanding loosely.
Is there any one reading this who has had more than 20 years of teaching experience who would really want to listen to your own messages from 20 years ago? I sure don’t want to listen to mine! Yesterday’s absolute assurance on a given topic can often be quite embarrassing today! It is likely that today’s assurance on some point will be tomorrow’s embarrassment, and God’s redemptive grace sustains and covers it all! It’s called growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord. The objective historical fact of Christ in resurrection is the foundation of my faith, not my understanding of the Bible at any given point in time.
The offense of Evangelicalism is the overweening smugness in evangelicals that their particular group and its views are “right about everything.” No one is right about everything. To believe so is naïve and arrogant. If God could be placed under our cognitive control through our objective knowledge of Him, He could not truly be God. To be able to comprehend something is to have gained a certain power and mastery over it. A god comprehended is no god.[2] Only God is comprehensive. Humanity can apprehend, and be apprehended by what it does not entirely comprehend.[3] We can only see what we have been given to see. Therefore it is all of grace and if my brother or sister is wrong in his or her views, where do I get off fire bombing him/her on the Internet?
Internet debates about who is right and who is wrong, on this or that issue, the point counter-point scriptural cat fights that we get into with each other, and spread all over Facebook, are a waste of time and ruin the Lord’s testimony. The flame throwing that goes on in the Christian blogosphere that claims to be “advocacy for the truth” is misguided, juvenile behavior that betrays the Spirit of Christ. It is rooted in adolescent arrogance: having just enough accurate information to be dangerous, not enough maturity to know what to do with it, and too much energy that would be better spent elsewhere.
There is no spiritual substance or merit associated with “being right” about the Bible. Jesus said that the Great Commandment (Mt. 22-36-40) fulfilled the law and the prophets. The Great Commandment is relational in two dimensions. Being right relationally with God and man is everything. Maturity is defined by the relationships we maintain, not how right we are on a point of Scripture. The New Covenant amplification of the Great Commandment is not: “Make sure you know the Bible better than everyone else,” but rather, to love one another as He has loved us. This is relational, incarnational, and practical.
We can be “right” in our view of the Scriptures and wrong in our relationships and spirit. We are therefore, more insidiously false (and more dangerous) than the people we may be chiding for allegedly being in error! We have betrayed the Lord with our intemperate and clumsy handling of His own Word. Personally, I would rather just be “wrong” than a betrayer! He is betrayed every day in thousands of associations and blog postings around the world.
So then, what is truth and what is falsehood and is there a place for advocacy of views or apologetics?
The confident fundamentalist would answer: “Of course, what the Bible says is true and everything else is false!” It’s not as easy as it may sound. One of the most amazing lessons of my life is to observe how honorable men and women can look at the same Scripture and come to completely different conclusions. It is a fascinating study in human nature to see how everyone . . . yes, everyone . . . filters his interpretation of Scripture through his personality, history, psychology, gift mix, and calling. No one is totally objective, despite all seminary and Bible School protests to the contrary.
Is everyone who disagrees with me in belief or practice, “false”? Regrettably, many believers act that way. False prophet, false teacher, heretic, and cultist are indiscriminately tossed around causing great harm. Too often, anyone who holds a contrary opinion, or who practices his or her faith more imperfectly than “I do,” is lumped into one of these categories.
What is false? What is true? It’s not as tidy as some might presume. Here are some examples.
- Balaam was categorically a false prophet. However, he gave the only accurate Messianic prophecy (Numbers 24:17) in the Pentateuch.
- Deuteronomy 18:19-22 is frequently held as the standard of evaluating what is true or false, particularly regarding prophetic ministry. That is a predictive word that does not come to pass establishes the prophet as false. However, Deuteronomy 13:1-5 says if a true word is given, a “prophecy that comes to pass,” but the fruit of the true prophecy causes someone to drift from the Lord, then the word and the prophet are still false! So we have a false, “false word” in Deu. 18 and a true “false word” in Deu. 13! By the Deu. 18 standard many of God’s true
prophets would have been declared “false” because their prophecies did not come to pass in the life times of anyone contemporary with the prophet! There is a reason a prophet’s existence was . . . tenuous.
- The case could be argued that Agabus was a true prophet who gave a “bad word”: accurate in perception, but not in application, trying to discourage Paul in Acts 21:10-13. Was he false in doing so?
- The case can also be made, that by definition, the gift of discernment and the judging of prophetic utterance means that “true” people can share “false” things. If it is not so, there’s no point to the exercise of discernment.
- It’s possible for our “light” to be “darkness” and to hold truth in unrighteousness.[4]
Professor David C. Jones has ably presented a simple scale of how truth devolves into falsehood:
Truth – mistaken opinion – isolated error – systemic error – falsehood
We all aim for Truth, but the “truth” is, we all have mistaken opinions. A mistaken opinion if practiced can coalesce as isolated error. Isolated errors, if many, need to be managed. They become systematized. When systematized error is propagated with fervor, we are tiptoeing in the tulips of falsehood. When systematized error is unrepented of, it becomes hardened, and if persisted in, results in falsehood and a spirit of falsehood.
We are now into “heart” territory. Falsehood, to me, is not merely being “wrong” about something. It is a heart issue of agenda, motive, the rebuffing of rebuke, and attempts to bring correction. We should not be labeling people as “false’ if the situation is mistaken opinion, isolated error, or systematized error. The only way we can know for sure is through . . . well, we are back again to . . . relationship.
In Christ’s kingdom, relationship is everything. Frankly, “Christianity” does not, and will not work on another other platform. What follows is for all the “techno-geeks” out there. Trying to live Christianity on any platform other than relationship is like trying to run Windows Vista on Windows 3.1. It’s all legitimate code from the same manufacturer, but you’re headed for a system crash.
Well, Steve, are you saying we shouldn’t give ourselves to the disciplined study of the Word?
Like Paul, I say: “God forbid!” I have devoted my life to the study of Scripture. I have a passion for the pursuit of biblical accuracy that is all consuming. However, I also under-
stand the reasonable limitations of my reason. I am deeply aware that our faith is revelational. The Scriptures are locked. If the Holy Spirit is not actively administrating the Word as I submit to it (notice, submit to it, not study it) I will get nothing of value from my efforts.
The study of Scripture is like making coffee in the morning. Just because there are grounds in the top of the coffee machine, does not mean there’s anything ready to be consumed yet. Water and heat are required for coffee.
Scripture study is like putting coffee grounds in my noggin. Until the Holy Spirit waters what I have put in the top, and the Cross has applied heat to what I think I know, I don’t have anything worth giving to anyone. It is a futile waste of time to argue that my coffee grounds are better than yours. It is in the tasting that we will know. When the coffee is brewed, then everyone in the room will know the aroma. Until water and heat have been applied to the coffee grounds of Scriptural knowledge that we may have accumulated, all we have is strongly held religious convictions about the Bible: a spirit of death based in truth.
I am not saying that we cannot be passionate or advocate strongly for our views within our spheres of relationships. The Jews and the Rabbis were able to engage in raucous debates with one another and then go out for lunch together. They understood that their different views did not affect their covenantal status with each other! They were in it together by covenant. Westerners, especially those descended theologically from European scholastic rationalism, with a fragile or unhealed introspective western psychology, perceive any divergence of views as a personal attack, and reason for the breaking of relationship.
I am also not saying that there are not some truths (little ‘t’) that are worth contending for. But if in our contention we betray Him who is the Truth, we have failed. There is a way to contend for the faith that is consistent with the New Covenant in both letter and spirit. We can all debate about doctrines, things, and “isms”. But we must be very careful about personalizing attacks. We can vigorously debate ideas. We need to leave people to the Lord: especially those who profess to be His.
If the Scriptures are alive (and they are) the ever-present challenge is to allow the Voice within the pages to speak to us, not project our voice onto it, thus hearing only what we have been conditioned to hear. The essence of religiosity is to be committed to the Scriptures but not hear the Voice in the Scriptures. He is Lord over His Word and by His Spirit, and through the Cross, He administrates His Word to us. The Cross/resurrection is the great interpretive filter of Scripture.
The Word of God does not present itself to us. We present ourselves to it. Therefore, I do not approach the Scripture looking for principles to understand. I approach the
Scriptures looking for a Person to know, a Lord to worship, and a King to yield to. I’m not looking for ammo to scorch my brother on the Internet and develop a blogosphere following for myself as an “uncompromising champion of the truth.”
Uncompromising champions of the truth normally travel with hammer and nails in one hand and the Bible in the other.
[1] In the sense of inspiration of the original autographs.
[2] Gerhard Tersteegen, quoted in Spirit and Truth, William Suttles, Ph.D., Raleigh, NC, p. 77.
[3] Adapted from Spirit and Truth.
[4] Matthew 6:22-23 is loaded with Semitic cultural, psychological, cosmological and physiological idioms that affect meaning. I cannot digress into them. Scholars and commentators are divided on exactly what “holding the truth in unrighteousness” of Romans 1:18 means. Some think it means to suppress, others think it means a lack of integrity or sincerity in possessing truth.
