My fellowship bible study yesterday was quite a convicting one. After having pondered upon it for a while, as well as taking some time to dig on my own, I felt it was worthy to write an article about the implications of bad and good teaching/preaching.
My church fellowship is currently doing a verse by verse exegesis in the book of Colossians. We spent the whole summer picking apart chapter one of Colossians. It was a very fruitful summer, in which we learned about the perfect and complete sovereignty of Christ. We learned how Paul wrote to the Colossian church to fight the gnostic heresy that Christ was somehow an emanation from God. But, in fact, we are shown that Christ is the beginning and the end. He is the complete and perfect image (or essence in the original greek) of God. Much more can be said about the sovereignty of Christ, but that is more of a tangent from the point of this post; so we will leave that for another article.
The reason Paul wrote Colossians was to address the bad teaching (gnostic heresies) that the church of Colossae was dealing with. In fact, the church didn’t even realize there was bad teaching; they were deluded and decieved into these heresies. Paul had to hit them upside the head in order for them to realize the wrong ideas that were being rooted into their head. He had to explain them in full magnitude who Christ really was and how to really understand (gain a full understanding - epignosis) of Christ.
I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument. For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ. -Colossians 2:4,5 (NASB)
You fool, you dumb sheep!
We are lucky in this day and age to have great theologians to have teachings from: Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Piper, John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, and many many more. But even more so, we have THE BIBLE. Imagine living in the times of the Colossae church. None of the epistles have been in written form for them yet! And here, today, we neglect what God has given us; His very own words to us. In fact, we are like dumb sheep today. One of Satan’s favorite tools to delude Christians is to have them follow the first thing that drops in front of them. He wants us to avoid reading God’s word. He wants to keep us stupid, uneducated, and unintelligent. This is how so many people today fall victim to false teaching! It is the mere dependence on others to do the studying for us that opens up a whole slew of problems. This is most certainly the reasons why emerging church has been picking up so much momentum today. We are too lazy to pick up the bible and see for ourselves what it really says! I am most certainly guilty of this. It is so easy for me to just trust what John Piper or John MacArthur say about certain things, because I trust their theology. However, they are still just sinful man. Our faith should lay in God and not in man. This was a wake-up call for me to have faith in God to teach me the truths he allows me to. I should test with fire everything that is taught to me. Test it by hitting where the source of all teaching should be: the bible.
Why are you so prideful? You are just a sheep.
Once you start to educate yourself in the word, you will have the notion of being “right”. Certainly today, there are great teachers that lead the flock closer to God, but just as much, if not more, are leading the flock astray with bad teaching. Take for instance, Joel Osteen. He is seen as a heretic, a horrendous teacher leading the flock astray for his half-picture approach to the gospel. But who are we to judge? Do we take pride in the knowledge that we contain within’ us?
Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. -Hebrews 6:1-3 (ESV)
The key here is “if God permits”. How can we boast in knowledge, if knowledge comes from God alone? So let’s put this into perspective. Imagine you are a kid again and you have a science fair coming up. And (especially if you were a lazy kid like I was) you’d find anyone to do the work for you. So, let’s say, your mom is super-awesome and she says: “Son/Daughter, go watch some TV, I will do the whole project for you, you don’t have to do a single thing at all.”. Your mom then spends the whole night, not getting any sleep at all, to create a wondrous and beautiful science fair project. When morning rolls around, you stroll into the classroom with your glorious project in hand. Now, imagine saying to the other kid who did a project on the same thing, but it was much worse and you say: “Look! You did it all wrong, see my project. This is the right way to do it. How can you be so stupid!?”. If you have common sense, the first thing that comes to mind is: how dare this kid boast about his project!? He didn’t do a single thing!
But just with knowledge of truth, we didn’t do a single thing either.
God regenerates our mind to understand truth. In the grand scheme of things we have no claim to attainment of knowledge. Because of this, we have absolutely no reason to boast in our knowledge. So, then, how should we respond to pastors like Joel Osteen? I think those more educated in God’s truth will be quick to condemn the efforts of Joel Osteen. But, remember this, we have no right to judge him. For to judge him, would be like claiming knowledge attained better than him. We should realize that, as hypocritcal as Joel Osteen and other bad teachers sound, we need to accept them as someone who loves the flock. We must be more gracious in our criticisms of not so good theology. (Note, by “accept” I don’t mean to let the teachings flow into your life, that would make you a dumb sheep. By “accept” I mean that you must not be judgemental and boastful to the knowledges you have gained over others.)
A delicate balance
Now by no means do I endorse what Joel Osteen teaches. What I would say is that we need to be smart sheep, not a dumb one. We need to educate ourselves in the word of God (to the point of which God allows us to reach). And through this gain of knowledge, we need to be graceful and tactful in our speech and in our actions. We should never be in a seat of condemning or judging; that is left for God alone. Realize that everything, including our knowledge of truth, comes from God. Knowing that will humble you and put you in your place in the matters of this world. I know I was definitely brought down from my prideful heights.
