As I return from a great weekend of fellowship with some of my closest friends and the most faithful people I know I know that God has moved and changed me. There were many good times over the weekend highlighted by great conversations and an hour long prayer session with our area that closed with 'Glory' on Sunday night. This time I believe brought our area of Young Life leaders much closer to one another through the working on the Holy Spirit.
However, I would be remiss not to further examine some of the points of the weekend that I found distressing and in some cases particularly alarming. It seems as though God may have been communicating through another speaker in the weekend when he read 2nd Timothy 4:3-4 which states:
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (NASB).
There seems to be continuing movements that propagate a low view of God and a complete disregard for the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. In this case the analogy of Christ being our bridegroom and the Church being His bride was extremely misrepresented. The claim was that Christ was our groom and each of us individually was His bride. While this point may seem rather trivial it in fact has much larger implications such as a correct view of God and the respect for the authority of the Bible in our lives.
To begin, the argument that we are all individually the Bride of Christ can be easily refuted by a correct rendering of the Scriptures on the matter. For example, the book of Song of Solomon is not written about the relationship of God to the Church, but rather a love relationship between a man and woman. This can be evidenced in the close parallels found mainly in Proverbs 5:15-20, 6:24-29, and 7:6-23.
Second, Scripture cannot be taken and twisted to mean things that we want them to mean. We must study Scripture and then form our lives around what is found in God's Word. One example of Scripture being twisted in order to fit God into the belief held by the speaker was the interpretation of Psalm 139 and specifically verses 17&18. In the Psalm David is describing how the Lord is everywhere and knows everything. Verse 17 & 18 read:
17 How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You. (NASB).
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. (NIV)
The claim was that God thoughts were constantly about us and that He was watching us sleep in some sort of stalkerish manner. While I do not deny that God can watch us sleep I do not believe that portraying God as a helpless being who sits above obsessing over us is scripturally accurate. The more important point however, is that it is clear from verse 17 that David is talking about how precious God's thoughts are to Him and not How precious David's thoughts and actions are to God. The NIV reads almost exactly the same way so there was surely nothing lost in the translation.
A second piece of Scripture that was vastly twisted was the parable to the costly pearl. It reads in Matthew chapter 13 verses 45&46:
45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, 46 and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. (NASB).
While the correct interpretation of this passage, that the kingdom of heaven should be the most valuable thing in our life and that we should give up everything for it, was mentioned a more dangerous thought and even larger problem was proposed. The idea claimed that we were the pearl and that God had sold everything to gain us. The phrase "flip the Scripture around" was literally uttered from the stage. Once again we cannot do damage to the text to make it fit with our views. If Jesus wanted to say that we were the pearl He would have when He first said it. Scripture points to us being anything but a pearl in saying, "There is none righteous, not even one" (Romans 3:10), and "every intent of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5) and many other verses point to our sinful nature.
Another disturbing point was that God was compared to as a middle-school boy who gets butterflies in His stomach when He is about to talk to us or even approach us. This is troublesome on many levels beginning with the belief that God is insufficient without us. This is simpy not true. God does not need us. He says that He stones could be used to cry out about the Lord (Luke 19:40). Additionally this view of God does not strike fear in anyone seeing that God is made out to be very effeminate and weak. And the belief that if we are individually the bride of Christ, which as stated above we are not, means that everyone will be in a wedding dress it is no wonder why men are not coming to church or stepping up and becoming God-fearing men who will lead the next generation of Christians.
Lastly, the reason why I care about this so much is that a person is put in front of a group of 600 or so leaders of High School students and preaches a very man-centered secondary analogy and believes it is the pinnacle of Scripture interpretation. This is Gnosticism of the secret knowledge form. But becasue he is speaking and in a position of authority it is as though it should be taken as truth. Furthermore many people will not do their own research because they believe that speaker has been responsible and true to the Word. If you are praying that something is not heresy in front of 600 people you should not be teaching it in front of 600 people.
I pray that God may show us truth in all of this and that we may grow in our faith in Him. To Him be the glory in everything.
