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.
4 comments:
derek-
I think a lot of what you are saying is some of what I was trying to say last night in regards to God and His glory.
The piper talk I linked to on my blog directly relates to this; especially the 7 questions. I'll post two of those here because I think if you were to ask these questions to the majority of American Evangelical Christians, you would get some pretty telling answers on the horribly low view of God that exists today.
Do you feel most loved by God because He makes much of you or because He frees you to make much of Him forever?
Are you God-centered because God is supremely valuable to you or are you God-centered because you believe you are supremely valuable to Him?
great post derek. we should always be wary of anything that seems to make us seem bigger and more important and God seem smaller and His value diminished. way to be faithful to the Scripture and not just make unwarranted attacks ... well done.
Rock-
I respect that you are bold with your convictions, but I don't neccessarily agree with some of your points. I want to preface this with I agree that it was a strange message, but I wouldn't consider it herasy, and I certainly wouldn't consider it gnosticism.
I agree with you in that there are often issues with God being portrayed as soft and "effeminate". But I think we need to be cautious not to over correct and portray a God that is all business and has little interest in us because this is obviously not true. My point here is that as I'm learning more and more about the personality of God, and really starting to recognize his voice in my life (which is definately still a work in progress) I see a God that is dynamic. While God is a god that deserves our submission, and commands our worship, he is also full of incomprehensible love for us.(Phillipians 2:8) Although it was a strange series of lessons, I think Eric got the main point across and that is that God loves us. To say that God is not obsessed with us, I think would be false. He knows the number of hairs on your head.(Mat 10:30)
A couple other things, if nothing else other than to maybe defend Hoffman's reputation as a Bible teacher and not a heretic,
I came across the analogy of becoming married to Christ a few months ago in a George Whitefield sermon. It's called "Christ:The Best Husband" it's on ccel.org if you're interested.
Also Song of Soloman is a somewhat controversial book, many popular theologians claim that it is an allegory to God's (Christ's) relationship to the church. John Wesley makes a very good summary of this in his introduction to Song of Soloman in his Bible commentary, Matthew Henry makes the same claim in his (Both of which are on ccel.org, John Wesley's is full of real good stuff, I don't know too much about Matthew Henry's, I dont read his all that often)
Just a closing note, I don't think that painting a picture of God who is obsessively in love with us gives a low view of him, or makes him effeminate. I say that because I believe it is a vital part of his dynamic personality. and I'm only just starting to see it.
Anyway, I hope this doesn't sound like a rebuke or anything of the sort because it's not, just food for thought, prayer, and conversation.
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Joe
Joe,
Thanks for your post. I believe that we agree on many of the points regarding the talk. However, I'd like to take the opportunity to clarify some of my arguments on our points of disagreement.
First, I totally agree with you and in the talk in terms of the depth of love that God has for us. I do agree that a picture of a God who has an inordinate amount of love for us was portrayed in the talk. Additionally I would agree with point of Him knowing everything about us as you referenced in bringing up Matthew 10:30. The point of contention I have with it was that God was depicted as deficient and lacking if we did not love Him back or if we were not in a relationship with Him. God is not lacking in anything and I believe that we would both agree on that point.
As far as the claim on Gnosticism, the error in the talk, that one must have a certain type of special knowledge or a way of viewing things which leads to a deeper knowledge of God, is an error stemming from the Gnostic belief that we are essentially good. While this may have not specifically been mentioned in the talk the content of the talk points to this view. This belief of that humans are essentially good at their core is unbiblical as can be seen in the verses previously posted (Romans 3:10, Genesis 6:5) and in others such as Romans 3:23 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God", Isaiah 53:6 "We all like sheep have gone astray". This special knowledge was put forth when the Bride and Bridegroom analogy was seemingly said to be the pinnacle of analogies that can be found in Scripture. While there is certainly support for the analogy as was referenced in the talk such as John 3:29, the emphasis on the special knowledge of viewing our relationship with God through the lens of the Bride and the Bridgegroom puts it in the category of Gnosticism. Since Gnosticism is a form of heresy that would also make it heresy.
Thanks for the recommendations on further resources I will have to take a look at them. I have read some of Whitfield which was good and have not heard of Henry. With Wesley I may be careful because some of his teachins such as we can become sanctified in this life I find to be incorrect.
Lastly, I would like to ask what do you mean in saying that God is dyanmic?
Thanks for your time, post, and further conversation. I hope this helped to clarify some of the points between us.
Derek
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