In a couple of recent posts, I have suggested that the devil deserves more respect than is apparent in the language of some church leaders, and explained why the armor of God is designed for defense, not offence.
In what I imagine will be the third and final installment on this topic, let’s look at why the whole concept of picking a fight with Satan is such a bad idea.
He is more powerful than us. When God gives Satan permission to attack Job, with one caveat, look at the destruction Satan wreaks. In short order, his ten children are killed, a large number of servants are killed, and all of his wealth is destroyed. God restricted the scope of Satan’s attack so that he could not kill Job, but the fact that God made the rule suggests that Satan could have done that as well (as he did to his family and servants). Satan has immense–though not absolute–power, and we stir him up against us at our peril (and probably the peril of those closest to us).
It suggests an imperfection in God’s design. Drawing again on Job 1, notice Satan’s answer when God asked him what he was doing: Satan was “roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.” (Job 1:7). God isn’t outraged or surprised; he doesn’t tell him to stop, even though he could have. In fact, God draws Satan’s attention to Job, who becomes a target for the big test. Elsewhere, we see the devil referred to as the “prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2) and as the “ruler of the world” (John 12:31). These are positions of influence that God, in his infinite wisdom, has allowed Satan to occupy, albeit temporarily. The concept of defeating Satan in an offensive battle suggests that God made a mistake in letting him stick around.
Victory is impossible and absurd. Assuming we could kick in the devil’s head, or skubala his face, what would we achieve? Would we get a week where we would be free from temptation? Would we be able to live without sinning? If I defeat the devil, would others get the same benefits? How many others? How long would it last?
Jesus didn’t do it. Ah hah, you say, but the Bible does tell us to resist the devil and he will flee from us (James 4:7). Indeed it does, but resistance is not quite the same as chasing the defeating the devil as if he were our quarry. When Jesus resisted the devil’s temptations in the desert, Satan came right back with a new challenge. After the third temptation, Jesus told Satan to leave him, which he did, though we see throughout the remainder of the Gospels that Satan kept testing and trying to defeat Christ. We are specifically told that Satan was at work in Judas when he betrayed Christ (Luke 22:3). Satan doesn’t go away for long, so aggressive actions against him have no useful effect, which is why Ephesians 6 is much more practically focused on preparing us for defense.
It attempts to pre-empt the work of Christ. Having established in point #2 that God has given Satan an influential role to play in human affairs, we also know that his defeat is assured, but it is not at our hands. Throughout the book of Revelation we see that it is God alone who has the power, and who promises to, defeat the devil and make all things new (Revelation 12:9-10, 21:4-5).
God told us not to.See here for the beginning of this whole discussion, or for the primary sources, see Jude 8, 2 Peter 2:10-12, and Ephesians 6:13.
Of my three arguments for not blaspheming the devil, the one about the armor of God being for defense rather than offense seemed the most offensive to quite a few commentators. The objection was that the armor includes a sword, which is an offensive weapon.
Before we get to the sword, let’s look at the stated purposes of the armor.
Stand Firm. Ephesians 6:11 introduces the armor by telling us that the purpose is to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
Resist. Ephesians 6:13 tells us to wear the armor so we can resist the devil in the evil day.
Stand Firm. Having stood firm and resisted, we stand firm some more. The Greek usage is interesting; stand and firm are the same word, so Paul is using repetition to emphasize the necessity of creating a very strong defensive position. Not only is the word repeated, but the concept is repeated. You have, therefore, four commands to stand within just a few sentences that explain the armor’s purpose.
These commands serve as a preface to the detailed components that follow, and should be used to interpret how we use them. For each implement that Paul tells us to take up, their purpose is to stand-stand.
Loins girded with truth. A protective and defensive measure. It’s interesting that this first element applies most obviously to protect our legs and their ability to stand firm.
Breastplate of righteousness. Like a bulletproof vest, it will keep you alive, but won’t defeat the enemy.
Feed shod with preparation of the gospel of peace. Peaceful shoes probably aren’t intended as aggressive weapons, unless you take them off and throw them at someone, Iraqi style.
Shield of faith. Used defensively to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Helmet of salvation. Again, defensive unless you intend to win the war with head butts.
Sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Now we get to the fun bit. A sword can be used offensively, but it seems fairly obvious to me that its place in this list is due to its defensive capabilities.
Just so we can use yet another numbered list, let’s break down exactly why I think the sword is intended defensively.
Immediate Context. A sword is obviously more effective as an offensive weapon than the other five items, but given the three purposes and the other five defensive items, the context of the passage surely demands us to treat the sword as a defensive device, otherwise it is the odd one out and would contradict the instructions for its use. Let the Bible interpret the Bible.
New Testament Context. The sword is the word of God, so where else to we see it used against the devil? The temptation of Christ in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11). Three times Satan tempted Jesus; three times Jesus resisted him by quoting Scripture to him. “It is written…” Jesus is clearly wielding the sword of the Spirit here. So what’s the result? After the third temptation, Jesus tells Satan to get away from him, quotes Scripture, and then it’s recorded that the devil left him. Jesus didn’t chase; he resisted and stood firm. In other words, Jesus clearly uses the sword of the Spirit defensively, even though he alone had the power to use it to completely defeat the devil.
Old Testament Context. When David volunteered to fight Goliath, he was initially outfitted in Saul’s armor. David was about to enter a contest where offense was clearly more important than defense (the Israelites had been in a defensive position for 40 days; now it was time to resolve the stalemate), so he ditched the armor and went with his shepherd’s tools. (This isn’t as strong an argument as #2, but it is an interesting parallel, especially if we let the Bible interpret itself.)
Historical Context. In an age of guns and missiles, killing is done at a great distance, so perhaps we have forgotten the dynamics of face-to-face battle that were much more familiar to the writers and readers in Bible times. Even so, we are probably familiar enough from Gladiator-type movies to understand that a good soldier can use a sword purely defensively.
What do we say, then, about the purpose of the sword? Although it can be used offensively, the preface of the armor passage, its grouping with other defensive items, and Jesus’ example in the desert demand that we interpret the sword of the Spirit as a weapon intended to help us resist the devil and stand our ground.
A few days ago I referenced Noble’s tweet about the future of the church in a way that was intended to dismiss it with a deserved bit of ridicule. To refresh your memories, here’s what he said:
WHAT IF this past 2,000 years of the church was merely the foundation to set up what God REALLY wants to do? That thought pumps me up!
The more I think about it, the more I think this warrants a more substantial response.
It contravenes Scripture. This was the essence of my first post. Jesus laid the foundation of the church in Matthew 16:18. All the church needed was provided by Jesus and the apostles and can be found in Scripture. There can only be one foundation for the church, and it was created two thousand years ago.
It contradicts special revelation. The most galling aspect of Noble’s thought is one of the words he emphasized: REALLY. Think about that idea and let it roll around in your mind. What is Noble saying? God has been hiding his real intentions from us. When we read Paul’s instructions to the church in Corinthians, for example, we can ignore that because it’s not really what God was meaning for the church. Appalling.
It condescends to the saints. According to Noble, the last two millennia were merely a foundation for today. Merely–another word to linger on. There’s an awful lot of amazing history dismissed by that arrogant word. Augustine. Aquinas. Luther. Calvin. Spurgeon. Graham. Persecutions. Reformation and revivals. Never mind them. There are merely mere.
It contains secret knowledge. This is the dangerous bit. If we believe what Noble says, and if he really believes it himself, what that means is that God has a new blueprint for the church that has been hidden until now. We will learn what it is from special leaders who receive special visions from God that they expect their followers to commit to.
It creates space for error. If Noble can establish that the church is about to change is form and function, he can make whatever rules and set whatever standards he likes. Because it need not be based on Scripture, it will necessarily be wrong. It will also be impossible to criticize his beliefs because it will be impossible to tie him down to the standard of Scripture. Noble is notoriously slippery when it comes to defending himself.
People will question our motives and our ministry. But our goal in all of this should not be to try to explain ourselves but to simply keep our eyes on the Lord and strive to become more like Him. If we spend too much time explaining ourselves we won’t have time to actually do what it is God has commanded of us in the first place!
If you can simply show that how you do church conforms to the established Scriptural standard, there’s no need for your defense to take very long. If the Bible compels listeners to test teachers, I think you might also say that a true Biblical teacher will be happy to show that he can pass those tests. They didn’t bother Paul. If Noble spent as much time defending his beliefs and behaviors as he does complaining about being questioned, we’d all be much better off.
If, on the other hand, he is doing church a new way and on the basis of special personal revelation, he’d better find every excuse he can to not submit to those tests and to keep doing what his vision compels him do to.
To be clear, I am not making a case here that Noble is doing church in violation of Scripture. I am pointing out that he is clearing space for himself that makes that not only possible, but difficult for his followers to detect and impossible for his critics to correct.
A few people around these parts have been insisting that gross errors of misapplying Scripture, as we saw with Noble’s teaching on Simeon, happen so infrequently at NewSpring that we need not be concerned. That being the case, here’s something else they can be unconcerned about.
Brad Cooper posted the sermon he was preparing when we last saw him with an assault weapon. I took a quick listen, as can you here.
His basic point was that worship is a weapon like his gun. (By the way, whoever thought it was “excellence” to open a meeting of high school students with a slow-motion video of a guy spraying bullets, then walking out on stage with the gun? Stupid, stupid, stupid.)
Cooper used a passage from 2 Chronicles 20 in which Judah faces the prospect of annihilation from an overwhelming enemy, and, led by Jehoshaphat, asks God for deliverance. God tells the people that he will save them. In a part of his response he says,
The battle is not yours, but God’s. Tomorrow march down against them…. You will not have to fight this battle.
For most of Cooper’s sermon he reads and applies the story faithfully, but when he comes to the concluding application, he gets it all backwards.
When the men … begin to sing and give praise to God, it was a weapon. …When they started praising–and notice[d?] that praise and worship is a weapon–God starts blowing up the enemy….
Here has been my prayer all week–that God would have some spiritual land mines out here where you’re standing tonight, and that as you rightly praise God, he would start blowing up your flesh, … that he would start blowing up and sending artillery back into your home where you’re facing this struggle, … that it would start sending grenades back into your schools….
As we worship tonight, that’s what our focus is going to be.
Worship is a weapon.
Worship was a consequence of victory, not the cause of it. It was a reaction to God’s power, not the reason for it. It’s a distinction that makes a big difference. The weapons in 2 Chronicles were all God’s; nothing the people of Judah did had anything to do with how God (the battle was his, remember) fought the battle. Cooper is supposing that worship is the cause of victory, which is why he advocates that his congregation engage in assault worship after his sermon.
Note his intended focus in worship–our problems. It’s worship inverted. We focus on ourselves and tell God to do good stuff for us.
Even so, narcissistic worship is still worship, just of a different god.
Yesterday I tried to defend Simeon against a slander from the pulpit that he was a crazy old man. In response, I see a few folk are also aiming at John the Baptist, suggesting that if God could use crazies like him in the Bible, he can use crazies in the pulpit today.
Look at John the Baptist, he was a loon by the standards of the day yet he Baptisted Jesus.
Another defended Perry Noble’s embarrassing Twitter posts by comparing his behavior to John.
john (who prepared the way for Jesus) ate bugs. you can’t really get any weirder than that.
Baloney. John was no crazy loon. Here’s why you shouldn’t think of him as some redneck idiot.
There is nothing in Scripture that suggests he was crazy or weird. He was an intimate of Jesus; he was much sought after for his astute preaching; he was a priest. What’s loony about that? My only guess is that his attire and diet seem weird. They weren’t.
He wore clothes made of camel hair. To our modern senses this seems foreign, though I thought it was well established among NSers that we don’t judge people according to what they wear to church. More seriously, he lived in the desert because he was fulfilling a prophecy that that’s where he would be found (Matthew 3:3). He’s not likely to be discovered there wearing a Brooks Brothers suit.
He ate locusts. Again, he lived in the desert. He didn’t have the luxury of dining at Fogos whenever he felt the urge. Also, there was nothing at all strange about it. Leviticus 11:21-22 tells God’s people that they are fine to eat.
There are, however, some winged creatures that walk on all fours that you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper.
He was Jesus’ priest. John was the son of a priest, was a priest himself, and consecrated Jesus as a priest. That’s a big-time resume.
He was respected by the chief priests. When Jesus was questioned after cleaning out the Temple, he appealed to the fact that John had baptized him (Matthew 21:23-27). It was a winning argument for Jesus and quieted his accusers. John the Baptist was a daunting, well-known and respected figure.
So, on what account can we say that John the Baptist was weird or loony? Are we not perhaps just re-imagining the intelligence and behavior of godly men like Simeon and John to justify the lesser intelligence and boorish behavior of more questionable modern leaders?
Seth asks how I know that Simeon is a priest, and accuses me of making stuff up by insisting that he is. Elsewhere, commentators on the Bathroom post have told us that they want to see some more theology on this blog. So let’s do some.
Getting Simeon right matters because if Simeon was not a priest, you and I could not be saved. If we dismiss Simeon as a crazy old man, we invalidate Jesus’ redemptive work on the cross.
Yes, it’s that important. Here’s why.
Jesus had to perfectly obey the law. Paul makes clear in Romans that the point of the law was to condemn us. No-one can obey it. Jesus, however, did. He’s the only one who obeyed the law perfectly, which makes his righteousness effective when by God’s grace it is credited to believers. If Jesus had not kept the law, he would not be able to save us from the law’s punishment.
Jesus had to conform to the law’s requirements for firstborns. Exodus 13:2 required the consecration of every firstborn male. Jesus was a firstborn male. He had to be consecrated.
Jesus had to conform to the law’s requirements for circumcision. Luke 2:21 tells us that Mary and Joseph obeyed that requirement.
Mary had to be purified after Jesus’ birth. Leviticus 12:2-4 tells us that she had to wait until the right time.
‘A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period.
On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised.
Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over.
Luke tells us that this is what Mary had been waiting for in Luke 2:22.
When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.
Jesus was consecrated at the same time that Mary was purified. Luke explains the connection in Luke 2:23.
As it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord.”
Mary and Joseph had to offer the correct sacrifice. Leviticus tells us that the parents had some options on what sacrifices to bring for the purification and consecration. From Leviticus 12:6, 8:
She is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering.
If she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering.
Mary and Joseph obeyed this requirement by bringing the doves or pigeons, as recorded in Luke 2:24. Luke is being very careful to explain the connection between Leviticus 12 and what is happening here in Jerusalem. Leviticus 12 and Luke 2 are exactly parallel. So, let’s go to the next requirement:
Jesus had to be consecrated by a priest. Luke says the consecration and purification are the same event. Leviticus says that the purification must be done through a priest. From Leviticus 12:6-8:
When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering.
He shall offer them before the Lord to make atonement for her…
In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean.’
Luke 2:27-28 tells us that Simeon was the one who did all of this for Jesus and Mary.
When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God
Only a priest could do for Jesus what the custom of the law required. Simeon was the person who did what Mary and Jesus needed done.
Simeon must have been a priest.
If Simeon had really been the out-of-control, crazy old man that Perry Noble describes, we miss the significance of this event.
If Simeon were not a priest, Jesus would not have been consecrated according to the requirements of the law. Had that been the case, he would have not perfectly followed the law. Had that been the case, he could not have atoned for our disobedience to the law. Had that been the case, we could not have been saved.
Simeon’s resume matters.
(For extra credit, why did Mary and Joseph bring pigeons and doves instead of a lamb?)
If you spend any time listening or reading modern church leaders like Perry Noble and Steven Furtick, you know that they are driven by vision. Their job is to cast vision, and everybody else’s job is to follow the leader’s vision.
It’s a leaders job to cast vision and focus people on the future, not to be in a constant state of comparison. I wrestle with this–every leader I know does; however, I honestly believe that the more passionate and obsessive we become about VISION…the more of a difference God will allow our churches to have.
Church members are expected to believe the vision religiously. They are something to be believed in.
People DO BELIEVE in the vision God has placed IN you.
The word vision is not the same as we use in corporate vision statements. The word has a number of possible meanings:
a) vision (in ecstatic state)
b) vision (in night)
c) vision, oracle, prophecy (divine communication)
d) vision (as title of book of prophecy)
In the context of this verse, it refers to God’s inspired Word. Notice the contrast in the but. People who don’t listen to God’s Word cast off restraint, but blessed are the people who listen and obey it. The antidote to perishing is not to cast vision, but to keep the law.
In fact, visions in the Old Testament usually describe things to be avoided. Scan the minor prophets, for example, to see how often visions are descriptions of God’s consuming punishment for sin. They are never blissful dreams of future goodness; prophets who cast such positive visions are condemned (Ezekiel 13:16, Jeremiah 23:16-18). Another way to translate the verse might be something like
Where there is no certain threat of God’s devastating punishment, the people will act carelessly and without restraint, but people who obey God’s law will be blessed. (Proverbs 29:18, Duncan translation)
As Lance Rowlett points out, the common misapplication of the verse is ironic.
Properly interpreted, this passage is a timeless call to proper proclamation of Truth. But in order to properly proclaim God’s Word, we must properly interpret it.
Of late, though, the passage has been improperly interpreted, thus improperly applied to ministry. And that is the irony–a verse that implies the need for correct handling of God’s Word has been improperly handled (cf. 2 Tim. 2:15), and thus ends up extinguishing its own intent.
So-called visions can be dangerous and wrong. Many times in the Old Testament, God’s people are warned away from false teachers casting their own visions.
See Jeremiah 23:16, for example (all of these verses use the same word for vision as Proverbs 29).
This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord.
Here’s another example from Ezekiel 7:26.
Calamity upon calamity will come, and rumor upon rumor. They will try to get a vision from the prophet; the teaching of the law by the priest will be lost, as will the counsel of the elders.
One more from Jeremiah 14:14.
Then the Lord said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds.
At least Perry Noble realizes that his own visions are risky.
I believe that if a leader is consistently spending time with Jesus and being set on fire that, from time to time, he or she will cast a vision that is so bold that everyone in the room becomes uncomfortably excited!
The comforting thing for Noble is that if someone points out that the vision is false, it’s actually proof that it’s correct.
He must understand that if the vision is from the Lord it will be attacked…people will not like it…it will get personal…BUT, even when all of these things happen he simply will not back down from what he knows the Lord has spoken into him.
Confidence is casting a strong vision and asking others to join you…
When someone asks you to follow a vision, especially when it’s not God’s certain revelation, run for your lives.
A few weeks ago our friend, BRink, posted the following video on his blog to highlight the fact that his pastor says some odd things. The point of the video seems to be the hilarious (Albert, that’s sarcasm) bit at the end about weed-smoking grandmas. I found the first part the most appalling, where Noble just invents a lesson about Simeon and worship from whole cloth.
Here’s what he said:
Here comes Mary and Joseph, and they’re walking into the Temple and they’ve got their baby, and here comes the old man. He’s an old man. The Bible says he’s getting close to death. He walks up to Mary and Joseph and takes the baby from them. Now, that’s a weird scene right there. If you are at NewSpring church, and you walk in the lobby and the old man walks up and takes your baby going, “Praise God!” And you’re going, “What in the world? Security!” You’re calling people. You’re freaking out.
Here’s what happened to Simeon. He was moved by the Spirit to a place where Mary and Joseph were moved by the Word. They met together, and he said, “I’m going to take him in my arms. I want to get as close to him as I can, and I don’t care what people think about me, and I’m willing to risk ridicule, and I’m willing to risk being pushed away, and I’m willing to risk my life because that baby is Jesus and I want to get as close to him as I can. And he took Jesus in his arms, saying, “I want to be as close to you as I can.” Worship is when you and I say, “Jesus, I want to be as close to you as I can, and I don’t care what others think about me, and I don’t care how others perceive me. All I care about, Jesus, is seeking your face and being as close to you as I can.” That’s worship.
Here’s why it’s a problem:
It’s self centered. Simeon was playing his priestly role in consecrating Jesus to prepare him for his own ministry. This was not about Simeon getting his jollies at all; it was about God.
It’s out of control. Simeon was not a maverick; Mary and Joesph didn’t freak out. Representing Simeon as someone who did unpredictable things in the temple must be comforting to a preacher who relishes his own attempts to push the limits of what’s acceptable in church.
It ignores God’s formula. This wasn’t a special, out-of-the-blue meeting. It was a planned aspect of whole-life worship, as dictated in Leviticus 12. Mary, Joseph and Simeon were all operating within God’s constraints. While we can’t put God in a box, he can put us in one, and these worshippers were respecting those bounds.
It disrespects Simeon. Mary and Joseph could only have a qualified priest perform the required consecration, so Simeon was not Perry Noble’s crazy old man. Simeon was an ordained minister of God. In other words, he probably had gone to seminary. The reason he was there was very likely because the Holy Spirit had, through Simeon’s study of Scripture, revealed to him that the Messiah had come, much in the same way as probably happened with the believers in Acts 2.
It’s needlessly antagonistic. Perry Noble wears out the NewSpring-against-the-world meme again in this routine. This was Simeon’s ministry, his divine calling. Why would anyone think less of him (risk his life?) for doing this? If Noble can establish that doing the right thing makes people hate you, he can (and does) reverse the proposition to prove that when people don’t like what you’re doing, you must be doing the right thing.
It reverses the relationship of worship. We don’t hold Jesus in our arms; we’re grateful that he holds us in his.
It does, however, justify NewSpring’s no-kids-in-church policy. A stranger taking a kid out of your arms when you walk into the NS lobby happens all the time. Perhaps this is how Noble justifies it.
It’s complete fiction. Except for the part about taking Jesus in his arms, everything else is the product of Perry Noble’s imagination. It makes for an interesting story, but it’s just not true. If you want to know exactly what Simeon said, Luke 2:29-35 tells us very clearly.
Why does this matter? Noble’s just spouting off like he always does, you counter. He’s demonstrating passion, and you’re trying to tear him down. Let it go. Focus on the weed smoking.
It matters because this is adulterous teaching. He takes a little bit of the Gospel according to Luke and adulterates it with a whole lot of the gospel according to Noble. Note how the whole lesson is predicated on a very long fictitious statement from Simeon. Noble’s gospel is false.
False teachers (like Rick Warren’s example a few days ago) often work this way by taking a little bit of truth and mixing it with error so we think we’re hearing the Word of God. This particular teaching is false, and whenever Perry Noble preaches like this, he is a false teacher.
When it comes to the Gospel, you can’t make this stuff up.
Last year, Voelz, a pastor, was tweeting at a conference outside Nashville about ways to make the church experience more creative — ways to “make it not suck” — when suddenly it hit him: Twitter.
Voelz and David McDonald, the other senior pastor at Westwinds Community Church in Jackson, Mich., spent two weeks educating their congregation about Twitter.
As expected, banter flourished. Tweets like “Nice shirt JVo” and “So glad they are doing Lenny Kravitz” flashed across three large video screens.
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.
Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.
As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool when there are many words.
Here’s an example from John Rich about where these ideas can lead.
What lesson should an allegedly Bible-believing Christian such as meself take away from such thoughts? Keep reading the Bible, believe in the bedrock truths of God and his creation. But don’t believe it to be the literal truth (as in, “this is being written on March 17, 2009″ is a literal truth). Know that we live in our time. God’s time is different, and unknown to us. And that God’s truths may not manifest themselves in our lifetimes.
God is the ultimate authority. His word may usually be discerned through the lens of the Bible. Usually; not always.
BCoop, is there anything here you disagree with? Is Rich misinterpreting your Kierkegaard quote? If he were to read your or Perry’s blogs, would he know any better?
There’s a curious sequence of posts coming from NewSpring’s leaders this week.
Perry Noble led the way, boasting about how God prepared him to lead 10,000 people by making him a theological and ecclesiastical know nothing.
I did just about everything you could do in a church and in all of that God was preparing me to one day lead a church in which I could understand the people that worked with me rather than spout out theology and ideas and methodology in which I knew nothing about.
Now Brad Cooper is following up, excusing Christians who don’t care to learn or think well, so long as they do stuff. He condemns Christian scholarship by approvingly quoting Soren Kierkegaard. If you see something in the Bible, Cooper and Kierkegaard tell us, and if it makes sense to you, jump right in there and do it. Don’t think. Don’t discuss. Don’t learn. JUST DO! We and God won’t even worry about your intentions, Cooper promises us.
It’s no accident that Kierkegaard is regarded as the father of evangelical liberalism and Christian postmodernism. There is no real truth; what you think is true is good enough.
A few weeks ago BCoop complained that I was being too concerned about desecration in the house of God.
I’ve been accused of worse, but I happened to be reviewing a Brad Cooper sermonette for an upcoming post and ran across this little piece of desecration. Although he doesn’t have the sex posters behind him on this evening, he brings the dirt to the altar all by himself.
After reading a passage from Romans (and successfully soliciting the crowd to endorse universalism, though we’ll leave that alone for now*), he asks his listeners if they frikin’ believe the Word of God.
You probably already know or suspected this, but frikin’ is simply a synonym for the other F-word. The fact that it’s a verbal sibling hardly excuses it it, given that the meaning is exactly the same.
Some questions:
What does Cooper mean?
How does one learn to frickin’ believe the Bible? Is NewSpring a good place to start?
Should all Christians frickin’ believe the Bible?
How do you get away with this as a pastor? Would his bosses be upset if he’d said “do you effing believe?” or if he actually used the original F bomb? How is what he said any better?
It’s too bad his question wasn’t greeted with a loud chorus of No’s.
P.S. What kind of Bible is this?
Shouldn’t the question be, “Do you frickin’ believe my sermon notes?” or at least “Do you frickin’ believe this little cut and pasted part of the Word of God?” Nothing against sermon notes, but if you’re going to use the Word of God as a visual aid, it probably should actually be the Word of God.
*Quick hint: when someone asks you to shout out an answer to something you haven’t thought about, keep your mouth shut.
This blog is mine alone and does not necessarily–or very often–represent the thinking or sentiments of anyone who disagrees with me, my wife, my employer, my friends, my family, my pastor, my brother, my church and, almost certainly, God. After I hit the Publish button, it doesn’t always even reflect my own thinking. It does seem to often reflect the thinking of Tommy F, Twit Conway and some guy in Minnesota, however.
A few people around these parts have been insisting that gross errors of misapplying Scripture, as we saw with Noble’s teaching on Simeon, happen so infrequently at NewSpring that we need not be concerned. That being the case, here’s something else they can be unconcerned about.