RT @RickWarren: Heresy-hunting lets u to ignore the mess in your own life. God is more concerned about your hypocrisy than other’s heresy.

Let’s examine that.

1. Where is the hypocrisy? Warren assumes that anyone who finds heresy is a hypocrite. Pointing out heresy is about identifying unbiblical teachings. In most cases, those heresy hunters can only make their argument by pointing to Scripture. What’s wrong with that? What’s hypocritical?
2. Are messes disqualifying? Warren’s standard is that you have to have a perfect life to start worrying about what pastors are teaching. It was my impression that pastors only talked to imperfect people, so I suppose Warren’s formulation gives every pastor a free pass on everything they teach.
3. Is God really not worried? Warren asserts that God thinks hypocrisy is worse than false teaching. James 3 tells us that God holds teachers to a higher standard. Paul and Peter contain far more numerous and serious warnings against false teachers than they do against hypocrites.
4. Aren’t we all hypocrites? Anyone who affirms a moral code, which includes all Christians, cannot keep that code in all instances. Does that mean we should all keep quiet about it? If that’s the rule, who’s going to be preaching in our churches this Sunday?
5. Who does most damage? A hypocrite affects only those people who know him or her intimately enough to see the discrepancy between words and deeds. A heretic affects the spiritual health of everyone who hears him.
6. When are we allowed to heresy hunt? The problem with heresy is that it doesn’t look like heresy. That was Peter’s point in 2 Peter 2. Heretics hide and never announce themselves. If we’re not allowed to actively look for them, how will we ever find them?

I know that Warren and his followers use the term heresy hunter as a pejorative, but it’s an activity that should be embraced by all believers. After a few months of “heresy hunting” on this blog, I’ve discovered a few things about the activity.

1. I heresy hunt my own pastor. Every time my pastor or someone else steps to the pulpit and opens the Bible, my heresy detectors are on. Is what I’m hearing consistent with Scripture? Are the verses from the reading being expounded consistent to their wider context? etc. With my pastor, the answers to those kinds of questions have consistently been in the affirmative. That’s why he’s still my pastor.
2. Heresy hunting is commended in Scripture. The Bereans heresy hunted against Paul. Paul! Here’s someone who really was preaching the directly inspired word of God, yet they wouldn’t believe it until they’d checked it against Scripture. I’m sure many of the Bereans had messes in their lives, yet they’re described as being more noble than other believers.
3. Heresy hunting isn’t just about the heretic. Think about the process of discovering heresy. To do so, you take a teaching and compare it to Scripture, usually multiple Scriptures. This is the basis of the nobility of the Bereans. Not only did they listen to Paul’s teaching, but they added to it and deepened it with their own study. The net effect is that they got a second helping of God’s word.

   NewSpring pastor, Shane Duffey, doesn’t see the connection:

   i’d love to compare the time “discerners” spend in the Word vs. on the web searching for people & reasons to hate… i’d bet the web wins

   I’ll bet, and testify from my own experience, that the Bible wins going away.

   I discovered this for myself in my posts a while back on Simeon. Perry Noble’s characterization of him as a crazy old man prompted me to examine the Scripture to see exactly who Simeon was and what role he played in the story of redemption. The discovery that he had to have been a priest was new to me, but an exciting insight into the unity of God’s redemptive plan and the perspecuity of Scripture. Regardless of what anyone thought about the original teaching or teacher, I was blessed and grew spiritually by engaging in the process of careful Bible study.

A biblical teacher will seek to develop a congregation full of heresy hunters.

A heretic will not.

Recent Tweet from Furtick:

Great night w a great man of God. Thx Pastor Joel 4 your humility & msg of hope. Love & honor!

Now it seems Pastor Furtick has added Joel Osteen to his growing list of spiritual mentors. Maybe, you say, this was just a nice photo op, and Steven doesn’t really know much about Osteen. Nope. Here’s a post defending Osteen from Furtick’s blog. A few selected quotes:

But to all of you mean spirited name callers who have made a career of condemning celebrity preachers:
Who the heck do you think you are to criticize a man who is impacting a city like Pastor Joel is impacting Houston?

Since when is “impacting a city” the final litmus test of God’s approval? One could easily argue Truman had a large impact on Nagasaki.

…Osteen preaches to 40,000 people weekly…
You couldn’t get 40,000 people to come hear you preach if you gave away free Escalades at the door.

Once again, we get the SCOREBOARD argument, and a slam at smaller congregations. And regardless of what Osteen may be preaching, it’s all fine because he draws a large crowd.

…If you’re concerned about a lack of cross centered preaching, then preach the cross yourself instead of wasting valuable time opining about how someone else should do it better.

Which goes completely against Jesus and Paul’s many admonishments to be on the lookout for false teachers.

…Don’t hurl insults at someone with a big church simply because you can’t make your church grow, and although you’d never admit it, you’re jealous.
That’s right… most of the time the motive isn’t defense of the Gospel… it’s jealousy and presumption.

And of course, the strawman argument that the only people who may have a problem with Osteen are jealous pastors. We couldn’t possibly be concerned Christians following the biblical call to “test all things”.

…You know, I think it’s absolutely essential that Christians think critically about what is being taught in Christian pulpits. We must preserve sound doctrine. We must guard against erroneous theologies.

This is a hilarious way to end a post that is scolding us for doing just what he says we must do. But, to follow Steven’s advice here and think critically about what’s being taught, here’s a clip of Osteen you should watch. Is this what Steven calls sound doctrine?

it is important to remember that we rarely find these first christians trying to prove that the resurrection actually occurred. for one, a lot of the people who saw jesus after he rose from the dead were still alive, so if people had questions and doubts, they could talk to somebody who was actually there. but there’s another reason: everybody’s god in the first century had risen from the dead. to claim a resurrection had occurred was nothing new: julius caesar himself was reported to have ascended to the right hand of the gods after his death. to try to prove there was an empty tomb wouldn’t have gotten very far with the average citizen of the roman empire; they had heard it all before. this is why so many passages about the early church deal with possessions and meals and generosity. they understood that people are rarely persuaded by arguments, but more often by experiences. living, breathing, flesh-and-blood experiences of the resurrection community. they saw it as their responsibility to put jesus’ message on display. to the outside world, it was less about proving and more about inviting people to experience this community of jesus followers for themselves.

Here’s how Bell’s reader applies the lesson:

people today could care less about the “proof” of our arguments, the “logic” of our evidence that demands a verdict, or our “cases” for faith, christ, easter, christmas or whatever else. the only evidence demanding a verdict people care about these days is how i live my life.

How, exactly, does Cooper’s retweet contradict this? The language is almost exactly the same, down to the emphasis on personal change.

This is why Cooper’s tweet is so foolish. There’s a dangerous movement in churches that look a lot like NewSpring to deny the necessity of the historical resurrection. Cooper’s message to his tweet peeps, many of whom have probably read Velvet Elvis, endorses Bell’s garbage.

UPDATE: Perhaps Cooper really has no idea what kind of doctrinal dynamite he’s playing with here. Earlier this year, one of his blog readers asked:

Brad, what are your thoughts on the whole Driscoll/Rob Bell ordeal that went down around this time last year I believe.

For context, Driscoll called Bell a heretic. Even though Cooper says he listens to Driscoll, he didn’t know what to think:

i definitely have convictions about Jesus… and i definitely have convictions about His Word— and i def think both of these men are being used by God— im not savvy to all the happenings of the Driscoll/Bell stuff.

Bell is “definitely being used by God” for what? An example of error, perhaps?

Acknowledging the historical fact of His resurrection doesn’t save u (James2:9). Being changed by His resurrection does (Rom6)

I think more highly of BCoop than some of you might suppose, so seeing him entertain this kind of idea stuns me. The cancer in the modern church movement is the tolerance for the denial of the historicity of Scripture (c.f. Rob Bell et al.) With this tweet, Cooper seems to be endorsing the idea that believing that the resurrection is a historical fact is optional to our faith.

No. No. No. No. No.

If we don’t believe that the resurrection is a historical fact, we are not going to be changed by it because we have no faith. The resurrection as historical fact is everything; without it, the foundation of our faith crumbles.

Yes, I was disappointed in the whole BAMF stuff, but this is much more serious. Perhaps he’ll retract and explain in an upcoming tweet. I really hope he does.

(BTW, I don’t get the James 2:9 reference. Is it a typo, or am I missing something? UPDATE: It was a typo. The proper reference is James 2:19.)