The false comfort of fatalism

One aspect of NewSpring’s apologists that has genuinely surprised me has been the repeated appeal to fatalism, the idea that because everything is predestined it is inevitable, uncontrollable and acceptable. It has been invoked to disqualify criticism of NewSpring’s leaders’ bad behavior on the basis that God made them do it.

For example, one commentator said we dare not judge because God ordained NewSpring’s pastors’ bad language:

I do know that God knew about what Perry and Brad were going to say trillions of years ago. If they are in sin about anything that has been communicated from stage or any other medium then they will be held accountable…BY GOD, NOT YOU!!!

If God doesn’t want what’s going on at NewSpring to happen…it WON’T. He’ll wipe it off the face of the earth if He pleases.

Another said

There’s only one way to explain how this is happening – God is completely in control. Like many others have said here on your site, if God doesn’t want NS to continue, then He will shut it down. [Emphasis added]

1. It blames God for sin. If you’re going to argue that God approves of something you like merely because because it exists, logical consistency insists that God is also on the hook for evil.
2. It contradicts Scripture. 2 Peter 2:3 tells us that God’s punishment for false teachers is certain, even if not evident now.
   

   Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

   If we make the lack of judgment our litmus test for truth, we are susceptible to all the false teachers Peter warned us about. The whole point of verse 3 is that false teachers do endure for a while without punishment.

3. It invites unthinkable punishment. If we wait for God to wipe our false teachings off the face of the earth, in the words of one commentator, we are inviting fearful punishment for them. 2 Peter 2:4-6 tells us what kinds of eventual judgements await false teachers by comparing them to the angels’ fall from Heaven, the Flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. False teachers need to be confronted and corrected, not passively encouraged along a sleepy path to destruction.
4. It fails an important test. False teachers have a purpose, as explained in Deuteronomy 13:3-4.
   

   You must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul.

   It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him.

   This explains why God will not wipe false teachers from the face of the earth; He uses them to test our discernment. If we favor fatalism, we fail that test and leave ourselves and our leaders defenseless.

Just to be clear, I am not making an argument here that Perry Noble is a false teacher. I’m sounding a warning that it doesn’t appear to me that some NewSpringers would know it or care if he were.

What harm could come from quoting Kierkegaard?

A day or two ago I asked if NewSpring’s leaders might be inviting trouble by embracing Soren Kierkegaard’s liberalism.

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?

Did someone put ignorance on the agenda?

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.

Anyone see any potential problems with that?