The Berean Endeavor

The Berean Endeavor

(2012 version)

 Prologue

When I was young my family used to go to the beach.  Not all that often, but because I love to swim, I have vivid memories of the experience.  I wasn’t much for playing in the sand or lying in the sun, and we almost never went where there was a board walk.  My time was spent in the water.

It was a sense experience.  Without consciously trying to recall it, I can taste salt water in the air.  I can hear the clamor of people playing and enjoying themselves, the cries of dazzlingly white gulls, and the reassuring sound of calm waves.  I can squint at the almost painful brightness of the sunlight.  I can feel the sharp sting of cold water on my feet and legs as I first entered.  The ocean’s buoyancy was all wrong; it lifted me higher than swimming pool water.  My feet recall the grit of ever-present sand.  The scene constantly changed according to the waves and sky.  This combination of sense experiences could absorb my attention so completely that I would grow oblivious to my wider surroundings.

Left to my own devices, I would stay in the water all day.  Except, of course, every so often I would need to get out – to get a drink, use the bathroom, eat lunch.  I always hated the lunch break, even if I was hungry.  The more learned authorities would compel us to remain on dry land after we finished for some interminable period … lest we be afflicted with a cramp.  This is an experience I have never had while swimming, but they made it sound sinister enough.

Every time I would exit the water, for whatever purpose, almost at a run once freed from its resistance, and head to where I was sure to find my family and my stuff, a strange thing happened.

I would arrive, hot sand clumping on my feet, in a tremendous hurry to get back to the real business of swimming.  And it would suddenly dawn on me:  I did not recognize a single person.  The blankets, towels, cooler on the beach were not mine.  What buildings there were were unfamiliar.  In fact, the beachscape offered no sign whatsoever where I was or where I needed to be.  A confused panic would set in as I scanned the area for anything I knew or any frame of reference.  The sounds of people having fun – their day at the beach – seemed no longer joyful, but hostile.  The sun-heated sand began to feel distinctly unpleasant.  The gulls, the breeze, the waves offered no help.

Where was I?

How did I get here?

More urgently:  How do I get back?

Obviously the situation was resolved satisfactorily.  But this set of circumstances happened frequently enough that I can remember that sick, sinking feeling deep in my gut, every bit as vividly as I recall the things about the beach I loved.  Two aspects of this stand out to me now.  I was always a long way from where I was supposed to be.  And I was never aware that I had moved at all.

As an adult I visit the beach far less frequently, and I often go out of season.  I spend far more time on the shore.  But when I do get in the water, the same thing still happens.  True, I no longer have the flash of blind childhood panic.  Also true, I now have a much better understanding of why this happens and how to get back where I belong.  But without fail it disturbs me.  It still disquiets me that I could move so far from where I intend to be without even being aware it is happening.

How Did it Come to This?

Do you ever feel that we’re living as sleepwalkers might?

That we go through the motions of work, family, school …

That we get up, eat without tasting, hurry late to appointments or activities only to get caught behind Clem Kadiddlehopper out for a Sunday drive – that jerk’s going to make us late…

That we rush to the store to buy products or even gifts that don’t satisfy nearly as much as we hoped they would…

That we talk and talk and talk and talk and never penetrate beneath the surface…

That we work harder and have (or even accomplish) less…

That we watch movies or go online and laugh at things that aren’t really funny or tear up to dramas we don’t really care about…

That the news makes us angry or sad almost without fail – there are always bad things happening in the world, but worse there is always someone abusing our trust, taking advantage of others, acting unjustly…

That politics get us all worked up – support our candidate, endorse our cause, or face the end of the world naked…

That people make decisions for the stupidest reasons when they can articulate their reasons at all – and, gulp, that we catch ourselves doing the same thing…

That there is just too much information, too much to keep up with…

That we go to bed frustrated and wake up tired…

That something’s not right, that this can’t be the way we’re supposed to be…

I know I do.

Anyone who has lived a few years might have the added suspicion that things haven’t always been this way – that we seem to exchange greater and greater effort for ever lessening satisfaction.  We don’t imagine an idealized past.  We don’t delude ourselves into thinking there weren’t difficult challenges and bad times.  It’s just that there is a quality of emptiness that is present in how we live now that seemed less pronounced formerly.

Now for a thornier question:  do you ever feel that way in church?

If we notice the sleepwalking effect, and if we let ourselves feel it; if we suspect something is wrong somewhere in how we are living our lives; if we start to wonder if life is supposed to be like this, we inescapably begin to ask uncomfortable questions.  We might take on the attitude of an entomologist observing a new species of insect.  Why do we do one thing and not another?  Why do we believe what we believe, and do we act as if we did?  How do we interact with one another?  Why do we organize ourselves the ways we do?  What do we spend the bulk of time on – does this reflect some urge or need, and is it beneficial or destructive?  We are forced to re-write the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

What I describe is a problem of culture.  In moments of clarity, human beings will question how and why we do the things we do without regard to our religious claims, philosophies, political views, or walks of life.  But I am a Christian writing primarily to Christians in response to a specific need I believe quite a few Christians feel.

During these periods of clear sight and honesty, when we examine ourselves we also examine our local churches, our organizations and denominations, our subculture.  Why do we do the things we do?  Why do we proclaim the beliefs we proclaim?  Do we live as if we believe things we proclaim are actually true?

We also notice that, like our culture, our churches are changing; they are not what they were.  We observe differences between things the Bible says and our practice.  We see contradictions – what we are taught one week seriously conflicts with what we are taught the next.  We turn to our churches seeking depth, substance, honesty; and we find ourselves puzzled and disoriented.

Many of us have been troubled by transformations in our local churches – so that we find ourselves alienated, isolated, and out of step with people we have known and loved for years.  Many of us have been troubled by voices from within the Christian community, by statements and actions of some celebrity Christians and Christian organizations, and by changes in the wider culture.  Some of them seem good to us; others feel wrong.  Often we get the sense we are somehow being bullied.  And often these transformations, statements, actions, and the “Christianity” they represent starkly contrast with the Christianity we knew and believed.  We do not assume that what we have done and understood in the past has always been right; but we also reject the notion that it was wrong across-the-board.

In our clear moments, we know things have changed and are changing.  We also know that many of these changes are movements away from the depth, substance, honesty, truth, or virtue we are craving.  Instead, the voices we hear in our Christian organizations seem increasingly plastic, clichéd, clueless, lightweight, without substance.  When we most seek the timeless truths that exist outside of culture – those truths that say, “What does culture, what does fad, what does human philosophy have to do with me?” – we receive blasts of wind directly from the culture and the age.  It seems rarer and rarer that we hear anything that we could not as easily and readily hear from the secular world.

In our clear moments we hear Peter say to Jesus, “You have the words of eternal life.”  In our clear moments we know the words we are increasingly hearing don’t sound very much like the words of eternal life.  In our clear moments we something is not quite right.  And we begin to wonder how we came to this place.

The Problem:

“The Times, They Are a-Changin’,” is a sentiment and tune I have heard my whole life.  It had already passed into conventional wisdom or cliché before I was born.  “Don’t stand in the doorway,” Dylan advises, “For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled.”  And, “Please get out of the new [road] if you can’t lend your hand.”  This could almost be an anthem for our day.  It seems hard to keep up:  we are bombarded with endless streams of data.  They do not rise to the level of information.  They are not meaningful or ordered enough for that.  They simply consist in random factoids, images, slogans, statistics, commercials, news and pseudo-news, celebrity, gossip.

This occurs without filter, as if all assertions of fact or interpretation were equally true, equally sensible.  At the same time, the data is partially filtered – each individual data source filters itself to support its own agenda.  Ideas, like products, are being marketed to us.  They are presented in their best possible lights to make us want to accept them.  But the net effect blends into noise. Its shear volume requires vast amounts of time and energy simply to process.  Yet all of it affects how we make decisions, what we accept, what we reject, what we think.

From magazines in the supermarket and commercials on television we learn:  younger is better than older – take years off your appearance, how to look and feel years younger; thin is better than fat – take this pill, follow that program, and lose the weight you’ve wanted to lose; a person’s value is found in sexual attractiveness.  We’re told that faster is better, more modern, more technologically sophisticated; we’re given the impression that people who have lived in prior times were stupid.  We’re told our careers and our wealth and our successes define us.

This is far less harmless than it might seem.  We acquire beliefs and attitudes without even consciously noticing them, and we end up allowing the same habits of mind that determine what trash bags and razors we purchase to determine how we spend our lives, what religion we practice, how we vote, how we act at our jobs, and how we treat people.

Of course, some changes are good; some things are better than they were.  In hindsight, other changes have not been improvements.  We can debate the merits of individual changes.  We can argue whether or not, or to what degree, we are better off than we were before.  What is troubling, however, is the degree to which we have embraced these changes uncritically, without conscious awareness, without actually making a decision (or at least without making an informed decision).  We embrace them because everyone else does; we embrace them because to not do so is no longer viable.  Imagine, for example, that you didn’t particularly care for credit cards; just try to get a hotel room, or book a flight, or rent a car without one.  And who goes anywhere without a cell phone these days?

More importantly, we don’t often consider how the changes we embrace change us.  No, they don’t change human nature.  But they do change how we live, how we think, how we receive and process information, how we interact with one another.  Years ago, when we wrote letters, we were content to wait weeks for a response.  Getting a letter was a pleasant event, not a demand.  Today we call, we text, we instant message, we email – all instantaneous.  Each of these media have different strengths and weakness; they lend themselves to communicating different things.  Email, for instance, is quite poor at conveying tone.  When speaking by phone we rely on voice, on rhythm, on non-verbal cues to discern a large portion of meaning.  When meeting face to face, we use posture, facial expressions, body language as freely as we use actual words.  When texting, space limitations make even words too inconvenient – we rely on acronyms and abbreviations.  The content of our interactions, while immediate, is increasingly surface, shallow, and non-reflective.

So what does this mean to us as individuals, as human beings, and as Christians?  What does it mean when the ideas and beliefs on which we base our lives, when our ways of interacting with others, when the assumptions of the culture and its values seem to be shifting before our eyes?  What does it mean when we stop recognizing the things around us; when we lose our frame of reference?  How do we respond when we find ourselves disoriented, when we don’t know quite where we are or how we got here?  What has remained the same?  Are there landmarks we can trust?  Ultimately, what happened?  And what do I do now?

Whether we acknowledge the fact or not, many of these questions are inherently religious.  Many of the attitudes, beliefs, priorities, values changing in our culture are also religious.  Whenever they touch on God, on ethics, on how we live, on what has ultimate importance, they are religious.

And we’re hearing all kinds of answers that range from the vague to the silly to the detrimental to the pleasant sounding.  Churches across this country and around the world are anxious to get into the act.  Many people in the church argue, first, that our times and culture have changed so radically that Christianity must change its methods and even, perhaps, its message in order to be able to communicate to this age; and second, such a change in methods or message is, in fact, an example of God doing a new thing in our time.  We seem to have an appetite for the latest new thing.  We seem to crave some particular brand or spin of Christianity.

Consider the fads that have swept Christian subculture (many of which embarrass us now).  Consider also all their products and accessories.

The Passion of the Christ.

The Prayer of Jabez – who’d have thought an obscure passage in 1 Chronicles would become – at least for a while – the model for Christian prayer life … even temporarily taking the place of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples?

Remember the Purpose Driven Life?  How about, The Purpose Driven Church, the Purpose Driven Life for Commuters, The Purpose Driven Life Graduate Edition, Meditations on the Purpose Driven Life, Daily Inspiration for the Purpose Driven Life.

What Would Jesus Do?  This is, in some senses, a good idea.  It is a valid question – and certainly something for Christians to consider.  However, there are WWJD mugs, key chains, bumper stickers.  I have seen What Would Jesus Eat?  What Would Jesus Drive?  How Would Jesus Vote?

We could talk about “seeker sensitive” churches and the church growth movement.

We could talk about the “emerging church” or the “emergent conversation”.

We could talk about “holy laughter”.

The Left Behind series…

Power point, worship teams …

And how on earth did Christians manage before we were “missional”?

Consider some of the titles of popular recent church literature:  Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change:  Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope, and A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith; Rob Bell’s The Velvet Elvis:  Repainting Christianity; Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence:  How Christianity is Changing and Why; Doug Pagitt’s Church Re-Imagined:  The Spiritual Formation of People in Communities of Faith, and The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier; Peter Rollins’s The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief.

“Change”, “new”, “transforming”, “repainting”, “changing”, “re-imagined”, “beyond”:  a common linguistic theme emerges.  Throughout the literature, ideas of novelty, transformation, growth, movement beyond, evolution proliferate.

Aside from affirming and embracing change as if it were automatically positive, this sort of language serves another function.  What do these self-descriptions say about the things Christians have always believed, and what do they say about the Christians who stubbornly insist on holding on to their historic beliefs?  The image of the velvet Elvis equates those beliefs and believers with the tacky, the kitschy, the outmoded, the ignorant, the regressive.  Brian McLaren’s title, A Generous Orthodoxy automatically casts traditional orthodoxy as “stingy”.  Doug Pagitt’s A Christianity Worth Believing implies that historic Christianity is not worth believing.  Judge for yourselves what to make of Rob Bell’s and Don Golden’s Jesus Wants to Save Christians.

The old saying, “Caveat emptor” applies here.  When we buy and use a product, and when we buy into and act on an idea, we are responsible for it.  “But that’s not fair,” we object, “It wasn’t our fault.  We were deceived.  We were taken advantage of.  We didn’t know.”  Those objections don’t matter; we bear the responsibility when we purchase a product or an idea or an attitude – because we are the ones who must live with the consequences of that decision.  Of course, sometimes our choices also affect others.

If we’re lucky, we’re only out the money, or we’ve only wasted our time.  Some ideas are simply vain from beginning to end – and consequently not that awfully important.  Sometimes we are made to feel or seem foolish.  Other products and ideas are actively harmful in themselves:  when I buy the contaminated food or the unsafe car I may actually be harmed.  When I believe that I can drive drunk or operate heavy equipment while taking cold medicine, the results may be catastrophic.  Still other times, buying into the wrong ideas may cause us to miss the right ones – if I take snake oil instead of medicine, I may not recover.

When these ideas are religious in nature the stakes rise.  What are the results of believing wrong things about God, or about myself, or about sin, or about salvation?  What if I am mistaken on what I call “good” and what I call “evil”, imagining I know which is which through empathy or some tortured moral reasoning?  What if I think a thing harmless when in reality it is not?  What if I miss grace and salvation because I accept an idea that rejects them?  What if some idea I accept keeps someone else from hearing the Gospel because I have substituted that idea for the Gospel?

The problem, put simply, is this:  we, as individual Christians are being confronted both by our culture and by our churches (local churches, seminaries, denominations, printing houses, Christian colleges and universities, and subculture) with a variety of answers to religious questions that contradict one another, that seem hopelessly muddled, that seem ineffective or even directly opposed to our understandings of Christianity.  This occurs at a time when so much around us and even we ourselves appear to be in a state of change.  And these ideas (posing as ultimate answers) are being presented so frequently and so rapidly that we have difficulty discerning right from wrong, truth from error.  We are often confused even about the most elementary Christian teachings.  At the same time our churches’ witness to the culture seems incoherent, conflicted, uncertain, and unhelpful.  We don’t know where to begin to sift through what is Christian and what is not, what is important and what does not matter.

A Simple Premise

I want to make very clear:  this is not a polemic against change.  Many changes are good.  Many changes truly are advances – things we could not imagine our lives without.  Some change is essential to life.  This is not an exercise in nostalgia for a real or an idealized past.  Elements of the past are good and bad; some features of our past we are well rid of.  This is not really an assertion that the rate and scope of change is increasing or that this particular period is one of abrupt change.  Nonetheless, this perception of the increasing rate of change is widespread.  This is also not an embrace of pessimistic fears – some dire dystopian vision for the future.  Some things are predictable; much remains unknown; and, like the past, it will be something of a mixed bag.

Instead, this is an acknowledgment of an intense difficulty faced by many Christians today.  All of these things – the rate and scope of change, the perpetual stream of data, the marketing of ideas, cultural value shifts and church fads – leads us to one, simple question.  How is a Christian to decide?  In one sense this circumstance is a gift to us:  it gives us a chance to examine what we believe and why.  But in another sense it presents us with a great challenge:  we need a methodology to identify what is truly Christian and what is not.  When we find ourselves out of our reckoning, how do we know what is right and what is wrong?  When new ideas – especially new religious ideas – come knocking at our doors, which do we accept?  Which do we reject?  Not all ideas are equal.  Some are good; some are bad; some are Christian; some are incompatible with Christianity; and some are basically neutral.  How do we process all of the data?  In short:  how do we make wise decisions?

The question is simple.  It is vast, but it is simple.

nd its answer is based on a simple premise:  we do not live in a privileged time.

How we as Christians must make decisions today, in this world, is no different than how we made decisions last year, or a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago.  What is right today was right before and will be right tomorrow.  What was wrong a thousand years ago is wrong today.  It is true that we now view some practices from the past as wrong.  But they were not right then.  If they are wrong now, they have always been wrong.  If they were right then, they are right now.

When we want to rationalize, we tell ourselves our situation is unique … what applies to other situations does not apply to ours.  In one sense this is true.  Our situation has certain aspects that make it unique, but that is true of every situation in which the people of God have found themselves.  Our situation is no more or less unique than theirs.  If there were a mode of evaluation for God’s people, if there were a biblical approach to making decisions about truth claims, values, ideas, actions that applied to the decisions of God’s people in other times, then that same approach would apply to our situation.

So is there such an approach?

Yes, I believe there is.

The Bible provides us with a number of discernment tools.  Among them are prayer – we’re told explicitly that if any one of us lacks wisdom we are to ask of God, who gives liberally without finding fault; the leading of the Holy Spirit – who will guide us into all truth, glorifying Jesus Christ; and Scripture – which is called God-breathed.  There is much written about discernment throughout Scripture.  But answering this question – how to deal with ultimate truth claims – is modeled for us in a very profound way in the book of Acts.

Because Acts records the spread of the Gospel, we are able to see different reactions to hearing the message.  Some laughed or scoffed; some wanted to hear more; some thought Paul was trying to add a god; some were jealous; some were offended; some thought Paul foolish; some clearly didn’t get it; some were violent; some considered Paul an offense to their gods; some believed.  But the reaction of one group stands out.  Paul’s hearers at Berea were described as noble.

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.  Therefore many of them believed; also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.

– Acts 17:11

The Bereans have been confronted with arguably the most radical truth claim of all time – the Gospel that Paul preached.  Christians who have grown up with that Gospel don’t often comprehend just how outlandish Paul’s claims are.   Paul was telling the Bereans that Jesus was the Messiah, that he was the son of God, that he died for their sins, that he rose from the dead, that a righteousness was available to them that did not come through observance of the law, but by grace, through faith.  To accept this truth claim would necessarily alter everything else in their lives.  Yet they did not dismiss it out of hand.  The writer of Acts calls their reaction noble.  For us, they model a posture of biblical discernment that we would do well to imitate.

There is a short answer to the questions, “How do we deal with the data we are obliged to process?” “How do we know what to believe and what to reject even when options are presented to us by Christians or when ideas claim to be Christian?”  “How do we make wise decisions?”  We follow the example of the Bereans.  By this I mean that we assume a posture that employs the biblical tools of discernment we have been given.  We recognize that we are responsible for the ideas, actions, and teachings we accept; we realize that some of the issues are profoundly important; and we put the effort into this process that it requires.

The long answer will require considerably more examination.

What’s so Noble about the Bereans?

The reader of Acts 17 is informed that the Bereans were nobler than the Thessalonians.  Nothing in the text leads us to believe they were particularly aristocratic in worldly terms.  Instead, “noble” seems in this case to describe a character trait:  the Bereans are displaying the behaviors that nobility should display.  The usage is similar to the dual way we use “noble” in English, or the way we describe certain actions as displaying “class”, or the way we might speak about “background”.  Something about the Bereans’ actions is being highly commended.

So what exactly was noble about them?

In this brief passage, the Bereans model a posture of biblical discernment.  And if we are seeking an approach to making decisions about truth claims, values, ideas, and actions, we would do well to examine what exactly it was about the Bereans that was being approved.

The incidents described by the writer of Acts took place millennia ago, in a very different culture, in a very different world.  We make assumptions about people from different times, try to visualize their lives, maybe feel we cannot relate to them or they to us.  We immediately notice that they wear different clothes, eat different foods, have different customs, different beliefs.  We might imagine we have progressed, and are therefore smarter, more knowledgeable, less credulous, less easily fooled.

But if you think about it, for all of the dramatic differences between us, we still have quite a few things in common.  Our world and the world of the First Century share some striking similarities.  A large section of that world understood one language.  Many people were bilingual – speaking the traditional language of their regions, but also understanding and communicating in Greek.  There was a dominant governmental power, but its empire was somewhat multicultural.  It was pluralistic in the sense that people practiced a variety of religions and philosophies.  Within that empire and its environs, travel was much more possible than at most other times in history.  People moved; ideas spread.  There was a ‘marketplace of ideas’.  As long as people bought into the general social framework, tolerance was a virtue.  In fashionable circles, paganism had a theosophic character:  it was very common for people to say that a particular deity worshiped in Britain was the same as one worshiped in Rome or Greece or Egypt – only having a different local name and different local customs.  The average, untutored person took his gods very seriously, but the most sophisticated tended to regard them as aspects of the divine – not literally individual gods.  Smaller cults and what appear to be religious secret societies proliferated.  Judaism was widely known throughout the empire – so many of the ideas upon which Christianity is based were also known.  There were certainly great differences between the very wealthy and the very poor, between the urbane sophisticate and the rustic, between the educated and the uneducated, between the powerful and the powerless.  The pretensions of the wealthy and powerful – in some cases even pretensions to divinity – were similar to those we see today.  The values of the culture were similar to those of our culture; the conflict between stated values and active values was as jarring then as it is now.

The point here is that (just as we are) the Bereans would have been very used to hearing a wide variety of often contradictory doctrines, truth claims, ideas, philosophies, and values.  Like today, responses would have ranged from the indifferent, to the cynical, to the gullible.  Some would, no doubt, believe every new thing they heard … until the next new thing came along.  Some would reject everything – mock and ridicule without giving a hearing.  Some couldn’t be bothered – they had more important or more practical concerns.  Others would say, “Prove it.”  Still others would vary in their response according to the appearance or wealth or eloquence of the messenger.  Others might despair, conclude there is no truth, and that every man, woman, and child had an agenda.

But the Bereans did not adopt any of these postures.  And the Bereans are called noble.  All of these postures, in their own ways, preclude making an accurate evaluation of an idea, teaching, philosophy, value, or truth claim.  A person may come to a right answer through one or another of them – but entirely by accident.  Cynicism and despair prevent us from accepting true or good ideas when we meet them.  Gullibility and desire for novelty cause us to accept false and harmful ideas.  Mockery and ridicule keep us from hearing and curse us to remain deeply ignorant.  Failing to take the time, refusing to be bothered cut us off from embracing either the true or the false; and that posture is, in itself, a value choice:  practical, temporal concerns outweigh all other thoughts.  Being persuaded by the external characteristics of the messenger means we are not considering the actual message – whether it is good or bad.

Instead, we can identify several characteristics of the Berean posture – the way they reacted to Paul’s teachings reveals several things about them.

1) The Bereans received the message with all readiness of mind.  They heard, listened to, thought about what Paul was telling them.  They knew it required attention.  They did not say, “I’ll think about that later.”  They did not reject it out of hand.  They did not focus on the messenger – but the message itself.  That is what they received.  This indicates that the Bereans were open to a word from God.  They had an expectation that God very well might have something for them.  They were not sitting in judgment on that message – looking for the flaw, looking for the excuse to discredit.  Instead they were eager for it.  They were excited by the prospect.  And they engaged their minds – not their emotions.  The focus was not on how they felt, but on the message itself.  In short, the Bereans were open minded to the truth.  They were actively engaged.

Can the same be said of us?  Do we hear a sermon, or read a book, or have a conversation expecting a truth from God?  Or do we listen for the flaw?  Are we concerned with what the speaker is wearing?  With the sound of a voice?  With our watches or our late dinners?  Are we waiting to pounce on the first ill-chosen phrase?  Instead of asking, “Is this true?” are we scanning for evidence of heresy?  When we say sourly, “I don’t agree with that,” are we asking if this is true?  Are we asking if this is what the Bible teaches?  Or does it conflict with our preconceived notions?  Does it conflict with behaviors we like – and wouldn’t want to give up?

Some Christians might wonder why we should want a word from God.  I mean, we believe we have the Gospel already … right?  Are we looking for a clearer understanding today than we had yesterday?  Are we looking for a closer relationship with God than we had before?  Are we looking to be more fully transformed into the image of Jesus Christ than we have been?  Are we looking to truly see what the Scriptures say about how we live our daily lives?  Are we looking to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord?  These are all things for which we ought to be eager.  Are we engaging our minds or are we concerned only with how we feel?  Even though we know our feelings are transient and very tied to the circumstances of our lives?  Are we asking if a service seems vibrant or if the music appeals to us?  Even though we know many of our notions about this have more to do with what is familiar, what we are used to, what we like and dislike?  In short, are we expecting the right things?

How do we respond to ideas from other sources?  Do we expect the Holy Spirit to speak to us only through sermons, or only in a church setting, or only in a Christian subculture?  Do we expect the Holy Spirit only to speak through our local church or our denomination?  Or does God speak through whomever God wills?  Are their ideas that are true that do not come to us from Christian sources?  Are there things in our culture that are true, that are honest, that are just, that are pure, that are lovely, that are of good report?  What should be our posture toward these things?  As a pragmatic matter, ideas we hear from those labeled “Christian” (rightly or wrongly), are often wrong; ideas we hear from non-Christians are sometimes right.  Proverbs indicates that it is folly – even shameful – for us to answer a matter before we hear it.  Of equally pragmatic importance, many of the ideas we encounter – upon which we must decide – come to us from our culture rather than from our churches.  Thus our posture toward ideas outside the church is still one of open engagement with readiness of mind.

2) The Bereans were waiting expectantly for the appearance of the Messiah.  Paul was announcing the arrival of that Messiah.  Paul proclaimed to them that Jesus was the Messiah, and that the Messiah had suffered and risen from the dead – in accordance with Scripture.  Certainly this proclamation had many details that differed markedly from what the Bereans expected.  But if they had not waiting for the Messiah in the first place, it is doubtful that they would have eagerly received such an announcement.  Such an expectation was based on prophecies that were many centuries old.

 

Christians today find ourselves in a similar situation.  Christianity has universally looked for the return of Jesus – in the Apostles Creed, we say, “From thence He (Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord) shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”  Hebrews tells us, “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.”  Paul tells Timothy there is a crown of righteousness waiting for “all who love His appearing”.  Paul tells the believers at Philippi that their “citizenship is in heaven. And they eagerly await a Savior from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform their lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body”.  Paul describes Christians in Corinth eagerly waiting for the day when Jesus Christ is fully revealed.  At the very end of the Bible, John says, “He which testifieth these things saith, ‘Surely I come quickly.’ Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus…”

 

The Bereans had the Law and the Prophets.  We have the Gospel.  Yet, like them, we still wait for something.  We still wait for the fullness of Christ to be revealed when He returns in glory.  Do we desire that?  Is it something we eagerly await?  Are we excited at the prospect?  Or would it be a terrible inconvenience to our daily routines?  For some, the works of fiction writers and speculation about events surround the return of Jesus cultivate a sense of adventure.  For others these create worry and dread.  Still others regard them as they might occult materials or tales of the supernatural – mentioning the prophecies of the Bible in the same breath as the writings of Nostradamus, the Mayan calendar, or astrological signs.  Some imagine they can hasten or ward off these events.  I’m not talking about any of those reactions; instead, at a fundamental level, do we really desire the appearance of Jesus?  John saw what this meant more clearly than we do.  To experience his vision must have been truly terrifying.  Yet he could say, “Even so, come Lord Jesus”.

 

3) The Bereans believed the Scriptures were true.  We know this because they searched the Scriptures to see if what Paul was saying was true.  If they did not start with the belief that Scripture was true, this would have been a very foolish exercise.  They trusted the testimony of the Bible.  They eagerly listened to Paul, but they checked what he said to see if it matched what the Bible taught.  They were not testing Paul’s message against traditions.  They were not evaluating his teachings according to philosophies.  We must ask ourselves:  what would have happened had the Bereans found Paul’s claims in conflict with Scripture?  I think the answer is self-evident:  Paul would have been rejected.

 

Are we willing to trust Scripture to the same degree?  Are we willing to say that, no matter how persuasive the presentation, no matter how much we want to believe or don’t want to believe an idea, we will be willing to be guided by Scripture?  We must be honest on this point.  Some things taught in the Bible we want to believe.  They appeal to us.  Other things in the Bible don’t appeal to us.  We would just as soon not believe them if we could have our preference.  Some things fit in with our agendas, with our goals, with our priorities.  Are we willing to subject every idea, every agenda, every priority to the Scripture as a measure of its truth?  Or do we want to use our feelings?  Our suspicions?  Our desires?  What happens if the message is one we don’t like?  What happens if the speaker is one we don’t like?  The Bereans were clearly willing to let the matter be judged by Scripture.

 

4) The Bereans were willing to put in the work.  They searched the Scripture daily.  This was not a haphazard whim.  They were not letting the Bible fall open, covering their eyes, and pointing to a text … giving God every opportunity to guide their divination.  No.  They searched.  The examined meticulously, carefully, completely.  They did this every day.  In one sense this was only logical – Paul was making claims based on the Hebrew Bible; he was making assertions about it.  Did the Scripture really indicate that the Messiah must suffer and would rise from the dead?  But it was a practice that would apply to any truth claim. It is impossible to measure a claim against Scripture without knowing Scripture.

 

If we seek to know what the Bible says about any topic, if we seek to know whether a claim is biblical or not, if we seek to know what Christianity teaches, we cannot do this without knowing the Bible.  Don’t mistake me – it is self-evidently possible for those who cannot read to be Christians.  It is also quite possible for those who don’t have access to the Bible.  Even for those who lack the time for detailed study of the Bible.  But if we want to know what the Bible says, if we wish to use this tool we are given for discernment – we must put in the time and work to study the Bible.  I’m not speaking here of theory or of interpretations or of inspirational reading or even devotional reading.  Those all have their uses, but the greatest need in terms of discernment is going text by text to become familiar with the actual contents of Scripture across the board.

 

I believe the Bereans were noble because of their posture:  they were open to a word from God, they were waiting for the appearance of the Christ, they took the Scriptures to be true, they were willing to measure teachings against Scripture, and they were willing to do the work required.  Equally, I believe that is a posture we ought to adopt when we are required to make decisions about the ideas, truth claims, values, doctrines, philosophies, courses of action we encounter every day.

 

Full Disclosure

 

 

Before we can proceed, I need to plainly disclose my basic assumptions.

 

I am only interested in biblical Christianity; by the phrase “biblical Christianity”, I mean the Christianity presented in the Bible.  I am persuaded that the Bible clearly presents a whole system of beliefs and a manner of living.  Biblical Christianity is either true or false.  It stands or falls as a whole; its individual truth claims are meaningless apart from the entire system.  If it is true, then opposing religious philosophies are false.  If it is false, one or another of those philosophies may be true.  But Biblical Christianity and contradictory philosophies cannot both be true because biblical Christianity makes inevitably exclusive truth claims.

 

Biblical Christianity is a religion.  By definition it includes a number of beliefs.  Among these are the claims that the God presented in the Bible created the heavens and the earth, that Jesus is God the Son – not a different god, but the same by whom all things were made, that Jesus was also human, that He died on a cross to atone for our sins – quite literally, that He rose from the dead bodily; that He is the sole mediator between God and man; that there is no other name under heaven, given among men whereby we must be saved; that we are saved by God’s grace through faith; that we are given the Holy Spirit.  Biblical Christianity also involves a relationship with God.  The God presented in the Bible is personal – One with whom humans can and do relate.  Biblical Christianity includes behavioral requirements.  This is not to say that behaviors make a person a Christian – but that there are Christian behaviors and behaviors contrary to Christianity.  These behaviors consist in those taught by Jesus, those revealed in the New Testament, and those portions of the law that were not exclusive to Judaism.  The source of information about biblical Christianity is, and must be the Bible.  There is no other reliable source material for the teachings of Jesus.  If the Jesus we think we follow is not the Jesus presented in the Bible, it is false.  Biblical Christianity is also a philosophy – there are philosophical implications of grace, of forgiveness, of the teachings of Jesus that ought not to be ignored.

 

Biblical Christianity claims to be a revealed religion.  God’s nature is unknowable to humans except insofar as God has revealed Himself.  It cannot be arrived at through speculation or unaided reason.  Some things about God can perhaps be understood rationally; most cannot.  In fact, if we were to sit down on our own and try to come up with what we thought about God, we would not come up with biblical Christianity.  The God we can perhaps discern from nature alone would be very different than the God we proclaim.  We might perceive order; we might perceive elegance; we might also perceive cruelty; we might also perceive predation and survival of the strong.  We would not see love; we would not see grace.  If we tried to learn about God from ourselves, we would either deny half of our nature, or we would try to make God like us.  That revelation of God claimed in biblical Christianity comes through the law, the prophets, ultimately through Jesus Christ, the witness of the apostles and New Testament writers, and the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

 

You may believe that Christianity is a revealed religion or not as suits you.  But it is indisputable that this is the claim of biblical Christianity.  The moment the Bible presents God as giving the law, the moment Deuteronomy claims, “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever”, the moment the prophets say, “Thus sayeth the Lord…”, the moment Jesus says, “It is written…” as if that settles the matter, the moment Jesus testifies that He does the work His Father sent Him to do, the moment He claims that He and the Father are one, the moment the apostolic writings speak of the Holy Spirit expressly testifying, we have entered the realm of revelation.

 

Biblical Christianity, quite obviously, is consistent with the Bible; when it is not it ceases to be biblical Christianity.  I would make the same assertion of Christianity across the board.  Many things – many ideas, many biases, many agendas – call themselves Christian.  But often they contradict themselves, each other, and the Bible.  Christians are instructed to test the spirits because not all of them are from God.  The Bible is replete with warnings about falsehoods – false teachings, false beliefs, false ideas, deceptions.  Over and over again, people claimed to speak for God when God had not sent them.  We are cautioned about false prophets, false teachers, false messiahs, false apostles, false believers, false doctrines.  We are told to turn away from those who deceive and who are themselves deceived.  In Deuteronomy we’re instructed not to listen to the words of the prophet who tells us to follow other gods and worship them – even when that prophet performs miraculous signs.  In some cases biblical warnings are directed to the false teacher – who is doing something very wrong and harmful.  But in most cases warnings are directed to the hearer – the ordinary person who might believe the false teaching.

 

We can easily conclude four things from this:

 

• The Bible indicates that some teachings are clearly true; others are clearly false.

 

• Some false teachers claim to be speaking for God; some false teachers claim that their teachings are Christian teachings.

 

• The people of God – Christians – can fall for false teachings.

 

• Since many of the warnings and instructions are directed at us, we are responsible for the false teachings we accept.

 

While God can speak to us in many ways, the source material for Christianity – where we get the teachings of Jesus, where we get behavioral expectations for Christians, where we get Christian doctrines – is the Bible.  All of the ideas that call themselves “Christian” are subject to the Bible.  If there is conflict between the two, the idea is not Christian.  Part of this is practical necessity because there is no other source material.  Secular history, archeology, art, and later writings may provide considerable insights, but they do not provide reliable accounts of what Jesus actually said and did.  If one were to conclude that the New Testament is not a reliable account, then there would remain no reliable account at all.  Any assertions about Jesus made in that circumstance are pure speculation – no matter how brilliant or innovative those assertions might appear.

 

As a reader can probably guess at this point, I believe the Bible to be true.  It is as God intended it to be.  Yes, much has been made of the fact that it has a variety of human writers working over a wide span of time.  And yes, the early church recognized the canon of Scripture.  But these facts have nothing to do with whether or how God acted in this process.  As a matter of personal belief, I am persuaded by the Bible itself.  The more I study the Bible, the more I am astonished by its unities, its consistency; the more I am amazed by the accuracy of detail of human nature; the more I am startled by its depth and subtlety.  Yes, I see contradictions – many of the same contradictions of which others complain.  But, were I to be honest, I would have to also acknowledge that I see far fewer contradictions than I used to.  In very many cases, where I posited contradiction and conflict, I did so because I didn’t understand the text.  This has happened to me frequently enough that I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to those that remain unresolved.  The limits to my understanding are great enough to indicate the problem is likely mine.

 

I am persuaded the Bible is true.  Its plain, intended meaning is the correct one.  Yes, the biblical authors speak in metaphor, in figure of speech, but their meaning is almost always either self-evident or evident from context.  I find myself agreeing with the Westminster Confession:

 

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.  

 

And:

 

The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.

 

The bottom line here is that the Bible is readily available and understandable to the vast majority of Christians, and it is the rule of faith and practice for Christians.

 

Naturally, I am aware that many people claim alternate sources of authority for Christianity.  These might include tradition, subsequent revelation, the Holy Spirit doing a new thing, evolution – as if our progress as a church or community or as humankind generally enables us to reach ever increasing heights of understanding.  Teleological approaches are even cited – so that we are being pulled through history toward the actualization of a divine idea.  In still other cases some argue that what religions have in common is true, that God speaks through different religions, and that Christianity needs to be corrected according to the truths in other religions.  Sometimes it is assumed that God speaks through culture.  These claims might sound strange to those unfamiliar with them, but all of them have been made.  The fact is that one or another of these approaches might sometimes yield a truth or an increased understanding.  Others of these approaches don’t work at all.  Whatever the results, in terms of biblical Christianity, these approaches and truth claims are all and always subject to the final authority of Scripture.

 

An observant reader might notice that I have just posited something of a tautology.  Christianity is the belief system presented in the Bible; therefore the final authority for determining what is and is not Christianity is … the Bible.  That reader would be right – it is circular.  However, that does not really pose a problem.  The point of this writing is to examine how those who embrace biblical Christianity can make decisions about the ideas, truth claims, values, doctrines, and behaviors that are being marketed to them.  Such a process might be able to be applied to all areas of an individual’s life – whether or not these areas were considered overtly religious, but it would not be useful or even sensible for those who already rejected biblical Christianity.  The question is one of consistency, not one of persuasion.  There are certainly many sound arguments for the objective truth of biblical Christianity, but I am not offering one here.  That person who does not believe the Bible to be true in the first place is very unlikely to be swayed by appeals to the authority of the Bible.  That person who believes the Bible is hit and miss … parts might be true and others false, is also unlikely to be swayed by the Bible’s authority.  In some cases it is possible, without appeal to authority, to demonstrate that “christianities” that oppose the Bible fail on their own merits (or lack thereof).  But that is outside the scope of this discussion.

 

The bottom line is that I’m writing primarily to those who already embrace biblical Christianity, and when I use the term “Christianity” I mean biblical Christianity.

 

Ordinary Christians and the Church

 

I have said I am writing to those who embrace biblical Christianity.  But I am actually appealing to a more specific subset of that group:  I am appealing to ordinary Christians.  By “ordinary Christians” I mean the people in the pews.  I mean no one special:  no one any more special than anyone else; no one with any extraordinary qualifications; no one with any superior degree of holiness; no one with any particular intellectual brilliance; no one with any official designation or ceremonial distinction.  In short, I am appealing to the people we call “laity” and the Bible calls “peculiar” – “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9).  I am appealing to people whose only claim to fame is that they are redeemed believers in Jesus Christ; people whose only noteworthy feature is the fact that they have been with Jesus.

 

I choose to speak to ordinary Christians for three reasons.  First, because I am one; I have no special accomplishments, titles or qualifications.  Second, because it seems to me that there is a widespread misunderstanding about what exactly the Church is and about what our role is in it.  Third, because many of us have been waiting wrongly for the professional Christians, for the people of note, for high officials, for academics and theologians, for the exceptionally holy to rise up and defend us from those who prey upon us.

 

I use the verb “prey” advisedly:  What would you call it when people make use of ordinary Christians to advance their own extra-Christian agendas – whether for power, prestige, financial gain, political activism, or merely to normalize non-Christian beliefs and practices with the church?  What would you call it when leaders knowingly tell ordinary Christians that Christianity teaches things it does not teach?  What would you call it when leaders knowingly conceal the inconvenient teachings of Christianity?

 

We are waiting for an intervention that is not going to come.

 

I am persuaded that once we grasp the place to which we have been called as adopted children of the Living God, and once we understand the rights and responsibilities that calling entails, we will begin to see our role in the Church more clearly.

 

We need to dispose of two pernicious myths from the outset.

 

Myth #1:  The Church, the body of Christ, the spiritual building made by God is the same thing as the man-made organizations we call churches.

 

The New Testament writers speak in sometimes glowing terms about the body of Christ, about the called, about believers.  At the same time, New Testament writers speak about the very real, readily observable, perennial failings of churches and believers.  Historically, Christians have made distinctions among the universal church, the local church, the visible church, the invisible church, the true church, denominations, hierarchies, buildings and material assets.  Yet all of these are at times called the church, and the characteristics of these are being confused.  The glowing terms New Testament writers apply to the body of Christ almost always apply to a spiritual reality made by God, saved by Jesus Christ, perfected by the Holy Spirit.  That church without spot or blemish includes believers of all times and does not include non-believers.

 

Our organizations, on the other hand, include only those currently living, include only their members, and include both believers and those who, for one reason reason or another choose to pose as Christian.  Our organizations are often incorporated; they have their own bylaws, rules, and procedures; they have their monetary assets and properties.  They may help Christians do good works; they may not.  But to read the New Testament passages about the body of Christ as if they applied to any one or group of these organizations is, at best, folly.  Worse, such readings usually result in an over-preoccupation with the singular organization, with temporal power, or with wealth and material resources.  Worse still, such readings lend themselves to the manipulation of the ordinary members of those organizations.

 

Myth #2:  There are two tiers of Christian.  There are ordinary Christians, and there are the professionally holy, paid providers of religious services, mediators between God and ordinary Christians. 

 

In the world, there are authorities, and there is everyone else.  This hierarchy may be more complicated, and it be more subtle, but it is always about those who have power and those who don’t.  Christianity also has authorities.  Ordinary Christians do find themselves in positions of leadership sometimes.  But Christianity turns that authority on its head.  When Jesus washed the disciples’ feet on the night he was crucified, and when he told us whoever would be great among us must be the servant of all, he was offering us a better model of authority.  Leadership within the body of Christ is by calling, by gifting, and by the leading of the Holy Spirit; and it is moral rather than temporal in nature.  Christian leadership is by teaching, preaching, and by example; it is by persuasion and patience.  It is not a status or a rank.  And none of the things that go along with rank in the world have any place in Christianity.

 

That is an extremely difficult notion for ordinary Christians to grasp.  We are very slow to dispute or disagree with a pastor, minister, priest, or official – even when the Bible, plain reason, and honesty are on our side.  This stems in part from a lack of confidence because we often lack the specialized training that officials and theologians tend to have.  We also lack the vocabulary, the technical theological jargon, even the fashionable and sophisticated phrases so that we are afraid of sounding ignorant or simplistic.

 

But there are other factors at work.  We have different expectations of ministers, priests, or religious officials to a different standard of expectation.  We hold them, and sometimes their families, to a standard of holiness we do not apply to ourselves or other ordinary Christians; and in return, we grant them deference.  But is this a function of respect, or is it a way of letting ourselves off the hook?  If there are people who are professionally holy, then we don’t have to bother with all that theology stuff.  That’s their job, and God has called them to do the work for us.  More, we don’t have to worry about those more irksome Christian behaviors and attitudes … after all, it’s not as if we’re pros.

 

The problem with this habit of thought is this:  the salvation provided by Jesus Christ does not come in two varieties – the serious version, and the bargain basement type; nor are there varying commitment levels.  There is only one salvation.  Any that receive Jesus are given the power to become the children of God; you cannot be a half-child of God.  Just as salvation is not two-tiered; holiness is not two-tiered; Christian behaviors are not two-tiered; Christian doctrines are not two-tiered.  There is not a subset of Christians who are born of God; there are not hidden truths available to the initiated few.  This gives ordinary Christians a far higher calling that we often realize.  It also gives us a far more serious responsibility than we often assume.

 

Why Bother?

 

The Berean posture of biblical discernment is called noble.  The first Christians in Jerusalem dedicated themselves to the Apostles’ teaching.  Jesus commissions his disciples to teach all nations to observe the things he has commanded them.  Paul tells Timothy, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”  He tells the Christians at Thessolonica, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”  The Psalmist declares, “Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee,” and calls blessed the one who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly … but who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night.  Proverbs compares the word of God to a lamp and a light on the path.  God instructs the Israelites in the wilderness to teach his words to their children.

 

Why?

 

Why should ordinary Christians concern themselves?  What is the need?

 

There is one very practical reason ordinary Christians should bother:  we don’t have a choice.  We are often required to evaluate ideas.  The notions, truth claim, value judgments, doctrines, philosophies, and courses of action that are being marketed to us often demand a response.  We can accept them; we can reject them; we can regard them with neutrality; we can suspend judgment; but in many cases we cannot live as if these are both true and false.  In many cases we would live one way if we believed they were true, and we would live a very different way if we believed they were false.  When such a decision is required we can flip a coin, we can follow the course of least resistance, we can blunder along pretending we weren’t making a decision, we can do what we wanted to do anyway.  Or we can make a conscious, thoughtful choice.

 

People have many approaches to making decisions.  The Bereans have modeled a posture – of openness to God’s leading, of expectancy, of trust in the reliability of Scripture, of a willingness to subject ideas to Scripture, and of doing the work of studying Scripture – that lends itself to discernment.  If we believe the Bible is true, this is a thing we, as ordinary Christians, would do well to practice.  For some reason, discernment is an in-group word; we seldom encounter it outside of Christian subculture (although the word ‘discerning’ is more widely used).  It describes the ability to tell the difference between true and false, good and evil, bitter and sweet, light and darkness, real and counterfeit.  It is about both approving what is good and rejecting what is bad.

 

It is unfortunate that when we hear the word ‘discernment’ or think of the concept it describes, our minds first leap to detecting falsehood.  We err when we do this.   Skill at detecting falsehood is an invaluable gift – one desperately needed at this time; but it is an inherently negative one.  That view of biblical discernment tells at best, only half the story.  Biblical discernment consists in more than identifying what is false.  In fact, I can think of at least four major reasons a Christian might want to imitate the Berean posture.  There are certainly others, but these are readily apparent.

 

1) The Berean practice of searching the scriptures daily yields innumerable benefits. 

 

1. The word of God reveals God’s character. We learn about God through what he has revealed of himself in scripture.  We know God through this revelation – it is something we could come up with on our own.

 

1. The word of God reveals us. We are told the word of God is living and active – that is not to say that it changes, but that our relationship to it changes.  The writer of Hebrews goes on:  “It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Searching the scriptures reveals our attitudes, displays what we think, what we value.  I’m not talking here about those attitudes we try to cultivate in obedience to scripture, but what we really think.  James compares this to looking in a mirror.  Paul describes the law in similar terms.  We spend a lot of time looking at ourselves, trying to understand why we do what we do, who we are, our motivations, but we rarely ever see ourselves.  The heart protects its secrets – as Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.  Who can know it?”  Searching the scriptures can show us who we are.

 

1. The word of God cleanses us from sin. Jesus tells his disciples they “are clean through the word which I have spoken unto” them; and he prays for them that God will “sanctify them through [his] truth: [his] word is truth.”  Paul describes Christ as sanctifying and cleansing his church “with the washing of water by the word.”

 

1. The word of God nourishes us. It is necessary for the life and growth of the Christian.  Jesus tells the tempter in the desert, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  Peter urges us to desire the “sincere milk of the word, that we may grow thereby.”

 

1. The word of God builds our faith. As Paul tells the Christians in Rome, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God;” and, “Without faith it is impossible to please him.” Faith is God’s gift to us – it does not come from us; more, faith itself is the victory – the victorious life is the life of faith.  Faith is God’s working in us, but he has provided his word as one help to cultivate our faith.

 

1. The word of God gives us hope. Paul tells Christians in Rome that the things written in the past were written “for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”  Reading and studying the scriptures is necessary for our comfort and encouragement.  Trying to live as Christians without the hope God has provided is impossible.

 

1. The word of God equips us for good works. Christians are saved by grace through faith – not by works.  But we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared for us. As James points out, “Faith without works is dead.”  Jesus tells us to, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” He then immediately speaks about the law and the prophets.  Paul informs Timothy that, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:  that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”

 

1. The word of God cleanses us from sin. Jesus tells his disciples they “are clean through the word which I have spoken unto” them; and he prays for them that God will “sanctify them through [his] truth: [his] word is truth.”  Paul describes Christ as sanctifying and cleansing his church “with the washing of water by the word.”

 

1. The word of God is a weapon against evil. It is called the sword of the spirit and listed as part of the whole armor of God which is necessary for us to be able to stand.

 

2) The exercise of biblical discernment enables us to see true things.  Jesus was not the type of messiah people expected at the time.  In fact, what he actually did – even though it was prophesied – could not have been foreseen.  Today, we still don’t entirely “get it”.  We still find ourselves looking for the political messiah, for the kingdom of this world.  We still find ourselves operating by this world’s ethos; and we often fail to understand just how radical the teachings and actions of Jesus were.

 

There is a story in Luke’s gospel about a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to two of his followers who were traveling on the road to Emmaus.  When Jesus joined them, they did not recognize him.  They were discussing the hopes they had had – that Jesus had been the one that was going to redeem Israel; they were discussing the horrifying events of his crucifixion; and they were discussing (with apparent incredulity) the amazing story told by the women who had visited his tomb.  Jesus criticized their failure to believe the prophets, but he also went through the scriptures with them and showed them everything the prophets said concerning him.

 

As startling as this truth was – so startling that none of the disciples expected it or understood it – it was already contained in scripture.

 

There are many true things that we do not and cannot naturally understand.  The gospel of God’s grace and what that means for us.  How we live in light of grace.  How we acquire the character traits we sometimes wish we could display.  What God is like.  The importance of living in love, forgiveness, and contentment.  What victory looks like.  How not to judge by outward appearances.  The predicted return of Jesus.  What is sin, and what do we do about it?  What commandments ought we to follow?

 

The gospel itself is simple.  It can be expressed in a few sentences.  But there are myriad questions we have and myriad things we don’t understand.  A Christian could spend his or her life trying sort it all out.  For some portions of the teachings of Jesus this is intentional.  He wants his hearers to have to think about them.  John reports that Jesus tells his disciples that he has many things to say to them that they cannot yet bear, but he promises that the Spirit of truth will guide them into all truth.  In fact, the life of the believer is a growing process – we grow in the grace of the Lord.  We grow in love.  We grow the fruit of the Spirit.  All of this comes from abiding in Jesus, but our understanding comes through biblical discernment.  There are so many true, and good, and transforming things we risk missing because we don’t follow the Berean example, and because, like some in the church at Corinth, we resist moving on from milk to solid food.

 

3)  Biblical discernment keeps us from accepting counterfeits that might prevent us from the full gospel.  While Moses was on Sinai receiving the law, the people despaired.  This is perhaps understandable – they worried about what would happen to them; they had left everything familiar behind and been led into the wilderness.  But their concept of God was misguided – they wanted a god they could look at, a god in one place they could pin down; they wanted a god who was less dangerous; they wanted a god they could control; they wanted a god that was an inanimate object, a toy.  Eventually they pressured Aaron into making gods for them that would go before them.  Aaron took gold from them and fashioned a calf.  When he had finished, Aaron’s words to the people are very revealing:  “This is your god that brought you out of Egypt.”  He then referred to the thing he had made as YHWH.  Aaron and the people used the very name of God to describe something he had made up – and they knew he had made it up.  It was a counterfeit.

 

We all have ideas about the divine – throughout the history of the human race, people have struggled to understand divinity.  But we speak without knowledge.  True, we use our experience, but we also use our imaginations and wishful thinking and rumors and preconceived notions.  For God to be God and our creator, the very nature of things dictates that we cannot know or understand him.  We can, of course, perceive certain things from this world about God.  But for us to know God, God has to take the initiative; God has to reveal himself to us.  Many of our ideas or notions aren’t bad in themselves – some are, but many would be harmless unless they keep us from seeing what God actually has revealed.  Aaron produced a counterfeit.  That counterfeit enabled the Israelites in the wilderness to ignore the God who is – the God whose presence was all around them in a very dramatic way – in favor of a god they could control.

 

Not everything is idolatry.  We use that word, sometimes, to discuss our attachments to money or fame or a nation or an idea.  But we are saying this or that attachment is wrong because it is like idolatry in that it diverts our attention from the living God.  Many ideas, truth claims, doctrines, and teachings that are false have this effect.  In certain cases, these are merely mistaken – we might deem them unimportant.  It may be that the snake oil does not, in itself, harm you.  But if it prevents you from a medicine that might heal you because you have mistakenly put your faith in the snake oil, it has caused harm nonetheless.  The faithful practice of testing ideas against scripture can shield us from this effect.

 

4)  The Berean posture of testing ideas, values, and truth claims against scripture helps us to avoid harmful false teachings.  Some ideas, values, practices, and truth claims that are false are also repellant from beginning to end.  They are actively harmful.  They hurt us, and they hurt other people.  The German Christians – a party within the Protestant German Church organizations – embraced Nazism.  They argued that God spoke through culture; consequently, God was speaking through the German culture of the day.  They rejected the Hebrew origins of the Gospel.  They did not object to the Nazi promotion of an Aryan Jesus.  They did not object to a ‘positive Christianity’ that purged Christianity of its Jewish elements.  They agreed with the assessment that Christianity historically focused too much on the virgin birth, the crucifixion, the resurrection, salvation as atonement, repentance and forgiveness of sin in the name of Jesus, and otherwordly things.  Instead, they embraced the idea that Jesus (the so-called historical jesus) was a fighter who opposed Judaism.  A baptized Catholic – who remained a Catholic throughout his life regardless of his personal views, Adolph Hitler  insisted, “As a Christian, I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.” … and the German Christians wholeheartedly approved.

 

What I have just described in broad brush strokes is an interlocking series of false teachings – teachings that claim to be Christianity that are diametrically opposed to biblical Christianity.  It is one coherent philosophy; but it is composed of many individual false premises.  While the holocaust and other Nazi atrocities were conceived and planned by relatively few people, without the widespread acceptance of these false believes among German people, the holocaust would have been an impossibility.  This is a system of belief (one of many in world history, and one of quite a few at large today) that is actively harmful.  It is also repellant from beginning to end.

 

This was not a system that emerged fully formed in the 1930s.  It was assembled piece by piece, idea by idea, and false doctrine by false doctrine over the course of many years, even centuries.  Most of the time people who embraced these ideas did not see the complete picture.  It is akin to putting together a puzzle without looking at the picture on the box.  Only as it begins to take on a more completed form do we begin to guess what it actually will be.  Taken individually – each piece of this philosophy might have appeal.  Many of them (those I mentioned and the related others), do not immediately strike us as sinister.  Some do, of course, but many don’t.  We don’t naturally, when we look at them, see them as threatening or repulsive.  In fact, some of them, we might accept.  This is true even of Christians when we believe we are committed to biblical Christianity.   By the time you place the final pieces in the puzzle, it is far too late.  We may, when we see the whole thing, reject it – and that is good, but it is also a far greater struggle than we might realize.  And far more harm will have been caused, than might have been if we had discerned the truth earlier.

 

The bottom line is this:  the posture modeled for us by the Bereans – of openness to God, of expectancy, of trust in the reliability of Scripture, of willingness to test ideas by Scripture, and of doing the work – is one that, if faithfully practiced, can help us discern truth and error.  It can lead us into a richer understanding of God and ourselves.  It can bring us into a closer relationship with God.  It can help cultivate the character traits in us we need to be able to live better lives.  It can keep us – and maybe by sharing, it can keep others – from missing out on the truth by accepting counterfeits.  It can help us to reject harmful false ideas and have no part in spreading them.  We are daily obliged to make decisions anyway, and this posture can give Christians who believe the Bible to be true, a tool – a way of looking at things that is consistent.

 

About False Teachings

 

Some more needs to be said in this context about false teachings.  Although rejecting false teachings is only a part of biblical discernment, it is that part that is causing the most discomfort and controversy today.  It is in fact that portion of discernment which ordinary Christians have the most trouble approaching.

 

People bristle at the mere mention of the phrase ‘false teaching’.  Who are you to say that a teaching is false?  Worse, are you calling someone a false teacher?  Many people regard such a concept as offensive.  Yet 100% of human beings I have encountered make such determinations frequently.  Why, for example, would it be a bad thing to call a teaching false?  That automatically presupposes some standard of right and wrong conduct.  Whether a person calls this standard tolerance or open-mindedness or some other equally approved virtue does not matter.  The bottom line is the person who disapproves of the use of the phrase “false teaching” is of necessity affirming a virtue he prefers and castigating a vice (e.g. intolerance) of which he is intolerant.  In short, every time a person holds an opinion about anything being true – even the assertion that there is no truth or that truth is unknowable – she is making a truth claim and by default calling contrary opinions false.

 

So what do I mean by the phrase false teaching?

 

For our purposes, a false teaching or proposition is a teaching or proposition that claims to be Christian while conflicting with definitional Christianity, while being incompatible with Christianity, while being factually false, or while causing harm.  All of these are things that we, as Christians, ought to reject.  It must be clearly understood, however, that these four are not the same thing.  They are measured on different axes; they are responses to different questions; they hold varying degrees of importance and knowability.  Any given idea can be true, false, partially true, definitionally Christian, compatible with Christianity, incompatible with Christianity, helpful, harmful, or neutral.  An idea that is not definitionally Christian can still be compatible with Christianity.  An idea can be wrong – we can be mistaken about a particular idea – without it being necessarily harmful or incompatible with Christianity.  An idea can sound good, can seem helpful, and still be incompatible with Christianity.

 

In the church, when we consider any idea, proposal, doctrine, or action, we must answer four questions, and it is very important that we treat them in their proper order.  First, we must ask of any given idea, “Is it definitionally Christian?”  By definitionally Christian, I mean those ideas that are reflexive to Christianity, that are necessary to Christianity, apart from which there can be no Christianity.  For example, if Jesus never existed, Christianity is false on its face – there could be no Christianity because there could be no followers of a Jesus who never was.  If God were an impersonal force – say creativity or love – Christianity would be false because it requires a personal God.  If Jesus did not die for our sins, Christianity would be untrue.  If Jesus did not rise again, same result.  Without the atonement, same result.  This list is not ponderously long, but the items on it are essential.  They are the truth claims of Christianity.  If we are Christians (and wish to remain Christians), and we are considering an idea that is definitional to Christianity, it must be accepted.  If, as Christians, we encounter an idea that conflicts with definitional Christianity, we must reject it.  Our only alternative to either of these – accepting what is Christian by definition and rejecting what is directly opposed to Christianity by definition – is to depart from Christianity.  (That is certainly an option.  A person may conclude that he or she no longer believes Christian truth claims, but he or she cannot do so and remain a Christian.  This creates a difficulty we face with increasing frequency these days when a person chooses to depart from Christianity but attempts to hold on to the name.)

 

If an idea or proposal or doctrine involves definitional Christianity – if we accept what is definitionally Christian and reject what opposes definitional Christianity – the matter ends there.  We need go no farther.  However, many of the ideas we must address do not fall along that axis at all.  They do not involve definitional Christianity or opposition to definitional Christianity.  It is here that our second question arises:  “Is this idea compatible with Christianity?”  Here again, if it is incompatible with Christianity – if it is incompatible with the testimony of Scripture, it must be rejected.  If, on the other hand, the idea is compatible with the testimony of Scripture – or if the idea is at least not incompatible with Scripture, we should proceed to the next question.  Examples of this type of issue might be political opinions, proposed policies, or even some doctrinal issues where Scripture remains unclear.

 

Our first question then is whether or not an idea is Christian by definition; our second question is whether an idea is compatible with Christianity as presented in Scripture.  Those ideas that are incompatible with biblical Christianity must be rejected across the board.  Much of the time we will not be dealing in the realm of what is definitionally Christian.  Though they are often challenged today, definitional issues are usually no-brainers.  Many issues that cause confusion fall into the range of degrees of compatibility or incompatibility with Christianity.  When we find an idea that appears to us to be compatible with Christianity, we must be careful never to absolutize it.   We must never treat that idea as if it were definitionally Christian – as if those that, in good faith, disagree are actually rejecting, not our idea, but Christianity.

 

I mention these two (definitional Christianity and compatibility with Scripture) first because they are our most important considerations, and because they are the most readily determined.  This order may seem backwards to many people.  Obviously Christians must avoid teachings and ideas that are known to be false, and obviously Christians must avoid those things that cause harm, but these questions only arise after the first two determinations are made.  The problem is that the latter two are harder determinations to make.  Consequences of actions and ideas are sometimes obvious, but sometimes they are utterly unexpected – so that a person might do something with the best of intentions and reasonable expectation of a good result and end up causing great misery.  Such an evaluation is notoriously complicated because immediate effects are often distinct from long term effects; there are often layers of secondary and tertiary consequences that are beyond our rational grasp.  Determining the factual truth or falsehood of any given idea upon which our actions might depend or be based is often beyond our competency.

 

After we ascertain that an idea is compatible with Christianity, we must consider its truth or falsehood.  Does it fit my observations and experience?  Is it logically falsifiable?  Is it practically falsifiable?  Humility is key in this process; if we assume we are always able to determine what is true or false factually, we are assuming that we are omniscient.  The limits to our knowledge – and to our understanding of what we directly observe and of what we directly experience – are far greater than we want to admit.  As human beings we are none of us as rational as we like to imagine; and as a species, we are not particularly honest or unbiased.  Very often, the data we collect serves as a Rorschach test where we see the patterns we already wanted to see or suspected to be present.  We ought certainly to reject any idea we determine to be false.  Nonetheless, while our rational processes are very useful and important, we would do well to refrain from placing all our faith in them.

 

Many times Christians have embraced ideas that were compatible with Christianity, but were themselves false.  This is not harmful in itself – it is simply mistaken.  However, there is a temptation to absolutize or dogmatize those ideas as if they were identical to biblical Christianity.  This tendency should be steadfastly avoided.  If we make an error of fact, under ordinary circumstance there is no harm or no foul.  If, however, we compound that error of fact by dogmatizing it, we cause great damage.  Once such an extra-Christian idea has been elevated in this fashion, we will tend to cling to it in the face of mounting contrary evidence.  This will greatly damage our credibility; worse, many Christians might find themselves actively working to suppress the truth because they cling to a wrongly dogmatized claim.  Ironically, such a posture – opposing the truth – is itself in direct contradiction to biblical Christianity.

 

Finally, Christians should always avoid causing harm.  If an idea or policy or doctrine is found to be compatible with biblical Christianity, is not known to be false, yet brings harm, it must be rejected.  This can be a very difficult determination to make – and it is a strong reason Christians should abstain from making pronouncements hastily or with very limited information.  This can be clearly seen in the realm of politics.  Many times Christians have taken political stands that haven’t necessarily directly contradicted biblical Christianity, but that proved harmful or unwise.  In fact, that has happened and continues to happen with alarming regularity.  In cases, Christians have taken these stands claiming the authority of God – as if they were necessary derivatives of Christianity.  Much of the time, without going quite that far, Christians have couched their political opinions in terms that sound very Christian – as if to imply equivalency.  Compassion becomes a specific political policy or support for a specific candidate; justice becomes a specific plan; reclaiming the culture for God.  All of these equate ideas that are not biblical Christianity with Christian values.  The person who opposes your preferred policy or candidate is automatically uncompassionate – and thus unchristian; the person who honestly sees a situation differently automatically supports injustice – and is thus unchristian; the person who disagrees with your pet issue is suddenly opposed to the reign of God.

 

Aside from the abuse of Christianity to support random political positions, and the frankly, self-serving deceit that requires, there is another hazard that must be considered.  We are responsible for the harm our ideas cause.  Even when we are dealing legitimately with biblical Christianity, we must have a care to avoid harm.  In all things we do and accept, we must carefully consider consequences.  How we use truly biblical ideas can make all the difference.  We can see ready examples of this in the Gospels.  The people who brought the woman caught in the act of adultery to Jesus were correct in the sense that the Bible – the law in this case – was quite clear.  We can raise tangential issues – if she was caught in the act, where was the man?  But ultimately, the Bible did speak very clearly about adultery.  Jesus clearly affirmed the commandment, but his application of it was unique.  There was no attempt to justify the woman’s sin.  Jesus did not say, “It’s not really that serious;” “Everybody’s doing it;” “The prohibition against adultery is not realistic in today’s culture;” “You were in love.”  Jesus did not even object to the penalty – though it is draconian to our sensibilities.  Instead, Jesus challenged the fitness of those who condemned her.  He chose not to condemn her.  His response, “Go and sin no more” makes clear that adultery remained a sin, and such adultery itself was condemned as a sin even though she was not condemned as a person.

 

Let us consider some examples of the questions we are asking.  For many years, the Ptolemaic model of the universe was widely accepted.  That model’s most important feature was that it was geocentric:  the sun, moon, stars revolved around the earth.  For centuries all educated people agreed to this notion.  Christians read the book of Jasher quoted in Joshua as saying that the sun stood still in the midst of heaven.  Now it is clear that the writers of Joshua and Jasher are describing a miracle.  What they are not saying, however, is that the sun moves around the earth – they only describe its movement through the sky.  They are not making any astrophysical claim.  However, here we are presented with an idea:  the sun moves around the earth.  So how might we evaluate that?  Is it definitional to Christianity?  Clearly not.  Is it compatible with biblical Christianity?  It certainly seems so.  Is it factually true?  No.  Therefore it ought to be rejected.  Is it harmful?  Not in itself.  But harm did come from it.  This harm did not come because Christians believed the earth to be the center of the universe.  Everyone believed that.  The harm came when Christians falsely elevated the merely compatible with biblical Christianity to the status of definitional Christianity.  Then the church found itself in the embarrassing position of having charged Galileo with heresy for supporting the heliocentric view.  He was falsely accused of teaching a tenet that was “false and contrary to Scripture”.

 

Today there is much debate about government spending for perceived social benefit.  Is support for such spending Christian by definition, or does it oppose definitional Christianity.  No to both questions.  Is opposition to such spending Christian by definition, or does it oppose definitional Christianity?  Again, no on both counts.  Is support for or opposition to government spending for these specific priorities compatible with biblical Christianity, or is such support or opposition incompatible with Christianity.  The simple answer is that neither such support nor such opposition is automatically incompatible with biblical Christianity.  The only aspect of the debate that is absolutely incompatible with biblical Christianity is the claim that one or the other are Christian or anti-Christian by definition.  For us, the debate must center on the truth or falsehood of various claims and the perceived benefit or harm from various policies.  The answers to this are possible to ascertain through meticulous pragmatic examination – but people can disagree about them and still remain Christian.  What is not appropriate here is to elevate the question from one of accuracy and projected results to one of essential Christianity.   Such an elevation is, in itself, a false teaching regardless of the merits of the original arguments.

 

From the heresies that began to appear in the First Century to the present day, the Church has been dogged by false teachings.  By “false teachings” I mean those teachings that are on their face incompatible with biblical Christianity or those teachings that contain elements that could be Christian but also elements of falsehood.  Many churches and many Christians have at times embraced these teachings.  The persistence of this phenomenon raises two questions:  Where do false teachings come from?  And why do people believe them?  Sure, sometimes people do set out with a conscious attempt to deceive others, but in most cases people did not posit or propagate these ideas because they thought them to be false.  They usually believed their teachings were right.  The ancient heresies, the whole church overwhelmingly and unequivocally rejected.  Yet even these errors reappear time and again – often without any awareness among their proponents that they were categorically rejected long ago.  In the same way, people generally don’t set out to embrace false teachings.  The person who accepts a false teaching is not usually noticeably more stupid than the person who rejects it.  While some false teachings are very subtle, many are transparent – many are obviously at odds with biblical Christianity.

 

So we are left to wonder:  why do so many false teachings continue to emerge?  And why are we so often willing, even eager to accept them?

 

How Do False Teachings Come to Be?

 

False beliefs are common.  We all believe things that are untrue.  In this world there are many sources of error.  Some errors are made in good faith; others spring from dishonesty.  Many times we lack sufficient data to draw a right conclusion.  In other cases we make assumptions about the meaning of things we observe that might be perfectly reasonable, but are nonetheless wrong.

 

When I was a toddler, my family used to have a mercury light on a pole next to the driveway.  It produced a blue light that almost appeared to pulse rapidly.  The doors and windows were open only during one portion of the year.  During these times, when I saw the light, I also heard the loud, almost metallic sound of crickets chirruping.  I distinctly remember believing (for some time) that the sound I heard was produced by the mercury light.  As toddler conclusions go, it was not without merit.  Every time I saw the light when the doors and windows were open, I heard the sound.  The sound matched my perception of the ‘vibration’ of the light.  And the type of light in question does actually make a noise – just not the one I thought.  This was a false belief that persisted for a while – I remember realizing my error on more than one occasion.  It just happened that I had so firmly associate the two things that, when I wasn’t thinking about it, I automatically reverted to my initial false conclusion.

 

False teachings about Christian doctrines, values, and practices are, in some senses, like that.  There are many of them; we often have reasons for believing them; and, once they have been established, we tend to automatically cling to them.  Even when we have perceived error, we almost instinctively revert to it.  But they seem to be different in character than simple errors of fact.

 

The concept of biblical Christianity is by no means new.  We see it in the Bible itself.  We see it in the way Jesus used scripture in the face of temptation and in the face of error.  “It is written” seemed to settle the matter.  We see it in the Berean example.  We see it throughout the New Testament.  We see the same principle applied in the Old Testament. The true prophets were continually pointing to the scriptures that existed at the time – even as they were bringing new words from God, they were doing so in agreement and harmony with scripture.  At many times in the church’s history this has been emphasized.

 

Why is it then that so many false teachings have arisen within the church and among people who call themselves Christians?  We can see this in the New Testament church – where Paul, John, Peter, Jude tireless opposed false teachings.  We can see the many warnings Jesus gives his followers about false teachings.  We can see it in the early church and the appearance of great heresies – teachings that were utterly incompatible with Christianity.  (I mean here, biblical Christianity could be true OR they could be true, but not both.)  This has been the case in every age – right up until today.

 

There are relatively few new false teachings – most of them have been elaborated and embraced in different forms throughout history.  Most of the incorrect beliefs common within our churches today have either been addressed and rejected or corrected by Christians long ago, or they are closely related, recycled versions of those incorrect beliefs.  Questions of the nature of God, of the creation, of the divinity of Jesus, of the humanity of Jesus, of the nature of human beings, of grace, of works, of the atonement, of the gospel, of the world and its destiny, of salvation – have all been heard and answered before.  Yet they crop up again and again.

 

In part, these teachings keep coming up because of things we, as Christians, do that facilitate them.

 

1. False teachings come about when we add to Scripture.

 

2. False teachings come about when we take away from Scripture.

 

3. False teachings spring from taking Scripture out of context.

 

4. False teachings emerge when we wrest a Scripture from its clear intent.

 

5. False teachings arise when we impose current presuppositions on texts.

 

6. False teachings result from sabotage.