The headline reads, "Suspicious Package Mailed To Joel Osteen Found To Contain Bible." Sure, that's the Babylon Bee. Yes, they're insulting Joel Osteen's knowledge of the Bible. "Osteen stated he had a 'bad feeling' when he went into the office this morning and began hissing, 'It burnss ussss!' about the time the suspicious package was delivered to Lakewood's mail room." It goes along with other stories like the one about Joel's Bible making a daring escape from an abusive owner or the Groundhog's Day story of Joel seeing his own shadow and predicting another year of taking the Bible out of context. Funny? Maybe. I think it's more sad. Not because of its disrespect for Osteen, but because of how it reflects on us.
Osteen does seem to be out of touch with ... you know ... actual Scripture. The problem with that is that he is a pastor. But to me the real problem is that he is not alone. Too many pastors are out of touch with the Bible. Just as bad, too many genuine believers don't seem very interested in what God has written in His Word.
There is currently on ongoing attack on the Bible. It comes from without. It comes from some that appear to be Christians but probably aren't. It comes from genuine Christians. We have well-known pastors urging Christians to "unhitch" their faith from the Old Testament and warning that "the Bible tells me so" is not a good argument. We have folks arguing, "I love the Bible ... but you can't really be sure of what it says at any given point, so don't try to argue that you can." The Bible, they assure us, is a book of myths, useful, perhaps, but not literally true. (That's a view held by 64% of Americans without a faith. Stunningly, 18% of Evangelicals who attend church at least once a week also believe it.) The Bible is not accurate in all that it teaches. (Of Americans with no religious beliefs, 74% go with that. Of the Evangelicals-that-go-to-church-at-least-once-a-week crowd, 12% believe that and another 2% aren't sure. In that same crowd, a stunning 27% believe that modern science disproves the Bible.)
For a large part, we don't know our Bibles. We don't know what God's Word says. Oh, we can find our favorite prooftext. "God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son." We like that. Except we misquote it and misunderstand it. (The "so much" isn't in there.) We don't have a sufficient grasp of all of Scripture to be able to compare Scripture to Scripture and let God's Word interpret God's Word. So we find, for instance, in "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chron 7:14) a promise for America. Never mind that the promise is made to Israel and the verse before it refers to the circumstances (where God shuts up the heavens for no rain and commands locust and pestilence). We might be able to find nice words to fit what we want, but don't know what principles God's Word is teaching so we can apply them to today. (For instance, if someone asked you, "On what biblical basis would you tell someone it's a sin to fail to stop at a Stop sign?", would you have an answer?) We just don't know!
Osteen is an easy target. Easier still, unfortunately, is the vast majority of modern American Christians who are willing to listen to some nice words from a preacher or two but not really interested in actually reading and understanding what God has to say. We don't like the Old Testament. We like a few places in the New. We might even be reasonably good hearers of the Word, but we are not doers. And then we wonder, "Why aren't people coming to Christ?" We are blessed with God's Word, but it is under attack. And we seem to refuse to equip ourselves to stand. Paul could have said to us, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you" (Rom 2:24). David wrote, "Your Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against You" (Psa 119:11). We've been satisfied to mostly just hide His Word. "My brothers, these things ought not to be so" (James 3:10).
6 comments:
I have a Kardashian-Jenner Revised Bible on order. It cost an arm and a leg and some silicone body parts, but I expect reading it will result in me owning a Lamborghini somewhere down the line.
Am I wrong in reading Acts 15 to be about not requiring the extraneous stuff the Pharisees added to the Law? They still told the Gentiles to basically many of the restrictions of the Law that even we ignore now, like don't eat strangled things.
This is in reference to the "unhitching" article you linked.
In Acts 15 the Apostles were separating "What was demanded of the nation of Israel" from "What is demanded of God's people". They were separating a theocracy from the rest of the world. The principles remain and always will and that's what's wrong with the "unhitched" article. That and the fact that Andy Stanley believes the Bible is not of much use anymore.
I was reading his post on that, didn't finish, but what it sounded like was that the Bible alone is not enough for non-believers. He says he agrees with the Innerancy conference from the 70s, but that the Bible alone is not sufficient to bring people to Christ. I can see where he's coming from in regards to the disenfranchised millennials that think they're too smart for the Bible. And as you pointed out, a growing number of Christians are believing that Science knows better than Scripture. The widespread respect for the Word of my great-grandparents' generation is gone. More and more people are agreeing that Scripture is a useless book of antiquated morals. From that perspective, to get to people, we would need to first prove the power of Scripture before spouting "thou shalt not". Yes, Scripture is the sole source of Truth for faith and practice. But with the growing sentiment of "I feel", Scripture alone isn't enough to reach the faithless. I agree with your side though, in regards to the already saved. You believe it is the Word of God? Then you do what it says because it says so. But that position can only be reached by a person of faith. Even as Scripture says, "the things of the Spirit are folly to those of the flesh." Beating someone over the head with Scripture doesn't serve the task of evangelism if there is absolutely no regard for Scripture. He's suggesting we need to finda different way to reach the lost. I think we can all agree that for someone that thinks Scripture is hogwash, "Because it says so" isn't going to be a sufficient starting place.
If the Church is a group of people following the good teachings of the Bible and all that, but really just another group of people, the Church is in danger of vanishing. It isn't. The Church is enabled by, built by, and maintained by God and is never in danger of vanishing from the face of the earth because it is not a mere standard gathering of people; it's a supernatural thing.
If the Bible is a nice book with nice thoughts and even genuine truth ... but just a nice book, then you're right. It won't be enough. If the Bible is God's Word, endowed with the power God's Word says it is (Jer 23:29; 1 Cor 1:18-25; Isa 55:10-11; Heb 4:12; et.al.), then we're not talking about a persuasive argument; we're talking about a living Word powered by God sufficient to produce changes in hearts and minds. Andy Stanley and the rest are coming at it from the perspective of an ordinary book. It's not (Isa 55:11).
Ooooh, that's right. You're right, Andy Stanley is an idiot. He's fallen into the same mindset that says we need to spice up the service to attract the young people.
Thank you for the correction.
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