It is very problematic to make general statements about large groups of people; those generalizations are almost impossible to prove.  Some say general statements amount to opinion and opinion is worth little compared to facts.  So when I write that in our world we have many Christians who are listening to false prophets I am writing my opinion, but I believe that many Christians have fallen prey to very weak conclusions based on information from questionable sources.  I know it is hard to prove that. 

Yet, I know those people exist.

I have a Christian friend who believes that the Christian faith is the God-ordained faith of America and if America would only cling to its Christian roots, our country will dominate the world.  (This idea ignores the diversity of America, the fact that we are a country with diverse faiths).  I have another Christian friend who believes that the Bible says that we are destined to be rich.  If we believe in God, He will bless us with material wealth and if we are poor, it is because we don’t believe in God enough (where in the Bible does it say that?). A third friend feels that God is working through political candidates, that men and women of a particular political party have been sent to earth to straighten out the world and members of another party are the people of Satan.  When questioned about questionable behaviors that some of their candidates have exhibited, my friend just gives them a “pass.”  They are God-ordained.  They don’t live according to the same standards the rest of us live by. (Where does the Bible say that “some” are free to sin because they are special?).

Where do people get this stuff?  Facebook, Tik Tok, YouTube preachers, the dark web?

It seems that people are turning to strange places to get a foundation of their belief systems.  They have forgotten the words of the Apostle John who says “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” [1 John 4]. 

Let’s get particular and ask the question above again.  Where should people be going to get the foundation for their beliefs?

The Bible.

That is a simple answer, one that is also problematic.  How many of us read the “real language” of the Bible?  The vast majority of Christians have not read Koine Greek, so we depend on others to help us understand the language of the New Testament.  As Protestants we have a rich heritage of freedom to read the Biblical text (the Catholic Church has the magisterium, the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, especially as exercised by bishops or the Pope).  But we protested about that “top down” control of Scriptural meaning.  Protestants depend on our translations of Scripture and our ability to understand First Century ideas from our current experience, culture and prior understanding of words and ideas.  I have had debates with Christians who resent any scholarly interpretation of Scripture.  They feel that  a scholar ideas are taking the Bible away from common man.  The Bible is not an obscure book.  It is “clear as a bell.”

It is sometimes not as “clear as a bell.”

What many Christians don’t realize or just don’t want to admit is when one picks up a Bible, they are already involved in interpretation of Scripture.  Any English translation of God’s word is a translation from the original language used by Old Testament and New Testament writers.  Some translations are regarded as better than others [e.g. the New International Version is more highly regarded than the Passion Translation].  The NIV is the result of serious scholarly consideration that tries to translate words, idioms and grammatical constructions from the original language to precise equivalents in English.  The Passion Translation is a paraphrase, which is helpful but not very accurate.  The intent is to eliminate distance between the Biblical writers and today’s world by using today’s language.  The Passion Translation does not try to be precise in translating  English equivalents.

What is the big deal?

Depending on how one reads God’s word, there is a lot of potential for bad interpretation in this world.  From the Biblical text that one reads to pastors who interpret the text for church members, people are looking for answers and too often the quest for foundational answers is not very thorough. 

Some rely on their idea that the “Bible is God’s word” belief.  God wrote the Bible [through Godly men] so the Bible has of course eternal relevance.  It speaks to all humankind in every age and every culture.  I had a friend tell me one time “my God means what He says and says what He means.  I believe every word in my King James Bible.”  My response was tepid.  I did not want to anger my friend who did not realize that the King James Version of the Bible is a literal translation using 1611 English based on accumulated mistakes of over a thousand years of manuscript copying.  In its time it served a major purpose, but we have more accurate translations today.  So I let it go.  I just figured anyone who is taking the time to read a Bible is better than the person who never opens one at all.

What is the answer to all this concern about good Biblical foundational knowledge.  Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart** give guidance for all Bible readers when they say the Bible is the word of God spoken over a one thousand five hundred year period.  Not only does that make understanding difficult, but those times are far removed from 2024.  What did those words of the Bible mean to the people who wrote them?  What did those Godly writers think about God?  How did they understand themselves? 

Fee and Stuart encourage Protestant Bible readers to make an effort to not only understand the historical context of the Bible but also to examine the literary context.  They  pose historical questions like what was going on in Israel at the time of the writing?  What was going on in the church at that time?  What caused the author to write the Scripture in the first place?  Literary context is all about meanings of words.  What do Biblical words mean when we examine them relative to preceding words and succeeding words?  Let’s not get too “grammatical”, but here is an example.  For every pronoun, there is an antecedent.  We have to trace the pronoun back to its antecedent to get the most correct meaning.

In conclusion, we live in a world where we are confronted by too much information.  Our minds are flooded daily with facts and opinions from so many sources.  It is increasingly hard to parse all of this information and determine what is worthwhile and what is worthless.  Too many Christians let others lead them to conclusions about Scripture,  television preachers who need donations, politicians who just need a solid evangelical voting bloc or just someone who desires power over others [false prophets].  Fee and Stuart discuss the Bible as the most important book that anyone will ever read but they have this caveat: “the Biblical text cannot mean what it never meant.”

Many have lost the desire to search for the truth because of the distraction of the massive flow of information and maybe because it is just too mentally taxing.  We want quick answers to foundational questions.  Pastor John Ortberg may be one of the best to address this problem when he uses the following words about Abraham Lincoln : “Abraham Lincoln had little to read but he read it well.  Today we have largely traded wisdom for information, depth for breadth.  We want microwave maturity.”  Biblical wisdom does not occur at microwave speed.  Foundational beliefs do no sprout up overnight.  Certainly impressionable, immature, lazy Christians are prone to accept any message that sounds good are in danger of building their belief systems on “shifting sand.”  But the Christian who takes the time to read Scripture, explore Scripture, meditate on Scripture is building their house on rock.  When the rains come, the floods come and the winds blow that house will not fall.  Microwave Christians who do not take the time to grow a solid faith are like the foolish man who builds his house on the sand.  The rains come, the floods come and the winds blow.  Their house falls…***

*I had intended to dedicate this post to Kevin DeYoung’s analysis of key Greek words related to the condemnation of homosexuality, but I was “inspired” to write these thoughts instead.  Please forgive.

**from their book How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.

***Of course from Matthew 7: 24-27.