Does Everything Really Need To Be ‘Bible Approved’?

Zack —  February 29, 2012 — 10 Comments

Have you ever heard of “discernment ministries”?

Be thankful if you haven’t and if you haven’t, then my apologies for introducing you to this bizarre phenomenon.

I’m sure “discernment ministries” probably existed before the internet, but the world wide web has allowed this phenomenon to explode. Essentially, “discernment ministries” are self-annointed, often anonymous people or groups of people who believe that it is their mission from God to discern for the church who the false teachers are, what is or is not “Biblical”, and what the “essentials” of the faith are which one must believe in order to be a true Christian.

No one asked these people to do this and few if any of them have legitmate credentials to “discern” what is or is not orthodox. But they own a computer and a Bible, so apparently that is qualification enough.

The unifying cry of the criticisms that come out of all of these discerment ministries is the same: “It’s not in the Bible!” Of course, this cry isn’t confined to the margins of the internet. Pastors and layity in churches across the country cry foul if something is done in another church, or God forbid their own church, which isn’t specifically prescribed in the Bible.

To be honest, I just don’t get it. What does it matter if we do something in church that isn’t specifically spelled out in the Bible, so long as it’s not contradictory to Scripture?

Sunday school isn’t mentioned in the Bible. Those little plastic cups and cardboard wafers we pass off as communion elements aren’t Bible approved. The Bible certainly doesn’t make mention of church softball leagues, youth groups, or vacation Bible school, but no one seems to make much of a fuss about those things. Curious if you ask me.

I think what really frustrates me about this go to criticism, though, is the latent hypocrisy of those who employ it.

If you really want to be like the 1st century church and you really think that the 21st century church should only employ tools, resources, and practices specifically mentioned in the Bible, then you’re going to have to give up at least the following: electricity, sound systems, air conditioning, guitars, keyboards, pews, projection of any kind, Christmas trees, Passion plays, altar calls, and of course….using the internet to tell people that using things not mentioned in the Bible to spread the gospel is a sin.

Furthermore, the early church wasn’t the perfect model for emulation we’ve come to believe it was. If we actually read the letters of Paul, instead of merely focusing on a few verses here and there, we would see that the vast majority of Paul’s letters (which make up the bulk of the New Testament) are spent dealing with church problems. In short, the early church was just as screwed up as we are and it was filled with people who actually heard Jesus speak for themselves.

But if we are going to model ourselves after the early church then we should look at how they actually did things.

The early church was innovative. It wasn’t bound by tradition or even the Hebrew Bible. In trying to answer her call to take the Gospel to the very ends of the earth the church was constantly finding and wrestling with new ways to make the Gospel relevant for those they encountered. We see this clearly in the famous struggle between Jewish Christians and the inclusion of Gentiles in the church.

The battle was being fought over whether the Gentile believers had to keep the laws in the Hebrew Bible. The Jewish Christians were particularly upset because the Gentiles weren’t following the law to be circumcised. Ultimately, however, they were upset because these people had the nerve to claim Jesus as Lord but they lived out the faith in a way that was very different than how the Jewish Christians thought the Hebrew Bible commanded the faith be lived. In other words, it was essentially the same “it’s not in the Bible” debate that rages today.

In particular, Paul’s approach to missions was incredibly innovative.

Throughout his many travels as “the apostle to the Gentiles” he was continually adapting his approach for spreading the Gospel in each new culture he encountered. If Paul showed up on the scene today and we were behaving as if we still lived in1st century Palestine, I have to think he would be mortified. Such an would approach nullify our ability to spread the gospel in our own 21st century context and thus would be fundamentally contradictory to what seems to be a big part of Paul’s philosophy of ministry: share the Gospel by whatever means necessary. As he wrote to the church in Corinth,

“Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law.To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”

We should certainly compare and contrast our theological ideas and conclusions against the Bible, but if the Bible doesn’t mention something we should tread lightly and not assume that the Bible’s silence is its implicit condemnation. Biblical contradiction, not Biblical approval is something we should be far more concerned about.

The very fact that the Spirit is alive and continues to blow through the church means that new and creative practices, traditions, and resources not specifically mentioned in the Bible will always find their way into the doors of the church. And that is a very good and holy thing. It frees up from the bondage of legalism and allows us to continue to fulfill our call to proclaim the Gospel in ways that are fresh and relevant to an ever changing culture.

So, if your pastor introduces something new at church next Sunday and it’s not clearly contradictory to Scripture, like erecting a literal golden calf in the sanctuary, don’t freak out. It may not have the explicit approval of the Bible, but there’s a good chance it’s been approved by the Spirit.

However, take caution when participating in new, Spirit led things.

They just may change your life.

 

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

In Uncategorized
permalink

Zack

Posts

  • Greg D

    I like to refer to these ministries and individuals as “truth mongers”. They feel it is their purpose in life to set Christianity (and Christians) straight. Anyone who slightly deviates from their own theological beliefs are either branded a heretic or liberal. Sadly, this is no longer isolated to discernment ministries as it has seeped it’s way into many popular fundamentalist and neo-Reformed circles (i.e. John MacArthur, The Gospel Coalition). Furthermore, I have a handful of friends that fit into this category as well. They subscribe to The Christian Research Journal and listen to Wretched Radio, both claiming to have a claim on truth. They spend much of their time posting articles from discernment ministries on Facebook and are always seemingly looking for a good theological fight.

    However, I must confess. I used to be one of these people many years ago. I was a product of fundamentalist upbringing as a young Christian. I knew no other way. Over the years as I have grown in grace and been exposed to the plight of many injustices around the world, I suddenly found myself caring less about other people’s theological beliefs and cared more about helping people who are perishing both physically and spiritually. Jesus charged us with caring for “the least of these”, loving God, and loving our neighbors. This is now the focus of my Christianity. Now, I cringe at what I used to be, and cringe when I still see it. Sadly, we can’t change them. Like me, the change can only come from an open heart willing to be changed by God himself.

    • Zack

      “truth mongers” – Love it!

  • http://bobthewriter.com Bobby

    Zack, after reading this, I’d be interested to read your take on Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna.

    • Zack

      I actually haven’t read it, just a few snippets here and there. It seems like they make some interesting points, but (and please correct me if I’m wrong) they appear to be making the case that the church’s co-opting of pagan practices is a bad thing. If that’s the case, I would have to fairly strongly disagree.

      I think one of the great gifts of the Church is her ability to take that which was once lost (pagan) and redeem, reclaim, and repurpose it for use in the kingdom of God. We see this clearly in the earliest creed of the church: “Jesus is Lord”. That statement was a repurposing of pagan propaganda, “Caesar is Lord.” This set the tone for a long (and I think beautiful) tradition of the church redeeming, reclaiming, and repurposing things which were lost. For me, this is the heart of the Gospel. It’s something to be embraced, not feared.

      Certainly, we should be cautious in this work, but the whole “it’s not spelled out in the New Testament” thing doesn’t carry much weight for me.

      • http://bobthewriter.com Bobby

        interesting take, and different from mine. but again, i think it’s because an organic-style fellowship works better for my family and me, and we generally treat institutional church with suspicion at best — largely because my wife and i both have been on the inside at traditional churches and have seen “how the sausage is made.”

        however, your comment definitely gave me some food for thought, and i appreciate it. :-)

  • Pingback: Celebrating ‘Pagan Christianity’ | The American Jesus

  • jokerman

    The past couple of days I’ve been reading “The Blue Parakeet” by Scot McKnight. McKnight is an evangelical, and comes across as rather conservative. He admits to having a fairly fundamental background. However, the book is encouraging us to read the Bible first as story, and to not cement ourselves in different interpretations. He keeps coming back to the statement “God spoke to Moses in his day in his way, and to Paul in his day in his way…etc,” essentially arguing for the same sort of reading you are suggesting. It is the narrative, the major theological overtones we are to desperately hold onto, whilst being comfortable in changing the methods and terminology to fit into our current culture. Robert Webber would say something similar.

  • http://homeward.wordpress.com Nora

    Thank you so much for this post. There are some people who are very close to me who have recently become obsessed with discernment ministries–people who spend all day justifying how so and so is a false prophet, etcetera, and it has made me really uneasy. I didn’t know what to call it (besides a “witch-hunt”) and it’s nice to know that it has a name and people are critiquing it. I wish there were more people blogging about how to use a Christ-like discernment with this discernment stuff.

  • Karen

    “The early church was innovative. It wasn’t bound by tradition or even the Hebrew Bible. In trying to answer her call to take the Gospel to the very ends of the earth the church was constantly finding and wrestling with new ways to make the Gospel relevant for those they encountered.”

    Zack, I really hear you about the “witch-hunt” attitude. This can be a real problem in almost any area, but especially in religion, because we understand from the laws of the physical universe that there is a real danger to our wellbeing when our understanding doesn’t conform to reality. So the development of true spiritual discernment is critical, but when our human fear takes over, and we fail to reckon fully with the ways of our God revealed in Christ and His power to reveal and drive out evil, and the nature of the love that drives out all fear, then we are tempted to take this responsibility of God’s (to expose and overturn the powers of evil) upon ourselves using our own faulty rational powers, and we fall prey to the very kind of deception we perceive in others. At least that is how it seems to me.

    This problem with “witch-hunters” is just as true in the world of Eastern Orthodox Christianity as elsewhere, so that you have the hypercritical self-professed “Orthodox” heresy hunters, who consider themselves and their like-minded fellows the only “true Orthodox Church.” Alas, the errors of the Corinthians addressed in Paul’s first epistle to that congregation repeat themselves in every generation!

    I pulled the quote above from this post because I believe that what you have said here is both true and not true at the same time. It is true in the area of what I will call small “t” Christian traditions, ways of expressing and observing the Truth found in Christ and in the gospel that vary from culture to culture and from era to era. Then there is what (following Eastern Orthodox understanding) I will call “the Christian Tradition” (capital T), which as EO understand it, is nothing less than the life of Christ Himself as it is expressed and manifested in the Church in every era (and of which the Christian Scriptures are the written witness, while the ongoing life of the Church is the living witness). Observance of this Tradition transcends culture and, in effect, forms a universal recognizable Christian counter-culture of its own that contrasts with all those of this world. This must be passed on faithfully without change (2 Corinthians 2:15), or our very understanding of the nature of Christ and His work in and through the Church—the very nature of spiritual reality—will be compromised.

    I do believe some of the developments, dogmatic and liturgical, following the Great Schism (and those that led to that Schism) between the Eastern and Roman Churches, and then in and following the Protestant Reformation are of this latter nature. One clue to that comes when you find that a major Creed of all who called themselves orthodox Christians in the first few centuries of the Church, and which was developed carefully following the same process one finds in Acts 15, is later unilaterally changed or substituted with another by those who purport to be members of the same Church. At the time of the Church that developed and accepted that original Creed as the expression of the essentials of orthodox Christian belief, the embrace of that Creed (as it was then understood in the context that developed it) was the very definition of what constituted being truly an orthodox Christian. Obviously, these convictions of the EO would be a huge stretch for those Christians whose faith was nurtured in Protestant traditions, but the fact that there must be innovation in some areas and not in others or the very character of Christian faith will be compromised is something to think about.

  • Ecron Muss

    I don’t even think it’s really theological. It’s sanctified gossip-mongering. The so-called “warning reports” and “discernment newsletters” are worse than the magazines at the supermarket checkout. Certainly they are more religious!