Osteen Thoughts

Lest the title of the post confuse you, this will not be a series of banal idiocies that might someday attain the level of wisdom found in discount fortune cookies. No, this is not the thoughts of Osteen or snippets from any Osteen book or sermon, but thoughts about Smiley Joel. Now I realize that this may be low-hanging fruit; so be it. He's as popular and dangerous as ever.

Most often when I see something about Joely-O, it comes across as if he's a bumbling idiot. He's just shiny-happy and smiley, and his theology is vapid and empty. The problem is thorough incompetence. And I can totally get that. Just listen to him dodge questions any 3rd-grader in Awana can handle easily, and you'll definitely think there's just no there there.

And that is where I think the danger lies. He may come across as a bumbling well-meaning doofus like Verbal Kint, but his Keyser Soze-esque heresy [no spoiler alert because that movie's old enough to vote, oh and Darth Vader is Luke's father] is every bit as deadly as that of any other prosperity non-gospel hawker like Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, TD Jakes, Paula White, Robert Schuller, etc. He's not an innocent incompetent who's in over his head. He's yet another following the was of Balaam son of Beor, actively working for your destruction.

Want an example? Here you go. Listen to Osteen explain his theology, and Chris Rosebrough react appropriately. Just a warning - the Osteen update music is, uh, special. (On a side note, his update musics are great examples of polemical sarcasm. You learn so much about Mark Driscoll, Perry Noble, James MacDonald (2 songs!), Patricia King, William Tapley, or Rick Warren before you even get to the story.) It's about 20 minutes, but it's worth it if you think Osteen is just empty but harmless.

There is no such thing as empty teaching. If the teaching is devoid of God's truth, it will be filled with demonic lies. No exceptions, no matter how big of a smile it hides behind. Osteen's teaching is deadly. Keep yourself and anyone you love far, far away.

Something Worse Than Shame

There is something worse than feeling shame when you do something shameful. As God said through Jeremiah:

How can you say, ‘We are wise,
    and the law of the Lord is with us’?
But behold, the lying pen of the scribes
    has made it into a lie.
The wise men shall be put to shame;
    they shall be dismayed and taken;
behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord,
    so what wisdom is in them?
Therefore I will give their wives to others
    and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
    everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest,
    everyone deals falsely.
They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
    saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
    when there is no peace.
Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?
    No, they were not at all ashamed;
    they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among the fallen;
    when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,
says the Lord. (Jeremiah 8:8-12)

But there's something significantly better than shame, too. So here, from worse to best, are the three typical responses to shameful acts.

Worst: No shame at all, not even knowing how to blush. Being convinced that there's nothing wrong with it - or worse, that it's actually good. Some go so far as to demand the church and society formally bless and honor their shameful sin. We could call this a hard heart or seared conscience. It's really, really bad.

Sorta better-ish: Feeling shame when you do something shameful - but that's all. You know it's wrong, you feel it's wrong, you're convicted about your sinfulness, but you have no idea what to do about it. By the grace of God this may become godly sorrow. But too often it leads the other way. Instead of repentance unto life, worldly sorrow leads to death. Worldly sorrow attacks the symptom, trying to assuage the conscience by self-justification, or killing the conscience by heart hardening. It's better than being incapable of blushing, depending on which way you go from here.

Best: Repentance and faith unto salvation. Confess sin as sin, agree with God's righteous judgment against it, and admit that there is nothing you could ever do to atone for it. Turn to Jesus in faith, trusting in God's great mercy displayed in the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus. The sorrow and shame of lawful conviction lead you to repentance and trust in the only one who can save.

The world is constantly trying to eliminate shame by pretending that sin is OK. The saddest thing is when the church joins them in this self-destructive quest. What we have to offer is so much better than deadening the conscience - the actual removal of shame through the forgiveness of sin which comes only through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Brothers, don't hate them by telling them their sin is fine; love them by telling them how their sin can be forgiven.

Epistemologies Have Consequences

The last few weeks, Frank Turk has been re-posting an old series debunking the arrogant, ridiculous idea that old-timey people just had no concept of whether or not historical events actually happened. You know - they told these stories, and they were 'true' because they conveyed true ideas, regardless of whether they described actual events. Those simpletons just had no categories for stories meant to convey truth without having actually happened (words like parable, for instance). So we get these Bible stories that read like historical narratives, but of course they aren't, it's just because those ignoramuses had no idea concept of actual history vs myth. If you'd like to see a Pauline and Petrine sledgehammer wielded against this Ennsian jibba jabba, read here, here, here, and here. Enjoy!

It got me thinking back to a post I never got around to writing in about 2005, back when I was first introduced to Rob Bell and the Emerg*s. Remember this famous/controversial passage from Velvet Elvis?

What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births?

But what if, as you study the origin of the word “virgin” you discover that the word “virgin” in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word “virgin” could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being “born of a virgin” also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse?

What if that spring were seriously questioned? Could a person keep on jumping? Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart?

Now if you remember, the typical conversation between a shocked Christian and a Bell fanboi went something like this.

Bellite: Rob Bell is awexome!!1!one!
Christian: Really? I heard he denied the virgin birth.
Bellite: No, he explicitly affirms it. He was just raising some questions. People r just h8ers.

And that would usually be that. Bell says he affirms it, so everything's OK, right? Not so fast. What he says here is every bit as bad as, if not worse than, outright denial. He's not saying it's untrue; he's saying it doesn't matter whether or not it is. It looks like a step further than Enns - not only do those ancient ignoramuses lack the concept of real history vs myth, to Bell it wouldn't make a difference if they did. True? False? Doesn't matter.

In fact, he's saying that this could be an outright lie intended to deceive pagan cultists, and it wouldn't matter a tiny bit. Think about that again: Rob Bell is claiming that lying Apostles could have made the whole thing up as a means of tricking cultists into "the way of Jesus", and it wouldn't have any effect on his faith. Actually, I kind of agree with him there - his 'faith' is such a mash of lies, deceptions, distortions, and jibba jabba, another lie here or there could hardly make a difference.

This is what made the kerfuffle over his "Love Wins" garbage so ridiculous. People seemed genuinely shocked that Bell was a universalist, as if he had been orthodox before that or something. Really? It was surprising that someone who bragged about his contempt for God's Word from day 1 would show contempt for particular doctrines contained within? Pro tip: if someone doesn't care whether the Bible is full of lies, he's probably not going to be the most faithful expositor.

Listen: when a guy's ministry consists of 'making people think' by asking innocent questions a la the serpent in Genesis 3, when he starts by ridiculing the truthfulness of God's Word and seeking to undermine the foundation of faith, when he is so openly contemptuous of Christianity and the very notion of truth itself, he's a wolf. Protect your flock from him, and move on.

Everything you needed to know that he was a rank heretic was right here (and a bunch of other places - he isn't shy about it!). Those who promoted him as if he were a Christian teacher, and those pastors who knowingly brought his vile teachings into their churches, will have a lot to answer for when the good shepherd demands an account.

Boring Testimonies

For some reason I'm not entirely sure of, I've been seeing a lot of mentions of Ergun Caner lately. Caner, as you may recall, was the president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, a renowned conference speaker, the inventor of Double-Stuf Oreos, once ate a whole wheel of cheese, played Donatello in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action movie, didn't surrender after the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, climbed Mount Everest solo in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, fought alongside Lewis and Clark at the Alamo, is the Lindbergh baby, and circumnavigated the globe thrice by riding a dolphin wearing pantaloons.

OK, maybe I didn't get every last syllable. But it's basically right. Basically.

The details of his biography don't seem to matter much to Caner. As Tom Chantry summed it up, "A kid from Ohio went around right after 9-11 telling churches that he was trained as a Jihadist/terrorist while he was growing up in Turkey." A little misstatement here, a tiny bald-faced lie endlessly repeated there, and we have a new 'evangelical' superstar.

I don't really remember this guy much, but the last generation's big testimonial liar was Mike Warnke. Dude rose to prominence by claiming to have been a converted Satanist high priest, only it turns out he was lying. Just lied to people, for God's glory, of course.

Now it's easy to see why these guys would lie - they acquired significant fame and wealth and power on the basis of their amazing testimonies. But even among people who are not aspiring to Christianoid celebrityhood, a similar spirit is alive and kicking. Most often it's well-intentioned (but sorely misguided), but the push to embellish our testimonies is all around us.

We loathe the boring testimony. Raised by Christian parents, never went all prodigal, came to faith at an early age? Boring. Who's going to be impressed by that? If you're at a Bible college and have a testimony-writing project, and that's your story, you will probably get a bad grade (not hypothetical, btw). Might want to throw in some rebellion - maybe a little drunkenness or something - so people will know how much you've repented. How will people know how awesome the life-transforming power of Christ is if they don't know what a hellion you used to be?

Have you ever heard someone tell his story, how he came to faith in Christ and was rescued from [drugs, illicit sex, a cult, liberalism, whatever vile thing you can name and many you shouldn't], and heard someone with a 'boring' testimony say something like "I wish I had done some of that so I'd have an awesome story, too"? Have you ever thought it yourself?

Why do we do that? Why do we even entertain the thought that we wish we had sinned more (so that our testimony to grace would be increased), or worse, that we should lie and claim we did? For one thing, we tend to forget just how horrifying sin is, that sin from which we've been completely forgiven can still have residual effects the rest of our lives. Instead of wishing we had sinned that way for a better conversion story, it would be a good opportunity to thank God for the grace that restrained your wicked, unregenerate heart from heading down that particular evil, self-destructive path.

But the bigger reason, I think, is that we're all Pelagian by (sinful) nature, and we struggle against remnants of it as long as we struggle with the flesh. That is, we can sometimes slip into thinking that the determining power in faith is not God's power, but the will of the listener. They will surely believe, if only our presentation is good enough to convince them. We think that conversion is merely changing sides in a debate rather than divinely-wrought regeneration. And so we fall into thinking that we can cut through their unbelief if only we have a more compelling story, and that would have been the case if only we had been worse sinners before we were saved.

So let's look at the least-dramatic conversion story imaginable, such as the person raised by Christian parents who came to faith early and never had a major period of rebellion. What kind of testimony does he have? Well, like all people, he was a rebel against the sovereign creator of all, and he gladly followed the ways of Satan. God has appointed a day when He will judge the world and punish His enemies, and he was an object of God's wrath. But God sent Jesus Christ to be a propitiatory sacrifice for our sin and raised him to life for our justification - he became sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him - and now all who are united to Christ in faith are forgiven of their sin, counted righteous in Christ, and reconciled to God. By God's grace alone he has been made alive, completely forgiven of all sin, and rather than bearing God's wrath eternally in hell, in the ages to come he will be lavished with the immeasurable riches of God's grace. And so God will save all those - and only those - who call on the name of the Lord Jesus, who repent and believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin, everyone whom God calls to himself.

You know, I'm not sure how that testimony needs embellishing. So I guess maybe what we should do is worry less about ourselves and proclaim Jesus more.

Questions for the Purpose-Driven Vision-Casting Blackabeans

"Now these in Blackabea thought themselves with their God-experiences more noble than those in mere Christendom; they received the extra-Biblical revelation with all eagerness, examining their circumstances, subjective impressions, and liver shivers daily to see if these things were right in their own eyes." (Not-Acts 17:11)

One of the big trends in what we still call evangelicalism over the last couple of decades has been the development of 'vision'. It goes by many names and takes many forms, but it all amounts to roughly the same thing - discovering extra-Biblical revelation of God's specific will, for you individually or for your church/ministry. You need to discover your purpose, and become purpose-driven, completely oriented towards fulfilling that purpose. You need to discern where God is working and how He is inviting you to join Him in that work. You need to identify God's vision for you and cast it to others.

Do this well, and your life will be meaningful and blessed. Your ministry will be more powerful that you can possibly imagine. You will experience God as you drive towards your purpose and fulfill your special calling and probably earn a trophy or something.

Fail to do this, and... oh man. I shudder to think of how horrible and purposeless and worthless your existence is. You'll be sentenced to the worst curse imaginable - being ordinary. Yikes. Just consider the horror of the man who loves his neighbor as himself, but never figures out where exactly he's supposed to be doing this or which particular neighbor he's supposed to particularly love, so he just loves them all indiscriminately. What a pathetic waste of protoplasm!

Clearly nobody would want to be like that, just being sanctified and obeying scripture all willy-nilly wherever he happens to be. No, we need something more. Obviously, we all must find our purposeful vision of God-experience. Like, duh.

But still, I have a few questions for the experts in this field. For instance:

How close to God's vision for my life is close enough? If God is calling me to be a missionary in France, and I get things a little messed up, and serve as a missionary in Belgium, is that OK? Or is my life and ministry doomed to endless frustration and worthlessness because I missed God's specific calling for me? What if it's not that close, like instead of going to France, I go to Pakistan or North Korea? Or maybe I'm not a foreign missionary at all, but instead just pastor a church at home for a couple decades. Is there any good that can come from that, or is it so far off my calling that it's a fate worse than death?

What if I love/evangelize the wrong people? You know - like what if God is working on my coworker Steve and inviting me to join, but I misinterpret the impression I got while praying my vision prayers, and accidentally told Brian about Jesus instead? Is it a sin for me to have proclaimed the gospel to the wrong person?

What if someone doesn't get on board with my vision? Can I make him another dead body in the pile behind my bus, or giving him a catapult ride out of the county? Isn't that more appropriate for, I dunno, prosperity-gospel spewing Sabellian false teachers than for actual Christians who just don't agree with my extra-biblical ideas? But wait - if my vision is from God, for them to disobey or even question it is sin. So even if they don't disobey anything actually in the Bible, I can still excommunicate them for the sin of disagreeing with me, right?

Isn't all the stuff that's actually in the Bible enough? I mean, Jesus gives a decent enough mission statement for his church, and there's a bunch of other stuff about what kind of people we will become and what we should be doing. Isn't that enough for equipping us for every good work, without the need for additional specific revelation? Where in scripture are we told to be looking for this kind of thing, anyway?

Remember when Gnosticism with its secret knowledge only available to a select few mega-apostles was such a threat to the early church? Why, exactly, do we need to re-introduce it and try to mainstream it?

Finally, did I really make it through an entire post about finding your special purpose without making a Navin R Johnson joke?

Don't You Go Putting God In That Box!

The modern evanjellybean lexicon is chock full of worthless jargon, and few phrases approach the utter worthlessness of "don't put God in a box". The easy route is to sneer that it's impossible, that God will do what He wants and we can't stay His hand, etc. True enough. But what is the cliché intended to mean?

It could mean that God does not fit our neat systematic categories. God is transcendent and awesome, and no simple statement or summary can totally describe Him or His works. Which wouldn't be the worst thing you could say, I guess. But it seems that usually it's taken a step further - that we can't say categorically who God is or what He will do. Por example:

Some say salvation is only through Jesus. Don't put God in a box!
Some say miraculous/attestational gifts ceased. Don't put God in a box!
Some people think God is sovereign in election. Don't put God in a box!
People put God in a box and think the Bible is the only way we find God's word.
Some people say God cannot lie. Don't put God... er, wait...

And so on. The cliché is not usually a warning against over-systematizing or reductionism, but a worthless (or anti-worthfull) shot against certainty in what God has revealed.

It's not 'putting God in a box' to believe He will do what He says He will do. It's not 'putting God in a box' to believe God is who He says He is. Interestingly, the Bible is full of commands about and case studies in taking God at His word, and not once does it refer to it as 'putting God in a box'. Do you know what the Bible pert near always calls this nefarious act? FAITH!

So to summarize, if "putting God in a box" means believing God has revealed truth that we can know and believe, then it's the heart of Christianity. By all means, 'put God in a box', if that 'box' is the truth He has made known to us.

Your Treasured 'Private Conversations' are Utterly Insignificant

Stop me if you've heard this before. Some mega-famous celebrity pastor is about to do something colossally stupid and sinful. Many little people - blogger/lepers, pastors of 'small' churches - voice concern over the issue. Mega-pastor publicly blusters and slanders and blasphemes. The little people cry out for help from the Truly Great Champions of the faith. And the response inevitably comes back: "Quiet down, you! You don't know what private conversations are happening behind the scenes!"

I'll admit - I don't know what private conversations are happening. And? Those private conversations are utterly irrelevant. I don't give a rat's lower digestive tract about them, and neither should you. They're about as important to the issue as ... well, they're so insignificant, the language lacks the words to explain just how insignificant they are. They don't matter one tiny bit. So shut up about them, already.

Don't believe me? Let me illustrate. Suppose I somehow get an opportunity to preach. During the sermon, I take ten or fifteen minutes to talk about how much I hate my wife, call her all sorts of horrible things, and actually threaten her a few times. Really ugly, nasty, horrible stuff. Now some people want to confront me about it.

Can you imagine the pastor and a few elders intercepting them and telling them to shut up about it - they've been talking to me privately, and important conversations are taking place? When I'm alone with her, it's all sweet and good, honest! If things are to progress, they can't have rabble like the peons in the pews speaking up! That might just alienate and offend me. No, you silly little people, just be quiet and get back in your place - the experts are handling this, and trust us, everything will be OK. And in the small chance that it isn't, well, tough questions will be asked someday.

Can you picture that? Not likely. The entire concept is utterly stupid, insane, and extremely dangerous. Most likely you'd think that what we're talking about in private doesn't matter at all when I act like that in public. In fact, you might think that if there's such a big disparity - that I'm really nice in one arena but a reprehensible reprobate in another - that the relationship is abusive. And you'd be exactly right.

Nothing that is said in private can justify such sinful, despicable public behavior. It couldn't in my example, and it can't when the Towering Guardians of Christendom tell you to just simmer down and let the Top Men handle it. It's really hard to even get my head around that kind of arrogance.