False teaching is alive and well in the Church t…

In 1985, a Christian writer by the name of Dave Hunt published a book called The Seduction of Christianity that went on to make a huge impact on the Christian community at the time. In the book, Hunt argued that anti-biblical teachings had infiltrated the Church — primarily those of various Eastern religions and what was labeled “New Age” then — with the result being many were being misled by false teaching and in eternal jeopardy.  

Hunt was right to call out the danger of syncretism, assimilation, and “mixing” with the world and other faiths. Such has always been contrary to biblical thought and forbidden by God. Many of the seemingly odd commands God gave Israel in the Old Testament were physical reminders of this concept, like not weaving together two different pieces of material to make a garment (Lev. 19:19).

The warnings about false teaching are repeated in 26 of the 27 books of the New Testament, indicating how important God takes it. Paul made it a primary matter in his letter to the Galatians when he declared to them: “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!” (Gal. 1:6–8).

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Strong words.

The other morning while I was on the floor of my study stretching out in prep for going to the gym, I looked over at one of my bookcases and saw Hunt’s book sitting on a lower shelf. It triggered me to start thinking about what Hunt would single out today, 40 years after his book was published, as the top false teachings that have, as Jude puts it, “crept in unnoticed” (Jude 4) and made their way into the Church.  

Three quickly popped into my head.

Deconstruction (Individualism)  

Although one accepted definition of deconstruction doesn’t exist, many will tell you it is a critical dismantling of a person’s understanding of what it means to be an Evangelical Christian, that often involves a rejection of recognized standards of the faith. Christian writer and singer Alisa Childers (who’s written a book on the dangers of deconstruction) talks about how she came face-to-face with it in her own life:

“Many years ago, my Christian beliefs were challenged intellectually by a progressive Christian pastor. It threw me into deconstruction that took several years to fully come out of. I found out later that he himself had already deconstructed and had hoped to propel his congregation into deconstruction so he could convert them to progressive Christianity. He was very good at it. In fact, he was almost totally successful. A few of us came back around to a historically Christian understanding of the Gospel, but most did not.”

What caused my heart to skip a beat when I heard the word “deconstruction” used in conjunction with the Christian faith was that it is the exact term employed by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida who used it to argue that any written work was “unstable” and thus could have many alternate meanings. He implied that any work — including the Bible — represents authority and exercise of power, but is in reality not held static by any metaphysical anchor and therefore has no single correct meaning or truth.   

When applied to the Bible it doesn’t take long to see that his “has God said?” (Gen. 3:1) thinking, now at work in the Church today, doesn’t have as the goal deconstruction but rather deconversion. Derrida’s teaching has slithered its way into Christianity much like the New Age teaching did back in the 80s.

This teaching, as Carl Trueman wrote in his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, ultimately leads to “the individual simply being himself, unhindered by outward pressure to conform to any greater reality … the individual is king. He can be whoever he wants to be.” And that includes forming their own personal religion that has no attachment whatsoever to reality.

Antinomianism

Many years ago, I had a guy in a Bible class I taught at church challenge me about the need for repentance in coming to Christ. He quoted Romans 10:9 to me: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9) and argued it said nothing about needing to repent to be saved.

He’s right, it doesn’t. But the rest of the Bible pretty much does.

For example, in his first Gospel sermon, Peter said, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). The guy in my class forgot (as many do) that there is a principle called “the analogy of Scripture” that says we need to look at the Bible as a whole when reading and interpreting it, acknowledging that all Scripture is in agreement and does not contradict itself.

The no-change-of-heart thinking still permeates much of the Church today, being technically labeled antinomianism, which means “against law” and says Christians are not required to adhere to the moral precepts of the Bible. Alongside Hunt’s book in the 80s, John MacArthur published his work The Gospel According to Jesus which challenged antinomian thought and argued, as Jonathan Edwards did in his book published in the 1700s entitled The Religious Affections, that true saving faith is accompanied by repentance and a genuine desire to obey God’s Law.

This is a deep truth that many miss (I did for some time). When God gave His Law, He was revealing Himself because His Law reflects His attributes. So, when the Psalmist writes, “O how I love Your law!” (Ps. 119:97), he is saying He loves God. Not loving God’s Law means not loving the One who gave and represents it.     

The prosperity gospel

There’s a prosperity preacher in our town who I catch now and then on the radio. It’s like when you see something so bizarre you can’t look away; every time I hear him, I’m glued to my radio because the twists and turns he makes through Scripture are bewildering.

For example, the other day he said: “Beloved, when Jesus told His disciples, ‘You shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth’ (Acts 1:8), do you know what that means? It means God had to bring wealth and prosperity to them so they could take the Gospel to those places! And he wants to bring prosperity to you in the same way.”

Oh boy.

So, yes, on the one hand, evangelism and missionary work require money to make those things happen, but that’s not the primary message of Acts 1:8. However when your focus is on God being a giant genie and piggy bank, and that doctrine is prioritized to be your primary draw to engage with Christianity and serve Him, you’ve strayed off course.

Jesus was clear when He said, “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). Paul when warned of “men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain … But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness” (1 Timothy 6:5, 9–11).

‘Nuff said on that matter?

No doubt other false teachings are meandering through the Church today, but deconstruction, antinomianism, and the prosperity gospel stood out to me. I’m sure you could name others.

The stakes are high with false teaching as Jesus said: “If a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit” (Matt. 15:14). The problem is recognizing fakes can be difficult at times as A. W. Tozer notes: “So skilled is error at imitating truth that the two are constantly being mistaken for each other. It takes a sharp eye these days to know which brother is Cain and which Abel.”

And so, to make that distinction we need to ground ourselves in Scripture just like the writer of Hebrews says: “But solid food [good doctrine] is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” (Heb. 5:14, my emphasis). 

In other words, the only way to spot fakes is to know the real thing.