No other gospel

For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will accumulate teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear something new. ?2 Timothy 4:3 (HCSB)

Give Oprah Winfrey a break. Through hard work and intelligence she has built an empire that makes her the queen of all media. Her name on a product or idea guarantees some level of success. At this point in her life, people jump when she says “frog.” That kind of influence leads many people to believe their wisdom in one endeavor should transfer into any realm they can imagine.

Her latest imagination is that she has religious ideas that will benefit all in range of her voice and pen. It’s only natural. She’s as wrong as I would be if I invented or bought into some man-made religion. No more and no less. And while we are right to note the errors in the ideas of a teacher, as we have with Joel Osteen, The Secret, New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra, and so on, let’s not forget the sin of those who nod like bobble heads every time someone says something in print or on screen. The problem of false teaching is as much one of demand as it is of supply.

And yes, the problem is sin as well as deception. When I read 2 Timothy 4:3 I think of our neighbors accumulating best-selling books on spirituality. The latest from Marianne Williamson (one of Oprah’s gurus) goes on the night table in the stack with “Your Best Life Now,” “The Purpose-Driven Life,” and a Bible. Maybe we’ll take an idea from each book until we come up with a spiritual smoothie that comforts and affirms all we like but only condemns mean people. Sure, it’s toxic, but we chose the ingredients and we drank it. As Paul says, our deception, our customized collection of teachers, is “according to [our] own desires.”

The apologists we interviewed and quoted for our special report on false teaching in this issue agreed that we all must be more discerning. It’s critical that we know the gospel, and the Bible that contains it so that we can recognize counterfeits. I agree. The question of getting the large number of us from where we are to being motivated to study and apply God’s Word to our world is harder to answer. We’re not nearly there. Until we stop loving some aspect or another of the lie, we’re not even in the same building with discernment.

Here’s a selection of what the Bible says about the problem. We, who lack wisdom (or understanding or discernment), are described in James as never asking for it or being too unstable and double-minded to receive it. In 2 Timothy 4:6-7 those ready victims of false teachers are said to be weighed down by sin and their impulses. They are also said to be unable to recognize even the truth they hear. Romans 1:25, after describing a horrible decline into sin, says that this slide starts when we exchange the truth of God for a lie. Strong words, and they attribute our gullibility to rebellion against God.

And this same rebellion rightly describes the false teachers, although they bear even a heavier responsibility. They are conceited (1 Timothy 6:4) to think that their distortion of the gospel can ever be sufficient for any good purpose. False teachers are rebellious, empty talkers and deceivers (Titus 1:10). They are men of a depraved mind (2 Timothy 4:8 and Romans 1:28). In his harshest condemnation, Paul says, in Galatians 1:8 (NKJV), “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.” Accursed? In looking at the word more closely, we see that he is turning such a person over to God for condemnation of his actions.

Does it seem like overkill to condemn someone who merely, though wrongly, wants to make people feel better about things? Are we also willing to drop our condemnation of people who impersonate medical personnel? How about if someone you believe is a physician tells you the pain in your side is gas when it’s actually appendicitis? Spiritual truth is more important than medical truth but we don’t act like we believe it.

Modern false teachers lead some to believe that they are alright with God based on their works?the lie of manmade religion from the beginning. Others tell folks that their poverty or sickness is a sure sign that they are bad or faithless. This is a negative version of the first error. In this one, you could be good enough but you just aren’t. New Age religion teaches that all religions are the same. You can worship a demon (Hinduism) and it’s all the same as worshipping a tree (Wicca) or an impersonal life force (Buddhism) or the God of Abraham and Paul who condemns all those forms of idolatry?it’s all the same. Surely the horrible deception of this is Satanic?worthy of condemnation.

False teachers like this stuff because it sells, and maybe because it comforts them also. We like it because it empowers us by freeing us from a personal God who, uninvited, involves himself in our daily affairs. It’s just the age-old rebellion of Satan dressed up and pushed to the top of the best-seller list.

“Gospel,” of course, means “good news.” And there can be only one. While we often love the idea of a new take on the old story, the new version can’t be rightly called good news. When we go from revealed truth to some novel imagination we also go from certainty to “I hope so.” We might like the appearance of tolerance in the “many ways to some god” language, but it throws us back on our own opinions or those of another.

I will disappoint myself and be wrong about the most mundane of matters, thus my opinion is suspect. The opinions of a celebrity preacher or media queen tarnish with temper tantrums, drunk driving arrests, unguarded words, or some other foible common to mortal folk. Whatever it is that offends us, our new and shiny authority figure will eventually fall prey to that temptation.

All this is Satan’s way. After we’ve pledged allegiance to some old, but newly packaged, lie, he lets us build our worldview around it and scoff at the narrow fools who believe God. Then he opens door number three and there’s nothing there. We despair and embrace some less religious religion more absurd than anything we ever thought we’d believe. Hell begins in the here and now.

But so does Heaven. As we live according to revealed will of our creator, we’re doing what he’s determined will work in the world he made. Through God’s son, Jesus, and only through him, we can have spiritual peace now and eternal life starting now. That’s the good news. And there is no substitute for the real thing.