Josh Benner

Tag: truth

  • The danger of bad Biblical teaching

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    Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
    -James 3:1

    Words matter.

    We can use words to bless, words to harm, words to boast, words to give instruction, and words to deceive. Through words we can tell a person that we love them, or that we hate them. Through words we can compliment or tear a person down.

    When the Prophet Isaiah had a heavenly vision of the throne room of God, and beheld the holiness of God, he said in Isaiah 6:5: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

    Words were part of the original sin. In the garden, the serpent, twisting God’s words: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

    God had never said that. He said they could eat of any tree except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

    “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die” (Genesis 3:2-3).

    Eve also gets it wrong. God had never said they couldn’t touch the tree. Twisting God’s words. Further provoked into sin by the devil In Genesis 3:4-5, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

    When Adam and Eve are confronted with their sin, they use words to blame in Genesis 3:12, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

    Words matter.

    In the first part of James 3, James zeroes in on teachers. He gives a warning to teachers that they will be judged with greater strictness. The reason why carries into verse 2 that we all sin in many ways, but one of the ways common to us all is that we stumble and sin in what we say.

    There is danger in bad Biblical teaching. It can lead people astray. It can teach people falsities, because the God who is revealed in scripture is the eternal, immortal, wise God. He’s the King of the universe, the creator of all things, he spoke the universe into being.

    There’s not a canvas where we are painting and where we can make something look however we want it to look.

    God is God. He has revealed himself in his scripture, his nature, his holiness. And so sound teaching about God matters. Teaching truth about God matters. Understanding God -in terms of how he has revealed himself in the Bible – matters.

    And not all churches do that. And not all teachers do that.

    Not many should be teachers because teaching necessarily involves words. Teaching about God’s word, teaching about God’s gospel necessarily involves words and language, and in talking, it makes it easy to say things that are untrue.

    We can’t be fast and loose with God’s gospel. We can’t make God who we want God to be if that’s not true about how God reveals himself in scripture.

    Unbiblical teachings that resort more to our feelings than to truth.

    Doesn’t God just want me to be happy? Not at the expense of sin!

    Words matter. How we approach the word of God matters. Like the serpent in the garden, twisting the very words of God.

    So it is true that there is a warning given to those who teach. And anyone who does teach from the word of God should question his motives, should be humble before God, and prayerful about the text. It should be taken seriously.

    We should be careful in our approach to God’s word.

    But regardless of if someone is a teacher or not, all of us should still use discernment in listening to what our teachers say. In listening to that which is in accordance with scripture. Of being fed by sound Biblical preaching. And that’s true here, and thats’ true if you ever move to a new community. And that’s true of any teacher who you might watch on tv or who you might podcast. We should be discerning with the Bible teachers we listen to.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

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  • Is the media making truth harder to know?

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    With major news stories, does anyone else ever feel like it can be incredibly hard to even know what’s true?
     
    All of the media outlets have agenda, the spin that comes from both parties, facts getting twisted, intellectual dishonesty. I believe that truth is inherently worth knowing and pursuing and I feel like they make it so hard. I’ve read multiple articles on the border situation everyday this week. 
     
    It’s complicated. There’s a lot of context to these situations. 
     
    But it’s made so much more complicated to understand because of coverage. And I see it with stories all the time. 
     
    Every major media outlet does things that undermine their own credibility. Not saying they’re wrong on everything, but they’ve all been guilty of things to where I feel they can’t be trusted on everything. Some of the photos that are being shared aren’t even recent. Most noteworthy among them is the one of the little girl who’s crying. The one Time put on the cover. It’s not even true. She was never even separated from her mother. 
    There is no media outlet that has the credibility where they deserve to be implicitly trusted based on reputation alone.
     
    You hear different statistics and then conflicting statistics. 
     
    There are questions about what did or did not happen during the Obama administration. What Trump can or cannot do in regards to the border. 
     
    I also feel like a lot of things hinge on which side of the political aisle someone is on. Some people will just automatically assume it’s bad and wrong if Trump does it (same when Obama was president, same when George W. Bush was president). Others will generally be inclined to agree with the president if he’s in their party. But it’s shortsighted to think one president is always right or always wrong, and I feel like that biases how we interpret events in the world. 
     
    It’s so hard for there to be civility in arguments. There’s so much venom and vitriol. So much judgment and condemnation with those who respectfully disagree. So many assumptions we make about people’s character and intelligence based purely on if they agree or disagree with us. 
     
    We assume that people who disagree have their heads in the sand. 
     
    It’s hard to know what’s true! 
     
    For every statement, there is an opposite statement that someone will make where they also have a link to something that agrees with their point. 
     
    And it goes round and round. 
    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • What’s the greatest danger to the church?

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    There are 300,000 churches in America.
    There are many wonderful churches that boldly proclaim the gospel and faithfully teach the Bible every week. There is no perfect church in the world, because every church is full of members who are imperfect people.
    I think that the biggest issue the American church faces today is related to truth and love.
    Love that undermines truth and truth that doesn’t practice love. I’ll briefly explain what that means.
    Love that undermines truth 
    Love is important. The greatest command in scripture is to love God and to love people. God is love.
    But some churches can emphasize love to the point where it undermines truth.
    For instance, there is a temptation in some Christian circles to consider the love of God and reason that: “since God is love, his love extends to all people, whether or not they believe in God and whether or not they want or accept his love.”
    God is love. But that is just taking a slice of the character of God and acting as if that’s the whole pie. God is love. But he is also just, and righteous, and holy. He judges, he has wrath towards sin. God has all of those qualities at all times.
    God is love. But the idea of love is not only exclusive to what our culture defines love as.
    We tend to value acceptance and tolerance as what it is to love. And it’s true that God meets us where we are, but Jesus doesn’t save us to keep us the same. God is a perfecting God. We sin. We sin so much that we needed a savior, and the gospel is not a message that teaches us that we’re ok and we should just keep doing what we’re doing. We need to live for God and pursue him.
    Making love purely about acceptance and tolerance is not the full Biblical scope of what love is. And so it undermines the truth of scripture. And it runs the danger of undermining the inerrancy of scripture (taking the Bible as practical wisdom rather than the infallible word of God). And this view runs the risk of undermining the gospel itself.
    Assuming that love and  demand for justice are mutually exclusive.

    I observe this being the great risk in more liberal denominations.

    Truth that doesn’t practice love

    I think this is more of a danger in conservative and evangelical circles. We place a high value on the scripture and theology. And well we should because both of those are hugely important.

    But we can get so preoccupied with having the right answer that we lose sight of actually living out what we know. This is very similar to the failure of the Pharisees in the gospels. They were very well studied and trained in theology, but they missed the heart of the message.

    It can be easy to know the right answer but it’s difficult to live it out in practice.

    Truth and love. It comes down to belief and practice. We need both.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.