It creates false teaching!
A pious, fraud, megalomaniac, Bible teacher can come in and say whatever he would like. And, because of his personality and charisma and our lack of knowledge, we believe whatever he says.
Thus, Bible illiteracy prevents us from thinking, processing and applying to our lives what is actually in the Bible. Instead, we get our feet caught in the gopher holes of this dysfunctional, bad teaching. We have seen this with the “little gods” phenomena that has spread like cancer with the false teaching crowd. What about all the end times’ books and speculations that led countless Christians no nowhere in faith or practice, or the overzealousness of a particular Bible translation and thus no biblical transformation results, or the rabbit holes on which we place our tent of faith that distracts us from God’s true Truth. We may think our pursuits are good, but in fact, we are just distracted from what God has for us and our church!
It creates mindless speculations.
Too many Christians get so captivated and fixated on speculations and things that Jesus told us not to, like the timing and arrangements of His second coming, that they miss the main point of Matthew 24. His coming again is not about when or how, but what we are doing to prepare for it. That preparation has to do with our faith formation more than anything else-not our ideas of when and how. It has nothing to do with a rapture or not a rapture; a pre-trib/post-trib/ no trib/pan trib, but through all the argumentations and conjectures, the Truth and point are missed. Christ wants us to be loyal and obedient to His Word in precepts and call. He is calling us, His people in His Church, to Him!
What we do instead is take Bible passages out of their context, string them together to satisfy our whims, and fight to the death to make our obtuse points. How sad that is!
It creates shallow Christians and pretentious, incompetent leaders.
The result? Shallow people and a faithless church, moving away from the Bible and embracing anything but Him and His Word. I am not talking about liberalism, although this is a problem too. Rather, I allude to conservative and Reformed churches moving away from the centrality of Scripture and the disciplines to learn and grow, substituting cheap stories without substance, shallow messages without challenge, and pride replacing love and fruit to be the icing on the cake of pretentiousness.
It creates emptiness and hurt!
Because it keeps us away from God and the blessings and opportunities He has for us. The Bible contains God’s voice; so, do you hear Him clearly or do you just hear your voice and think it is His? God spoke! God speaks to His Son and to His people through His Son. In Hebrews, we have the “prophetic revelations” such as Moses and Isaiah where His voice was heard and written down for us to hear too. This has become our Bible, which contains His Word, instructions, and call for us to heed. As great as this was when first heard, it was incomplete and waiting for a culmination and fruition; now, through Christ, His revelation is clear and complete and audible for us to hear. So, why do we not desire to hear it more (Acts 2:17; 1 Tim. 4:1; Heb. 10:1; 13:20; 1 John 2:18)?
We create an inability to learn from our lives, failures, and hurts.
Sometimes, God has to get our attention though adversity; sometimes, we have a willingness to listen. He has to break our pride and call attention to our misplaced priorities. The key Jesus uses is His explanation to us of how we are able to receive Him. Are we able and willing to understand? Sometimes, that may not come until eternity as it was with Job.
Our key to Exegesis (drawing out from the Bible) and Bible literacy is to trust and know that He is in control and He will be there with us carrying us through. It is not just about understanding ourselves; rather, it is our understanding Christ. Ask Him to show you His deep, hidden treasures and be willing to listen and grow.
Filed under: Bible Issues, Research | Tagged: bad teaching, Bible, Bible Illiteracy, Bible literacy, Bible teacher, biblical transformation, dysfunctional, emptiness, Exegesis, false teaching, fraud, hurt, incompetent leaders, megalomaniac, mindless speculations, pious, shallow Christians, speculations | Leave a comment »
Acts29.org 