Honest Interpretation, the Episcopal Church, and Apostasy

 

Often, when mainline church leaders are challenged about their liberal interpretation of the Scriptures, they defend themselves by saying:

• Well, we also believe that all Scripture is God-breathed. We just interpret it differently than you.

However, I wonder whether our differences are a matter of honest interpretation or our prior commitment to a particular philosophy, which we impose upon Scripture, coercing Scripture to agree with us. Here’s an interesting example. Luke wrote:

• One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. (Acts 16:16-19) 

Frankly, I can’t say with any assurance why Paul was “very much annoyed.” This spirit-possessed slave girl was evidently speaking Gospel-truth. Perhaps she said it in a disruptive or mocking manner? We don’t know. However, Paul reached a point where he had had enough and cast the spirit (demon) out of her. Consequently, she was no longer able to reveal hidden knowledge and make money for her owners.

However, according to BishopJefferts Schori, head of the Episcopal Church, USA, “Paul was guilty of failing to value diversity, to see the slave girl’s beautiful difference”:

• “Paul is annoyed at the slave girl…She’s telling the same truth Paul and others claim for themselves. But Paul is annoyed, perhaps for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness. Paul can’t abide something he won’t see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it.”

However amusing Schori’s imaginative interpretation might be, it was clearly miles away from what Luke had intended to convey. Luke never gave his readers the slightest hint that Paul ever attempted to deprive anyone of God’s gift! Schori’s idea that Paul sought to deprive “her of her gift of spiritual awareness” flies in the face of everything we know about Paul – a man who consistently sacrificed his life to build up the church.

Furthermore, if a holy spirit from God had been cast out by Paul, there is absolutely no precedent for such a thing anywhere in Scripture. It would mean that God Himself was casting out His own servants – an unthinkable impossibility! Instead, Luke identifies the resulting problem for Paul as the fact that the owners were now deprived of their income, not that Paul had done anything unrighteous or that he didn’t “honor diversity.”

Why does Schori resort to such an impossible interpretation? Evidently, she has a commitment to an alternative philosophy of life – one that will not restrict her or others to certain sexual norms. How will such a pre-commitment affect interpretation? It will relativise it. In other words, Paul’s teachings and behavior are no longer the product of the Holy Spirit, but rather his own limitations – personal and societal. It also means that we are now free to take the teachings in any manner we so choose in order to justify our lifestyle!

Clearly, despite her protestations otherwise, Schori doesn’t believe that Scripture is God-breathed. How then do such people rise to the head of our churches? Can say for sure, but it certainly was prophesied. When Paul addressed his beloved Ephesian elders for the last time, he revealed his pain:

• I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears. Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” (Acts 20:29-32)

“Savage wolves” will arise from the midst of the church and tear it down by distorting the truth. His prime concern was never the plague, invading armies, or even the Romans, but the distortion of the Bible. What was Paul’s answer? Unwavering alertness and discernment! From where would this come? From God and the “word of his grace!” As the distortion would tear the church down, it is Scripture that would “build you up and give you an inheritance.”

It is therefore my prayer that my own agenda or philosophy will never interfere with my understanding or the teaching of His Word. Above all else, I want to honor Him! This is life and truth! This must also become the prayer of us all!

Probing the Priestess and the Question of Love

I met a brand-new Episcopal priestess today at church. What a delightful woman! I therefore felt some hesitation about confronting her with my provocative and often unsettling questions. Fortunately, Anita and I prayed before that the God would give us grace in speaking, in order to honor God and to love others. I trusted that the prayer would carry me through on this mission, but had my doubts based upon my past performances.

She informed me that she had graduated from seminary with more questions than she had had before. Perhaps I could exploit that vulnerability?

“Do you still have those questions?” I probed.

“No, I resolved them.” Hm? I was going to follow up in this manner: “Do you feel that your lack of answers will make ministry difficult?” I wanted to bring the conversation around to the centrality of Christ and His Word. I’d now have to probe in a different location.

After apologizing for asking such invasive questions, I asked, “What is it that you feel you have to offer others?”

“Well, I see my role as helping people answer the questions that are important to them.” This was a people-centered answer not a God-centered one. She seemed to assume that it is most important to help people find a spirituality that works for them.

With another apology, I probed further: “Don’t you think that there are essential, objective principles or truths that pertain to everyone – truths that we Christians must all minister?”

“What do you mean?” I could tell she was becoming a bit uncomfortable, so I decided to back off a bit and personalize my response.

“Well, I come from a Jewish background and identified intensely with my roots. However, I had a problem. I had suffered from intense depression for decades. I had seen five highly recommended psychologists, and each left me worse off than I had been before. I therefore saw no other answer on the horizon apart from God, but I wanted Him my own way. He had to be a Jewish God, not a Christian one. Consequently, I wasn’t finding God. I found out later that I am in no position to set the terms of the relationship. I had to come to Him according to His specification, acknowledging what He wanted me to understand about Himself – His Cross and my utter sinfulness.”

However, in many churches, this is now a revolutionary, if not idiotic, idea. According to them, a relationship with our Creator should not depend upon believing certain truths. An Episcopal daily devotional for August 5 reads:

• There is a confusion today about the word “believe”…Another interpretation is “trust.” Belief has nothing to do with trying to talk ourselves into ideas just because others like them…A big part of defining, what we believe is noticing how we are building up the body of Christ.

Well, there certainly is a strong connection between what we believe and what we do to build up Christians. However, believing is not the same thing as doing. For one thing, we come to the Savior, not by earning our way through our good deeds, but by simply humbling ourselves to acknowledge His truth. The Apostle Paul associates this building process with the use of the right material – the Word of God:

• Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth [of Scripture] in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. (Ephes. 4:14-16)

Only when Christians are established in the Word do they find peace and stability. Therefore, growth is a matter of “speaking truth in love.” However, according to the Episcopal devotional, belief is not about truths or doctrines. It’s about simply trusting! But trusting in what? Well, it’s trusting in something other than “ideas.” However, this devotional is using their erroneous ideas to denigrate ideas. Somewhat of a contradiction!

Perhaps instead, it’s a matter of trusting in a person – Jesus. However, what about Him do we trust? That He was a good role model? A moral human being? Someone who offered one way of salvation among many? The Bible makes it overwhelmingly clear that salvation is a matter of accepting certain truths – “ideas” - about Jesus. Paul warned that:

• If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! (Galatians 1:9)

The priestess who stood before me seemed to be an incredibly gentle, sensitive and caring person. I felt like an insensitive brute by causing her discomfort. I wanted, above all else to be winsome, but the true Gospel is offensive. It informs us that God’s ways aren’t ours and that our human sentiments are often misguided. I had to remind myself that there is more than what the eye sees – including eternal consequences. Besides, God sees the inner person, while we are limited to what we see superficially.

Sometimes less is actually best, so I drew back from the battle lines and introduced the priestess to my wife.

   

   

Ezekiel, the Temple, Secularism and the Decay of True Religion

I felt like the Prophet Ezekiel. God had taken him on an intimate and private tour of the inner workings of the Temple. The spiritual decay was far worse than Ezekiel had imagined. Israel’s spiritual leadership was happily engaged in idolatrous worship behind closed doors.

This Sunday, Anita and I went to the Episcopal Church. The honored guest preacher invited us all into the Episcopal inner sanctum, revealing its treasured secrets. According to him the Bible couldn’t be authoritative. That’s because even Jesus had been wrong on numerous occasions, and Paul showed us how irrational many of the Old Testament revelations had been by overturning them. Conclusion: This gives us the authorization to overturn anything in the Bible that’s irrational to us!

Anita and I looked at each other. I had long suspected that the guest preacher’s candid tour was an accurate representation of the real, unvarnished Episcopal Church. (Here’s what we usually hear it saying, “We too believe in the Bible. We just have a different interpretation.”) It reminded me of my tooth where the infection had penetrated to such a depth that I needed a root canal.

I whispered to Anita, “I think that we are seeing the real Episcopal Church.” Then the resident pastor got up to praise the “wonderful” sermon we had all just heard. That confirmed it, and so I took a long fretful walk to compose myself in prayer.

During the coffee hour, I confronted the pastor in the most loving manner I could conjure up. “If the Bible is no longer authoritative, what should be authoritative for us?” I shot at him.

“Well, I didn’t say that,” he corrected me. “Instead, we have to approach the Bible carefully, using our best critical tools.” I envisioned a doctor wearing his anti-septic mask and gloves, lest he be contaminated by the cadaver before him.

“Instead, of placing our faith in the Bible as God’s Word, are you insisting that we should now place our faith in the scholars and their Biblical-criticism tool box?” I asked. He responded surprisingly good-naturedly. However, I shouldn’t have been surprised. He had been a professor at Oxford for six years, among many other places, and knew all about dealing with characters like me. Nevertheless, he was one of the many architects of the new religion – the religion of the educated, secular experts, tamed, defanged, and socially acceptable

“I wish you had been in my Bible study!” I wasn’t going to be flattered. At least, I wasn’t going to allow this too soften me. However, someone else caught his ear, and I wandered away and found the seminarian – the interning General Theological Seminary student.

After exchanging some pleasantries, enough to convince her that I was one of them, I asked her, “What do you thin of the NYC ruling, ousting churches from the NYC schools where they had been renting space on Sundays. She was all in favor of the ruling and cited the “separation of church and state.”

“Well, isn’t this a violation of the principle of ‘equal access?’ If AA can rent space, why not also the churches?” I asked.

She then lifted the veil to the “holy place” of her true thinking. “Well, these churches tend to be fundamentalist. They won’t have women pastors.”

Sadly, it has been the more Biblically-oriented people who had been marginalized from the mainline churches and forced to seek asylum in store-fronts and schools, while the majestic church structures, which Bible-believing Christians had built, have been taken over by “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” Now, once again, these churches were going to be booted out.

I then asked her a series of pointed questions: “Doesn’t your position represent ‘viewpoint discrimination?’ In essence, aren’t you saying that religions that don’t share your views or the views of your religion shouldn’t receive equal protection and access under the law?” She graciously excused herself to find more congenial company.

This is the nature of the modern secularized religion – monopolistic, intolerant, and promoting “freedom of religion,” as long as it’s their own pluralistic religion.

This new monopolistic religion is taking many forms. Here’s a recent example:

• Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington State has signed into law a gay “marriage” bill that will force church-owned facilities to accommodate homosexual ceremonies.

• The bill text originally stated that religious organizations that provide “accommodations, facilities, advantages, privileges, services, or goods related to the solemnization or celebration of a marriage” to the public must offer all those goods for use to homosexual couples seeking marriage or else face a penalty for discrimination. The version of the bill that passed dropped the qualification, allowing religious groups to retain marriage facilities for heterosexual unions.

Although this clause was finally dropped, it reflects the drift of today’s secularism: “If you don’t play ball with us, you don’t play ball at all. We will not respect your freedom of conscience or your freedom of speech or your freedom to worship if you violate our own religious views.”

While the secularists cry “separation of church and state” when a church rents space at a school, they have hypocritically instituted their own state-sponsored church with government funding in our public schools. And it’s a highly permissive religion! A recent video shows how Planned Parenthoodis sexualizing our children according to their beliefs about the “good” life. 

Meanwhile, the religious belief of naturalism has been exclusively enthroned in the science classroom. Consequently, natural mindless causation is the only form of causation that can be mentioned. Free from any God-talk, they now can joyfully shout, “Look how irrelevant God is! We can explain everything by naturalistic causation!”

However, there is not the slightest shred of evidence that causation is natural and mindless. Instead, it’s another chunk of evidence that cries out “God.” (It is much more reasonable to conclude that our laws emanate from the mind of God. After all, who created and maintains the laws!)

I’m almost sure that Ezekiel wasn’t thrilled with his Temple tour. It meant that he now had to do something. He had to cry out his outrage to a people who didn’t want to hear him and eventually killed him.

AN INTERESTING ADDENDUM:

Some unlikely people are waking up to the threat of secularism and its offspring - moral relativism:

• A Muslim Cabinet minister has become the latest member of Prime Minister David Cameron's government to urge the country to embrace its Christian heritage. Sayeeda Warsi also said that "militant" secularism poses a threat to Europe, a comment that has angered atheists and highlighted the divisive political potential of religion…In an article published Tuesday in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Warsi urged Europe "to become more confident in its Christianity"…

• "You cannot and should not extract (the) Christian foundations from the evolution of our nations any more than you can or should erase the spires from our landscapes," she wrote. "My fear today is that a militant secularization is taking hold of our societies," she added, accusing some atheists of having the same intolerant instincts as authoritarian regimes.

• In a speech in Rome, Warsi said that "too often there is a suspicion of faith in our continent." She said in Britain religion has been "sidelined, marginalized and downgraded" and "faith is looked down on as the hobby of 'oddities, foreigners and minorities.'"