Heresy Watch
Warning: The following post contains Heresy. Heresy being defined as a teaching in clear contrast to Holy Scriptures. Those who are weak in faith, need not read.
So I was at text study today, and the group was quite bad.
The group started out by taking shots at President George W. Bush. One pastor made what started out like a humble confession saying 'That though I disagree with the President, I need to have a more graceful attitude, and focus on his gifts". I was shocked by this non-self rigtheous confession. But then it turned back to self-righteousness on a dime as the guy said "He couldn't think of one good thing about President Bush". Then one Pastor said Barbara Bush said that "People in Katrina got what they deserved for their poverty." This is not quite the case, as this pastor openly violated the 8th Commandment when what she said was ""What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," she said during a radio interview with the American Public Media program "Marketplace." "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.-http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/06/katrina.presidents.ap/. Was this the most apropriate statement maybe not. Was what she said wasn't totally untrue on all true on all levels. They were having a rough go off it, and people were now working to help them out. Then the Pastor I formerly praised as being humble, then said "She's the most sain one of the family".
Then they decided to start questioning the intelligence of members of their congreations, by saying they couldn't believe how many of them believed the historicy of the Jonah story. They ignored how Jesus spoke of the Jonah story in Matthew 12:38-42. They find hetrodox commentaries to try to explain texts. As far as the Jonah story goes their is obviously some exegreation in describing the size of the city, but this is a really minor point. The point of Jonah 3:3 is that it was a large city, not the exact accurate details of the city's size. But again my point is the self-righteousness, and the fact that many churches that are far more Orthodox than the churches these pastors are in believe in the Historicity of the Jonah story. They probably could make better arguments for its historicity than I am doing right now.
Then a Pastor (Lutheran) said that Jonah 3:10 is an example of God changing his mind. I explained that a condition was set forth that if they persisted in their sin they would be destroyed. God made this condition and sent Jonah so they wouldn't be destroyed. God didn't change his mind, the condition didn't persist which would gain their destruction. Then a Pastor (Lutheran) and a Pastor (Methodist) said God repented and that's the greek. But as I pointed out before to say God is perfect in no need of repentance, when we repent we say we are unlike "God" when "God" repents he says he is unlike us. So this one Methodist pastor said "God could have repented for threating to bring destruction". These are the very words of the Self-Righteous. The Self-Righteous can't stand the Doctrine of Grace, because our need for grace is predicated on our wickedness. They can't stand the Old Testament, when it talks about our deserved Judgement. The reason is because it doesn't jive with thier man-made worldview. The truth is God is just, we are wicked, the fact that we aren't destroyed today by God is an act of Grace.
Then we talked about Philipians 1-I don't remember saying anything at this. But there was talk about Sexuality and one of the Heterodox pastors talked about being Faithful to Christ is worth seperating the Church. So basically implying that his view on changing sex standards is predicated on the Bible, but a faithfulness to Christ apart from the Bible. He never addresses how the Gospel cites the Old Testament 121 times. How Jesus said in John 10:35 that scriptures cannot be broken. Nor Luke 24:27-When Jesus speaks of all of scripture pointing to him. He doesn't cite Luther's view of "How the word of Man can error, but the Word of God cannot error" as it is found in the Large Cathecism. I needed to confront this idea of people saying stuff that is heterodox and claiming to be faithful to Christ. This is a blatant false teaching of what I like to call "Generic Gospel", I will address it this weekend.
Then we talked about Matthew 20:1-16: They turned it into a economic parable, I said it is a parable about how the Self-Righeous have a problem with the concept of Grace. But then some views were exchanged to close the day. One Pastor said that this parable could argue for univeralism, except that so many other parable argue for judgement. Well, at least he was honest.
One Methodist pastor said "He was trained in Process Theology, so when he had to write a ordination paper on Christology, "He had no Christology" since he was into Process. He said this in such a way that he could have been disproving of Process Thought. Even if he didn't he condenmed Process as the Heresy that it is.
This pastor then said that all people will be saved. He didn't do exactly careful exigesis on John 3:18 or John 3:36. My supervisor said "He would have confronted him, but he had to get back" So praise God for his stance for truth.
Then this heterodox Methodist Pastor said that he visited with a member of his congreation, who thought it was God's will for Katrina, and how he didn't believe this image of a domineering God, though he didn't come close to citing Isa 45:7, Amos 3:6, nor Lamentations 3:38, but whatever.
So if this is what Mainline Text studies are like, a lot is explained.
My next post will be Saturday on this concept of Generic Gospel.
So I was at text study today, and the group was quite bad.
The group started out by taking shots at President George W. Bush. One pastor made what started out like a humble confession saying 'That though I disagree with the President, I need to have a more graceful attitude, and focus on his gifts". I was shocked by this non-self rigtheous confession. But then it turned back to self-righteousness on a dime as the guy said "He couldn't think of one good thing about President Bush". Then one Pastor said Barbara Bush said that "People in Katrina got what they deserved for their poverty." This is not quite the case, as this pastor openly violated the 8th Commandment when what she said was ""What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," she said during a radio interview with the American Public Media program "Marketplace." "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.-http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/06/katrina.presidents.ap/. Was this the most apropriate statement maybe not. Was what she said wasn't totally untrue on all true on all levels. They were having a rough go off it, and people were now working to help them out. Then the Pastor I formerly praised as being humble, then said "She's the most sain one of the family".
Then they decided to start questioning the intelligence of members of their congreations, by saying they couldn't believe how many of them believed the historicy of the Jonah story. They ignored how Jesus spoke of the Jonah story in Matthew 12:38-42. They find hetrodox commentaries to try to explain texts. As far as the Jonah story goes their is obviously some exegreation in describing the size of the city, but this is a really minor point. The point of Jonah 3:3 is that it was a large city, not the exact accurate details of the city's size. But again my point is the self-righteousness, and the fact that many churches that are far more Orthodox than the churches these pastors are in believe in the Historicity of the Jonah story. They probably could make better arguments for its historicity than I am doing right now.
Then a Pastor (Lutheran) said that Jonah 3:10 is an example of God changing his mind. I explained that a condition was set forth that if they persisted in their sin they would be destroyed. God made this condition and sent Jonah so they wouldn't be destroyed. God didn't change his mind, the condition didn't persist which would gain their destruction. Then a Pastor (Lutheran) and a Pastor (Methodist) said God repented and that's the greek. But as I pointed out before to say God is perfect in no need of repentance, when we repent we say we are unlike "God" when "God" repents he says he is unlike us. So this one Methodist pastor said "God could have repented for threating to bring destruction". These are the very words of the Self-Righteous. The Self-Righteous can't stand the Doctrine of Grace, because our need for grace is predicated on our wickedness. They can't stand the Old Testament, when it talks about our deserved Judgement. The reason is because it doesn't jive with thier man-made worldview. The truth is God is just, we are wicked, the fact that we aren't destroyed today by God is an act of Grace.
Then we talked about Philipians 1-I don't remember saying anything at this. But there was talk about Sexuality and one of the Heterodox pastors talked about being Faithful to Christ is worth seperating the Church. So basically implying that his view on changing sex standards is predicated on the Bible, but a faithfulness to Christ apart from the Bible. He never addresses how the Gospel cites the Old Testament 121 times. How Jesus said in John 10:35 that scriptures cannot be broken. Nor Luke 24:27-When Jesus speaks of all of scripture pointing to him. He doesn't cite Luther's view of "How the word of Man can error, but the Word of God cannot error" as it is found in the Large Cathecism. I needed to confront this idea of people saying stuff that is heterodox and claiming to be faithful to Christ. This is a blatant false teaching of what I like to call "Generic Gospel", I will address it this weekend.
Then we talked about Matthew 20:1-16: They turned it into a economic parable, I said it is a parable about how the Self-Righeous have a problem with the concept of Grace. But then some views were exchanged to close the day. One Pastor said that this parable could argue for univeralism, except that so many other parable argue for judgement. Well, at least he was honest.
One Methodist pastor said "He was trained in Process Theology, so when he had to write a ordination paper on Christology, "He had no Christology" since he was into Process. He said this in such a way that he could have been disproving of Process Thought. Even if he didn't he condenmed Process as the Heresy that it is.
This pastor then said that all people will be saved. He didn't do exactly careful exigesis on John 3:18 or John 3:36. My supervisor said "He would have confronted him, but he had to get back" So praise God for his stance for truth.
Then this heterodox Methodist Pastor said that he visited with a member of his congreation, who thought it was God's will for Katrina, and how he didn't believe this image of a domineering God, though he didn't come close to citing Isa 45:7, Amos 3:6, nor Lamentations 3:38, but whatever.
So if this is what Mainline Text studies are like, a lot is explained.
My next post will be Saturday on this concept of Generic Gospel.
posted by Stew at 5:29 PM
1 Comments:
My goodness, Stew...this is some pretty deep stuff! Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, I had to endure the Bush jokes at this week's text study. The worst was one pastor who compared Bush to Hitler and Hussein. I have heard that more than once from liberals and it about drives me nuts. I'd like to see any of them do the job that no President would have wished on himself. Bush has been a tremendous leader through some very difficult crises for our country. And he has never resorted to mere soundbites. He has stood up for what he believes in. He has been a real leader: thick-skinned and tender-hearted. Argh.
Anyway, although the pastors seem to be politically liberal, they are otherwise a bit more conservative than in the Twin Cities. And they do seem to be faithful servants of Christ, so that is a blessing.
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