MOTIVES OF SCRIPTURE TWISTERS

Let's turn to the question of why false teachings are promulgated in the first place and why we sometimes believe them. Here are just a few causes that I want to discuss today in somewhat random order with examples where the underlying motives are pretty easy to detect. Some causes apply more to those who spread false teachings in the first place and others apply more to those who believe in them later.

Publish or perish

A new tool

Financial gain or other self-interest

Pet interests

Mistaken defense

Over-reaction

Message in search of a text

Over-simplification

Gnostic tendencies

Distrust of authority

Attract seekers

Some novel teachings arise from the academic world, because even in seminaries it is a case of publish or perish. And the only way to really make a name for yourself is to come up with a brand new theory, which may be quite untested. The thesis of one scholarly study on the Book of Revelation that I have in my library is that the author of Revelation is really John the Baptist. The author's theory is unlikely to sway anyone's opinion who reads it, and even other scholars are not convinced that there is any truth in the claim.

Another aspect of academic studies is that they get especially excited about any new tool that comes along. When I was starting my chemical research, the latest and greatest was nuclear magnetic resonance. In 15 seconds you could get a scan that was about the closest thing to looking directly at the structure of an organic compound that you can get. It revolutionized my field, and the temptation was to ignore any of the old technology and use nmr as the sole tool to rely on. This sort of temptation gave rise to the well known saying attributed to Maslow: “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Here are some examples from biblical studies.

Mitchell Dahood was the world expert on the Ugaritic language, an ancient language somewhat related to Hebrew. He wrote what I consider to be the most useless commentary on the Book of Psalms ever published, at least for a general audience. Instead of truly commenting on the text, he spent three large volumes re-interpreting the psalms because of supposed similarities he saw between the original Hebrew with parallels in the Ugaritic language. As one reviewer said of this book, there is a slim chance that one or two of Dahood's insights will last the test of time, but the rest are rather far-fetched and will soon be forgotten.

When the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls were at last published, Bible scholars had a field day because here was a wonderful new tool to use. Certainly the scrolls have been extremely valuable to OT textual scholars because they provide a Hebrew text 1,000 years earlier than any other manuscripts we had previously. But NT scholars were equally excited because many thought they detected similarities between the Dead Sea sect's own writings and those in the NT. This gave rise to all sorts of unsubstantiated statements that obviously Jesus, John the Baptist and/or Paul belonged to the Dead Sea Community at one time and that was where they got many of their key ideas. Now that the furor has died down, it is obvious that the differences in the teachings are much stronger than the similarities.

I am certainly not immune to this temptation myself. I only truly realized it earlier this year. I have been spending the better part of the last 30 years viewing the Bible from one particular point of view, that of structural criticism, looking for various forms of symmetry in the OT and NT writings. A friend of mine was in the middle of writing a devotional commentary on the Book of Habakkuk and he asked me to proofread the first draft for him. Well, I couldn't just stop there. I diagrammed his book and pointed out to him that if he would only delete his first interlude and add discussion questions to the end of his Chapter 3 along with a new interlude, he would have a perfectly symmetrical structure to his book. He politely thanked me for my proofreading and wisely ignored my other suggestions. I had one tool, a hammer, and his commentary looked like a nail to me.

The motive of gain is clearly identified in the NT as one of the reasons false teachers arise.

    “Whoever teaches otherwise...imagin(es) that godliness is a means of gain.” (I Tim. 6:3-5)

    "There are also many rebellious people...teaching for sordid gain what it is not right to teach.” (Titus 1:10-11)

    “Because of these teachers the way of truth will be maligned. And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words.” (II Peter 2:2-3)

    “These are grumblers and malcontents...flattering people to their own advantage.” (Jude 16)

While I know that we should be hesitant in judging other people, the basic motive behind certain Christian teachers certainly looks like nothing less than financial gain.

For example, I am naturally suspicious of any prophecy “experts” who attempt to pin down the time of the Second Coming, even in a rough time frame. So it seems like more than a coincidence that the best selling of these books all seem to zero in on a time frame about 5-10 years in the future – a close enough time period to get people excited enough to buy their books, but far enough in the future to ensure a good run of sales before their conclusions are proved false. I was especially suspicious of one prophecy Bible that came out about 10-20 years ago. It firmly predicted the end of the world in about 10 years, but they advertised the book as being available in a special leather binding guaranteed to last for 100 years. I always like to contrast these prophetic books with William Hendricksen's commentary on Revelation, More Than Conquerors, first published in 1939, which has never gone out of print or needed updating.

Of course, there is the obvious example of popular TV preachers who plead with their audience for more money needed desperately to keep their valuable ministry going, often appealing to the promise of material gain in return. It is probably unlikely that any of the Health and Prosperity preachers in mega-churches are hurting financially because of their ministries.

But sometimes Scripture twisting results from admirable motives. Several years ago, our home Bible study group called in a special speaker for a month to talk to us. He had a local ministry where he had put together his version of a Walk Through the Bible course, which is now available on YouTube. His lessons were filled with outrageous and unsubstantiated statements: the blood of Jesus had been found and analyzed to contain no paternal DNA, the mysterious nephilim of Genesis were definitively identified as Neanderthal men, references to dinosaurs were found in the OT, etc. etc. And, by the way, if you want to know where God's home town is, the speaker had found the answer. It says right it in Habakkuk 3:3: “God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran.” I tracked down the very few sources he provided for his facts – one was a website put out by a group of Singaporean businessmen and another was an article in an obscure Australian newspaper. His comment when I questioned him about the accuracy of all these teachings was that he knew some of the things he said were perhaps a little dubious, but he defended himself by saying, “Exciting things like this get people's attention; it attracts them so they want to hear more about the Bible.” In other words: the ends justify the means. So again, I applaud his motive but not the fact that he felt he needed to shade the truth quite a bit in order to achieve it.

There is a cartoon I have seen that describes me on at least past occasions. A woman is approaching a man who is reading. The caption says, “Don't bother me. I'm looking for a verse of Scripture to back up one of my preconceived notions.” Many years ago I shared preaching duties with several others at the small church we belonged to in upstate NY. I thought of a great sermon topic and spent about two weeks vainly scouring the Bible to see if God agreed with me. At least I had the wisdom to abandon that particular idea when I couldn't find it anywhere in Scripture.

Unfortunately, the temptation is to try to force-fit our own ideas into the teachings of the Bible in support of a pet concern of ours. I have already given some such examples. Here is an additional one where the underlying motivation for a teaching is reasonably clear. You can find a number of people on the internet claiming that the reason Paul had to take up a collection for the poor in the Jerusalem church was that their poverty was the direct result of their ill-founded experiment in setting up an economic commune. The fact is that there was a widespread famine in the land that affected everyone, not just the church. Why would someone insist that the church sharing their goods with those in need was a bad idea? I think it stems from an absolute abhorrence of the idea that the Bible might be used by someone somewhere to support communism.

Here is an interesting question posed by a Christian animal rights organization: Did Jesus kill 2,000 pigs? On their website, they explain that of course Jesus didn't kill a herd of pigs when he cast the legion of demons out of the possessed man because this wasn't a miracle story at all. Instead it is a political parable put into the NT to teach that the Jews needed to expel the Roman “legions” from Israel, not legions of demons at all. This is a prime example of the trend C. S. Lewis once described. People start out by talking about the Bible and animal rights, then it becomes animal rights in the Bible, and finally their true motive comes out when they deny the clear meaning of the Bible if it doesn't fit in with their prime concern, which is animal rights. The end result from all these attempts to read into Scripture what we want to see there is called eisegesis. It is trying to get a square peg to fit into a round hole.

Then there are other teachers who, for the best of motives, want to strip away the complexities found in the Bible in order to present a more simplified version with no ambiguities that might confuse people. Unfortunately, this can cater to the desires of the many who don't like to be challenged in their faith with any unnecessary facts that might cause them to reexamine their already set ideas. For example, there are various chronological Bibles which combine parallel passages together so that they can be read more easily as a continuous narrative. These are certainly very useful for following the overall thrust of biblical history as long as they don't become as a substitute for reading the Bible as it was written. The problem is that such books by necessity have to leave out a wealth of details present in the original.

Using The Daily Bible as an example, here is one verse from the gospels chosen at random.This is how its account of Matthew 16:1 and its parallel Mark 8:11 reads:

“The Pharisees and Sadducees (1) came to (2) Jesus and tested him by asking (3) him to show them a sign from heaven.” (Matthew 16:1; Mark 8:11)

(1) “Others” (Luke 11:16)

(2) “began to argue with” (Mark 8:11)

(3) “kept demanding” (Luke 11:16)

To get this reading, the editor basically chose Matthew's longer version, which includes a reference to the Sadducees not found in Mark's Gospel. This should raise the question as to why Matthew felt the need to emphasize the presence of the Sadducees. Or alternatively, why did Mark leave them out? If you look at an analytical concordance you will find that this difference in emphasis is consistent with what Mark and Matthew do elsewhere. Mark only mentions the Sadducees once to Matthew's seven references. That fact alone might prompt a major Bible study in itself, but you would miss it entirely if all you relied was The Daily Bible.

Then there is the question of the Pharisees and Sadducee's motive. Both Matthew and Mark agree that they were trying to test Jesus, but Mark makes it stronger by saying that they began to argue with Jesus, a phrase left out of The Daily Bible, which also omits a possible parallel passage found in Luke 11, which is almost identical to the story in Matthew and Mark, but places it in an entirely different chronological setting. So that brings up the confusing question of whether Jesus had two such identical encounters in his ministry, or whether Luke has maybe placed the story in a different setting for some literary or theological reason. That sort of possibility really disturbs some Christians. And, as if the situation weren't complicated enough, there is another possibly parallel account in John's gospel which is left out of The Daily Bible entirely. There is an admirable motive behind this sort of over-simplification, but unfortunately it also has the side effect of eliminating much of the richness of the original, so it is definitely a trade-off. We really have to be prepared to wrestle with a little ambiguity in the Bible when we run across it and to slow down in our reading at that point even if it runs counter to our desire to speed-read without really comprehending.

A better approach if one is studying Jesus' life, for example, is to use a “harmony of the gospels” so that you can compare the various accounts side-by-side instead. Most will include all four gospels in side-by-side columns, some even highlighting in color the phrases that the various accounts have in common.

I used to feel that the only one to blame for false teaching was the teacher himself or herself. After all, it says in James 3:1 that teachers will be judged more strictly. I always hoped that God would let those who follow false teachers off the hook because they probably didn't know any better. Now I'm not sure that is really true. Here are two interesting passages in the OT historical accounts. In the first story, David wants to build a temple for God, and the prophet Nathan says without consulting God on the matter, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the LORD is with you.” In the rest of the chapter, God reveals to Nathan and David what God's true will in the situation is. And surprisingly, God doesn't chastise Nathan at all for his bad advice and taking God's name in vain. Instead, He bawls out David for listening to Nathan.

In the second story, someone only identified as a man of God has been told by God to leave Bethel without stopping to eat or drink. But he is followed by an old prophet who tells the man of God that an angel has appeared to him with a different message. According to this supposed new revelation, the man of God is to stop and have supper with him first. The man of God believes him and stops to eat. Then, just as the case of Nathan and David, God bawls out the man of God for listening to the false prophet while He doesn't chastise the false prophet at all. In both cases, the lesson seems to be that those who follow false teachings have at least some culpability in the matter. They should know better. So let's continue with some possible motivations for false teachings that also can be motives for us as listeners to believe them.

Probably the most common origin of problems in interpretation arises from our badly wanting certain things to be true. We don't need Sigmund Freud to tell us that we should be suspicious of believing something that turns out to be in our own best interest. John Wenham says this regarding the doctrine of hell, but it applies to other issues as well. “Beware of the immense natural appeal of any way out that evades the idea of everlasting sin and suffering. The temptation to twist what may be quite plain statements of Scripture is intense. It is the ideal situation for unconscious rationalizing.” (The Enigma of Evil, p. 38)

Look at these paired beliefs. Which of the two in each case do you want to believe in?

    1. Eternal security vs. possibility of apostasy

    2. Escape from the “Tribulation” vs. having to participate in it

    3. Promise of health and prosperity vs. promise of hardship and persecution

    4. Universalism and annihilationism vs. eternal punishment in hell

    5. Christ's imminent return vs. an extended delay

Regarding #1, I was teaching a Sunday school once and mentioned in passing that some verses in Hebrews seem to indicate the danger of apostasy when one completely turns his back on God after an earlier profession of faith. Afterward, an elder's wife came up to me almost in tears and told me that I really shouldn't teach such things. I found out afterward that her son, who had grown up in the church, had now renounced Christianity completely and of course she wanted desperately to believe that he was still saved.

My wife and I also ran into two interesting cases regarding #5 years ago when The Late Great Planet Earth first came out. My wife overheard one lady in a Bible book store openly bragging that she was running up bills on her credit card to the maximum limit buying things she had always wanted to have. She said that the best part was that Jesus was going to come again before she had to pay any of the bills off. Then, there was another lady in our Sunday school class who said that she used to worry about her young children growing up and whether they would accept Christ later on, but now she wasn't worried at all about their Christian education because Christ was going to come before any of them reached the age of accountability. Both of these events happened about 40 years ago, and I often wonder what happened to those two women.

Now remember that just because one belief in each pair above may be more to your advantage, that doesn't necessarily mean it is incorrect. But you do need to test it objectively against what the Bible truly teaches.

In II Timothy 4:3 Paul talks about this problem of people in church only wanting to hear what is to their advantage. He calls this having “itching ears” that beg to be scratched. And if a teacher or preacher refuses to cater to their particular wants, they will hunt around until they find one more to their liking.

Here is another motive that is a little more altruistic: I have already talked in previous lessons about misguided attempts to defend the Bible or God Himself. So let me describe another category: defending the “heroes” in the Bible. One noted example is how some people try to defend Abraham's actions in twice misleading rulers who wanted to take Sarah as their wife. Both times Abraham said that she was only his sister, in order to save his own neck. One particular internet source concludes that Abraham may have deceived those rulers with his half truth (she was related to him), but that isn't at all the same as actual lying. Then there are other commentators who try to explain that it was the custom for a patriarch who had a favorite wife to also adopt her as his sister. So Abimelech misunderstood Abraham when all he was trying to do was explain that Sarah was an especially dear wife to him.

Concerning the rather embarrassing episode of the golden calf, here are some examples of ancient rabbis trying to defend the actions of characters in the incident, taken from Brevard Child's commentary on Exodus:

    “Why Aaron chose to make expressly a calf is not explained in the text, but has evoked a variety of theories from commentators. B. Jacob's explanation that Aaron wanted to make something completely nonsensical to expose their folly misses the mark badly.” (p. 565)

    In reply to Aaron's statement that he threw the gold into the fire and a calf came out, “Jewish commentators tend to defend Aaron and accept his defense at face value.” (p. 570)

    “Israel as a nation was not chiefly to blame, but the trouble began with the 'mixed multitude' who came from Egypt.” (p. 576)

And there are many other examples in rabbinical commentaries trying to explain away the dubious actions of Miriam, King David, etc. These sorts of justifications might make sense in a works-based religion but they have absolutely no place in a religion of grace.

Then there are those beliefs geared toward those who have a somewhat gnostic tendency and want to be completely in the know regarding everything in the Bible, with all the I's dotted and the T's crossed. Try googling “Dispensational Charts” some time and see what you get. You will find page after page of wall charts explaining the whole of God's plan for the past, present and future. Dispensationalists found out early on that the only way people could even begin to grasp all of the complexities of their scheme was with visual aids. I belonged for years to a church that had this basic view of theology, and even the assistant pastor's wife (who had graduated from DTS) had to ask her husband at one of our home Bible studies to explain it one more time since the exact order of future events always confused her. 

And during one sermon, our senior pastor told us that the pastor at another congregation had remarked to him that our church had the perfect theology, the perfect form of church government, the perfect method of Bible interpretation, the perfect view of the future and the perfect type of preaching. Our pastor didn't actually dispute any of these statements, as I had fully expected him to, but he did admit that with all this perfection we needed to be careful that we still leave room for the Holy Spirit's leading.

Joseph Smith, of course, took another more extreme approach in supplying answers to questions that were the most pressing for early 19^th century American Christians: Why isn't America even mentioned in the Bible and what is its unique place in God's plan? Where did the darker-skinned races originate from and should they be considered equal to the whites? Is our current KJV Bible an accurate translation even though the Bible was in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church for years? What is the meaning of obscure references to baptism on behalf of the dead and the Urim and the Thummin? What happened to the lost tribes of Israel? Why doesn't the Bible condemn sins such as smoking? And will I still be married in heaven? Couple this with a promise that you can become a god equal to Christ and you have a potent mix that caters perfectly to people's various desires.

The next motive we need to be aware of is spiritual one-upsmanship: my faith is superior to your faith. Years ago, I was teaching a series on the parables at a home Bible study. A man from the neighborhood found out about the study and visited once but he didn't really like my approach. He explained to us that God had revealed to him in a dream that he needed to understand everything in the Bible as a literal event, and that included the parables. When Jesus says, “There once was a man, etc.” if we take that as anything less than the literal truth, we make Jesus a liar. The motive of spiritual pride may also be present in some who insist on six literal days of creation or believe in a flat earth on biblical grounds. Sometimes it seems that they think their faith will be greater the more that the facts and reason contradict it.

Another reason for false interpretations arising and being followed by others is a common problem best seen in politics today. We tend to think only in extremes, and any form of compromise is looked upon as selling out to the enemy. In spiritual matters, the great Christian writer G. K. Chesterton was quoted as saying “Every heresy is a truth taught out of proportion.” I had heard a slight variation on that quote: “A heresy is a truth taken too far.” And if heresy is a truth taken too far, then it can be taken too far in more than one direction.

Newton's 3^rd Law says that every action gives rise to an equal and opposite reaction. Unfortunately, in religious disputes the situation often appears to be more complicated. Consider that the truth is represented by a straight line. We recognize an error in interpretation departing from the line in one direction so we try to avoid it as much as possible by swinging in the opposite direction, which causes an even more extreme counter-reaction from the first party when they see how far off the truth we are, etc. etc. Much of the history of Christianity can be charted this way, with the truth sometimes getting completely lost in the process. Here are two examples I have seen recently. I have known people who were so bombarded growing up with the idea of Jesus coming any minute that they swing to the opposite extreme by becoming full preterists, denying that there will be any future coming at all. The same thing happens when people start denying the existence of Satan because they have been around those who overemphasized Satan's influence in the world.

While we are mentioning reasons for false or incomplete teachings, I don't want to ignore ignorance as a cause. As Benjamin Franklin noted, “Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.” I think of the example of Apollos who accepted the superior truths of Aquilla and Priscilla as soon as it was explained to him. Over my own lifetime of moving from one city to another, I think it has been a blessing that I have been a member of six different denominations, which has exposed me to a variety of viewpoints. But I must admit that it has been a culture shock at times and it has exposed my own ignorance of other approaches to the Bible.

Here are just three example of how traditions can become so ingrained that it is a real surprise to us when we first see to a new perspective:

Definition of grace – Back in high school I got into a theological discussion with my best friend, who was a Catholic. He started ranting and raving about what a horrible person Martin Luther was. My comment was that at least he emphasized the important and neglected doctrine of grace. My friend couldn't understand what I was talking about. He said that the Catholic church teaches grace and they even provide a number of ways for you to earn it. Of course, that wasn't at all my definition, or the accepted definition, of grace.

Mode of “baptism” – One of my pastors told the story of the time when he led a church in Australia. He was at an ecumenical luncheon and was seated next to an Anglican bishop. The bishop turned to him and said, “I see by your name tag that you belong to the Disciples of Christ. I have always wanted to ask someone from your denomination where you got your quaint custom of dunking people in water to baptize them.” Our pastor asked him if he had been taught Greek in seminary. The bishop got into a huff and said, “Of course so.” “Then what is the meaning of baptizmo?” The bishop said, “immerse” and then got very quiet. He had never even considered the original meaning of the word before that time.

Eschatology – I'll tell the third story on myself. For about the first 30 years of my life I attended the same denomination and their view of the future, I found out later, was called amillennialism. At the time, I assumed that it was the only accepted view. Then I started attending an American Baptist church. In one of the Sunday school classes, the members started speculating about what life during the millennium would be like, wondering if all the animals would become vegetarian and whether we would age any. I realized later that their belief fit in the mold of another accepted view of the future called historical premillennialism, but at the time I thought that I had inadvertently wandered into some sort of weird cult. Then I moved to Texas and attended a church where I occasionally taught Sunday school. I was covering the various views of the future and when I got to explaining and defending amillennialism, one visitor to the class started fuming. He blurted out, “How can you possibly call yourself a Christian with that sort of belief?” It turned out that he had only been exposed to a third view of the future, dispensationalism, and couldn't see how any other perspective could possibly be true.

Well, how do you cope with the fact that different denominations and teachers have differing views of Scripture? How do you sort out what is true and what is false? Here are two opposite tacks I have seen taken, both of which themselves can lead to Scripture twisting.

There are some churches which have such a distrust of any sort of spiritual authority that they practice a completely democratic approach to studying the Bible. There was a church in upstate NY that I visited once that took this to an extreme. The Sunday school teacher (and I wouldn't really call him a teacher at all) would read a verse and then go around the room asking each person in turn, “What do you think this means?” and then he would summarize the results by saying, “We have two votes for this interpretation while three people think it means such and such, etc.” And then we would proceed to the next verse. Now there is nothing wrong with getting a good discussion going in class. But without some sort of direction from a leader who has spent time in preparation, it soon becomes an exercise in sharing our collective ignorance.

But the opposite approach is no better and that is to follow blindly the teachings of an authority, such as a best selling author. The Left Behind series had a total sales of 63 million copies at the last count. I realize that these are fiction books, but they are based on one particular view of the Bible's teachings on future events and have had a huge popular influence in getting people to accept that branch of theology because of the many people who have read them and seen the movies based on them. Or consider this, when I first moved to Texas, my next door neighbor came by to introduce himself and invite me to visit his church. He said that I just had to attend it because it was the largest church in town, with three services, and they even televised their church services. The idea he was conveying was: that many people can't possibly be wrong. Just consider the theology taught in many mega-churches to easily dispel that notion that truth is established by popularity.

I will have a little more to say later concerning the matter of spiritual authorities; however, keep in mind these two passages:

    “But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be cursed.” (Gal. 1:6) He repeats his words for emphasis in verse 7.

    And Paul lived out these words in Acts 17:10-11. “That very night the believers sent Paul and Silas off to Beroea; and when they arrived, they went to the Jewish synagogue. These Jews were more receptive than those in Thessalonica, for they welcomed the message very eagerly and examined the scriptures every day to see whether these things were so.” Notice that the Bereans aren't criticized for questioning Paul's teachings. Instead they are commended for going to the Bible to see if they are true. We should never feel afraid to question teachings if we think they don't represent what is in the Bible.