Let us Contend!
I listened to a preacher yesterday who, while talking on the issue of the Jews and their place in world history, came up with this fantastical tale:
When Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moria, as he lifted the knife up above his head he was transported two thousand years into the future. What he saw was a hill not far from where he stood, and there appeared to be a man, carrying wood on his back. He watched as the man was hung on the cross, and, thinking it was Isaac, peered closer until he recognized that it was not his son Isaac, but Messiah! The Christ! He was then transported back to his own time and thus he had the assurance that God would send His son for the sins of the world.
As I listened, I thought he was just adding poetic detail, to further enhance his viewers' experience. But no. He had a proof text. John 8:56 - "Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad."
Besides the obvious issue that no one in the history of Christendom has ever come up with that interpretation, there was another, more serious issue. After the video was over, several people offered their opinions on what he had said. They were all very nice and gave him the benefit of the doubt and said "Wow, I never thought of that before.", and "That really spoke to me."
Jude exhorts us to "contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." What does it mean to contend for something already delivered? It means it must not change. The early christians equated change with error, and rightly so. For every doctrinal error has crept in through the use of creative innovation.
The trouble with us today is that we seem to exalt innovation. If we've never heard it before, it's new, and exciting! This might be true for the latest movie or iPhone, but this is not true of our faith! What this preacher was doing was sitting down with nothing but his own mind and his Bible. Then he dreams up stuff like this and the masses go gaga over him because he's a Bible teacher and gets everything he states from the Biblical text.
This goes to show that the faith we must contend for is not a textually based faith. We need more than just a guy with his Bible coming up with who knows what and validating it only within his own mind. This is what a faith based on a text will do: it will change as the text is interpreted differently, at different times and at different places.
Innovation is the devil's playground, and has he ever been busy! Ideas springing from nowhere have rooted themselves within mainstream Christianity so persistently, that the average Christian doesn't realize their believing in an innovation less two hundred years old.
This is a problem, and I'm not sure how to fix it. We need to contend for the faith, not set it aside for the latest, coolest new interpretation.
I hope we can start contending again.
When Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moria, as he lifted the knife up above his head he was transported two thousand years into the future. What he saw was a hill not far from where he stood, and there appeared to be a man, carrying wood on his back. He watched as the man was hung on the cross, and, thinking it was Isaac, peered closer until he recognized that it was not his son Isaac, but Messiah! The Christ! He was then transported back to his own time and thus he had the assurance that God would send His son for the sins of the world.
As I listened, I thought he was just adding poetic detail, to further enhance his viewers' experience. But no. He had a proof text. John 8:56 - "Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad."
Besides the obvious issue that no one in the history of Christendom has ever come up with that interpretation, there was another, more serious issue. After the video was over, several people offered their opinions on what he had said. They were all very nice and gave him the benefit of the doubt and said "Wow, I never thought of that before.", and "That really spoke to me."
Jude exhorts us to "contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." What does it mean to contend for something already delivered? It means it must not change. The early christians equated change with error, and rightly so. For every doctrinal error has crept in through the use of creative innovation.
The trouble with us today is that we seem to exalt innovation. If we've never heard it before, it's new, and exciting! This might be true for the latest movie or iPhone, but this is not true of our faith! What this preacher was doing was sitting down with nothing but his own mind and his Bible. Then he dreams up stuff like this and the masses go gaga over him because he's a Bible teacher and gets everything he states from the Biblical text.
This goes to show that the faith we must contend for is not a textually based faith. We need more than just a guy with his Bible coming up with who knows what and validating it only within his own mind. This is what a faith based on a text will do: it will change as the text is interpreted differently, at different times and at different places.
Innovation is the devil's playground, and has he ever been busy! Ideas springing from nowhere have rooted themselves within mainstream Christianity so persistently, that the average Christian doesn't realize their believing in an innovation less two hundred years old.
This is a problem, and I'm not sure how to fix it. We need to contend for the faith, not set it aside for the latest, coolest new interpretation.
I hope we can start contending again.