Stephen
Terry, Director
Dealing
with False Teachers
Commentary
for the September 19, 2026, Sabbath School Lesson
"The
great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan,
who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels
with him.
Then
I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
'Now
have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the
authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who
accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.'" Revelation
12:9-10
People have a tough time living
in a state of cognitive dissonance. And yet such dissonance is essential to
faith for faith rests on the cusp of ambiguity. When we choose to believe something
based on faith rather than evidence, the absence of that evidence, while giving
testimony to our faith, testifies that we are bereft of the answers that would
logically endorse that faith. It not only testifies of faith. It demands it.
Commonly we try to resolve the dissonance by seeking to construct a paradigm where
there is no evidentiary failure. We try to prove faith, and in so doing it
dematerializes and is replaced by something unintended but essential to resolve
ambiguity.
We lay a foundation of what we
consider logical proof for our faith that requires no actual faith at all.
Faith proven ceases to be faith and instead is believed to be fact. Once we lay
that foundation, we examine scripture to find structural proof texts to support
the edifice we are building, and once that building is complete, we demand belief
in and adherence to that structure and its needs. This we call "obedience." But
as with all human endeavors, over time, inconsistencies appear and the same
people who resolved the issue of faith with logic and proof texting are
themselves demanding those within the structure and those who would enter do so
based on faith and obey the dogma they used while constructing their house. But
faith cannot be demanded. It is the result of trust and the resulting
experience of how that trust played out that produces faith, timorous at first,
but over time it can become iron clad.
However, humanity does not like to
see their ideals challenged, especially if the control over others has been
established for a long time, and Christianity has been presumed true for two millennia
now. This has been time enough for an entire discipline of apologetics to
develop to defend the edifice and illuminate others regarding the proper
understanding of the proof texts that built and adorned the edifice. But
apologetics are problematic as they are developed from the assumption that
truth is already known and therefore needs no re-examination, only defending.
There is irony in that for it also assumes God is incapable of defending himself
and can only be saved from figurative annihilation by his human followers and
their store of proof texts. Little wonder that Nietzsche in the 19th
century and the "God is Dead" movement of the 1960s came about when a weak and
impotent God that needs such a defense is presented by his followers.
There is even a worse downside
to apologetics. When we construct proofs for God, whether from logic or proof
texting, we set ourselves up as experts in something we know extraordinarily
little about. And when the reality promised does not match the reality
experienced the entire Christian promise blows up, leaving wounded and
disenchanted people scattered everywhere. Some may find their way back to
faith, but it is especially hard if they have been manipulated into obedience
through fear of what might happen in the face of disobedience. We stumble when we
make the Bible into the equivalent of a magical spell book where if we get the
incantations and the actions and ingredients accompanying those actions just
right we can expect the desired spell to materialize in the form of healing,
prosperity, the perfect soulmate or the ideal career.
All sorts of evils have been
perpetrated in the interest of achieving such things or even the goal of salvation.
We beat our children while reciting "spare the rod and spoil the child." (Proverbs
13:24) And despite Jesus telling us to love our enemies, our hearts still
feel justice is served whenever we can repay "eye for eye, and tooth for tooth."
(Matthew
5:38-48) This is so common that the Germans even have a word for this Schadenfreude,
meaning joy at seeing someone receive a justly deserved misfortune. These things
do not build up the body of Christ. When we focus intently on obedience and retribution
for disobedience, people may obey, but not from the heart. They obey from a
place of fear. Part of that fear is fear that others will feel those suffering
justly deserve misfortune because of some hidden disobedience since they have
been taught to believe that God is constantly seeking to catch us out and enact
retribution to push us back in line.
This scenario also produces an
army of petty spies, calling themselves "fruit inspectors" based on (Matthew
7:15-20), these are those who are eager to point out the failings of others
and defame them. It is because of these that Jesus established a means to deal
with conflict within the church. (Matthew
18:15-17) Most of these judges are eager to run to the pastor or the church
board behind someone's back and trash them, hoping to get those authorities to
be as vindictive as they are and bring church discipline to bear on the
individual. They think they are saints because they would never get involved
directly in dealing with the issue. However, Jesus required the individual
themselves to first approach the one they are accusing before escalating the
problem to higher levels of authority. Jesus felt that it was important that the
accused know who was accusing them. Unfortunately, too much of what is
considered dealing with sin in the church is the running backstab rather than
the model Jesus gave. And pastors err gravely when they enable such
backstabbing by sheltering the accuser from discovery.
At this point some might wonder
what the relationship is between false teachers and sin in the church. They are
of an ilk, and those zealous proponents of obedience would eliminate both. The
disciples even came to Jesus to complain of a false teacher they discovered. He
was casting out demons in the name of Jesus but was not part of their
fellowship. (Mark
9:38-40) Jesus said to leave him alone and that whoever is not against them
is for them. Zealousness to purge those who do not fit in can gravely wound the
very cause someone may be trying to protect. One thing that the Pharisees and
others who persecuted Jesus had trouble realizing is that spiritual fruit can
be manifest even in the absence of obedience to dogma. It helps when one understands
that dogma is the result of humanity's purported understanding of God. When
Jesus was born, dogma for the temple, the synagogue and the people of the land
had developed over many centuries, almost as long as Christian dogma has had to
develop. Despite that length of time, Jesus revealed that they had erred on
many points, and he continually pointed out that they were teaching and
demanding obedience to rules derived from human understanding and as a result
had lost sight of mercy and compassion, the very attributes of God. (Exodus
33:18-19)
It is the error of humanity to
demand sacrificial obedience to dogma, elevating it above mercy and compassion.
We see what we consider errors and immediately want to eliminate them. We
seldom have the patience to wait upon God and the work of the holy angels. God
tells us not to go after those weeds in his field, for in doing so we crush the
hearts and minds of those who are already his and drive them away or crush them
altogether. (Matthew
13:24-30, 36-43) Sadly, in doing so, we forget the effect of such baleful
work. Nature itself teaches us that we get in return what we put out there. If
we plant corn we get corn. But the miracle is that when we plant one corn
kernel, we can get more corn back than we can hold in both our hands. The same
is true of our actions. We can plant mercy and compassion, or we can plant
trouble and hardness of heart in God's beautiful field. When we do, whatever we
plant comes back to us many times increased. If life seems to be giving us more
trouble than we can manage, we can choose to plant mercy and compassion in
those fields that are producing that harvest of trouble and reap a better harvest.
We can share with others
whatever we have in abundance. Sowing determines what that abundance will be. Let
us sow gladness, joy, mercy, love, peace, and all good things. Let trouble and
accusations end. Let us build no more storage in our hearts to hold evil, vengeance,
or retribution. "God is love." (1
John 4:8) And that is enough.