Paperback Wolves

Last Tues­day, when I was teach­ing for my Giv­ing the Sense series, we had a dis­cus­sion on books. The class cov­ers a broad demo­graphic from new believ­ers to peo­ple who have been Chris­tians for over twenty years. I was point­ing out how help­ful it is to read good books when one of the more mature believ­ers pointed out that there are a lot of bad books out there. Of course, I know there are bad books on the­ol­ogy out there; I’ve read a few. For me, sens­ing really bad the­ol­ogy is some­what instinc­tive; I can almost smell it coming.

The man who had pointed out the exis­tence of bad books, though, showed wis­dom because new believ­ers don’t nor­mally have the same abil­ity to sniff out bad the­ol­ogy. You usu­ally learn to detect bad the­ol­ogy by study­ing lots of good the­ol­ogy. I had sug­gested that I might write a post on authors that new believ­ers ought to avoid, men­tion­ing Rob Bell and Joel Osteen. Rob Bell denies the lit­eral nature of the atone­ment in his book Love Wins, thus mak­ing him a wolf and prob­a­bly not saved. Joel Osteen spends far more time talk­ing about health, wealth, and pros­per­ity than he does about Jesus; he might not be a wolf, but he is not very helpful.

Rather than list­ing off a bunch of authors to avoid, I thought it might be bet­ter to write two posts. The first (this one) will deal with what makes a wolf a wolf; it will explain what sorts of things should cause red flags for newer believer. The sec­ond will address the ques­tion of what books a new believer ought to be reading.

The Marks of Wolfdom

The Bible uses the wolf a few times. Jesus made false prophets out to be syn­ony­mous with wolves in Matthew 7:15. Paul stated in Acts 20:28–29 that it is the job of the elders (or over­seers) to pro­tect the flock from wolves. Per­haps the best thing you can do is clear the books you’re read­ing (and ser­mons or lec­tures to which you’re lis­ten­ing) with your pas­tor. If your pas­tor isn’t well read—many today sadly aren’t—clear it with some­one you trust who is well read.

The peo­ple who were caus­ing harm in the church fairly con­sis­tently looked quite godly and even clever to onlook­ers.¹ They are marked, though, by deny­ing fun­da­men­tal doc­trines like the res­ur­rec­tion.² In my (admit­tedly lim­ited) study of wolves and false prophets in the New Tes­ta­ment, the con­sis­tent string I’ve found is a desire to take people’s focus off of Jesus Christ and put it else­where. In Galatians the wolves are try­ing to get peo­ple to focus on their own faith­ful­ness to the Mosaic covenant. In 1 Corinthians (15) they are try­ing to get peo­ple to doubt Christ’s work in the res­ur­rec­tion. In Colossians they are try­ing to get peo­ple to rely on things learned from the ele­men­tal spir­its (demons) like asceti­cism (wor­ship of humil­ity), hav­ing visions, and wor­ship­ing angels.³ In all these cases, focus is taken off of Jesus and put on some­one else (usu­ally us or the message-bringer).

New believ­ers, then, should be wary of any books that focus more on what we do or get than on what God did in Christ (the Gospel). You ought to be able to see the author talk­ing clearly about how Jesus died for our sins and rose for our jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. If he denies it or man­ages to go sev­eral chap­ters with­out at least allud­ing to it, you could prob­a­bly be read­ing some­thing bet­ter. Colossians 2:16–23 would say that the author is puffed up, not hold­ing fast to Jesus, and focus­ing on help­ful tips, tricks, and how-to’s that in the end—apart from Christ—aren’t that help­ful after all.