Worldview Matters!
Guest Post by Holly Roe
Part 1 of a 3 Part Series
The days we are living in are unprecedented! We absolutely have to learn how to discern what is going on around us from a biblical standpoint. Here’s some help from my friend Holly—
A BIT OF BACKGROUND– I’ve been in ministry almost all of my life in some capacity. Since the age of 8, when I gave my life to Christ, I’ve had the privilege of serving the Lord through churches, missions, camps, music and leadership. I spent about 20 years on church staff and I am still a ministry consultant.
For many years, I blindly trusted that most of the leaders I served on staff with or partnered with in ministry had the same Biblical worldview and mission that I did. It wasn’t until about 2014 that I began to hear and see things from leaders I was associated with that seemed to drift away from the historical Biblical Worldview I held so strongly.
Initially, it was not overly tangible evidence that made me question these leaders. There were subtle comments that were accompanied by quite a bit of truth which made it a bit tricky to decipher. I probably looked a bit like my dog Harvey when he hears a squeaky noise and in his curious confusion, he contemplates whether to go after the squeak or run. This had me squinting my eyes and tilting my head in a curious kind of confusion. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I was really hearing.
At the same time, my daughter had been in a youth group and heard some teaching that she also recognized as false teaching as well. I’m grateful she knew enough in 6th grade to come to me and say, “Mom, is everything in the Bible not true? I thought you told me it was but they said that some bible stories might not have actually happened.”
The questions and comments that we were hearing were directly related to the authority and inerrancy of scripture and some beliefs deviated from historic Biblical understanding and teaching.
The leaders in question were also encouraging dialogue with people of other faiths and with those who had no faith for the purpose of learning empathy and finding similarities, not necessarily with a purpose of converting.
Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue…that’s a word I began to hear over and over again.
During this time of research, I began to directly question the leaders I was working with. I discovered what I believe is the most important step to figuring out if a leader is someone I should do ministry with or follow–Ask who they follow. Who do they endorse, retweet, and promote? What do they post? Which authors do they read, which conferences do they attend? Who endorses the conferences they go to and who are the keynote speakers?
I found that the majority of influencers that were teaching these leaders were following were all pushing a similar new movement. The subtleties slowly began to take on more of a theme which followed an unconventional progressive path that claimed it was getting back to who Jesus really was. The heart of the movement was progressive Christianity, but it had many different veins extending from that heart.
Many of the emerging influencers had the word “activist” under their headshots and most were “calling out” what they saw as flaws in Christianity in some way. They were passionate, opinionated and some enjoyed using the “shock and awe” approach to intrigue and capture the attention of curious new inquisitors. Some of the more visible leaders were known for hanging out with lots of celebrities and freely using profanity from the pulpit, some for writing books that called for “A New Kind of Christianity,” and some for melting down golden purity rings into the shape of women’s body parts in protest of the True Love Waits program that they say is damaging because it promotes abstinence before marriage and makes people feel guilty for past mistakes.
All of these leaders are still around and still have huge followings today. I saw words and phrases like, interfaith, dialogue, emergent, seeker friendly, postmodern, and social justice pop up more frequently. It took some study to break down some of the elements of this movement and it’s still growing and morphing even as we speak.
2 Timothy 3:1-7 is a perfect descriptor of the things we saw back then and are still seeing which describes an unholy group of people that appear godly which is very tricky. They lead people astray and are in constant dialogue, always talking, speaking, reading and always “learning.” (verse 7) They are, “Always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”
They seem studied, speak with confidence and teach boldly and they include just enough truth to be dangerous.
There’s an underlying message to most all progressive Christianity and it is that truth is not absolute and that no one should ever be so arrogant to believe that they can actually know what it means. It’s the idea that I can have “my truth’” and you can have “your truth,” and that the Bible was penned by humans therefore it can be left up to individual interpretation.
The problem is that absolute truth does exist.
Jesus tells us that he is “the way THE truth and the life.” Our feelings about what is true is totally irrelevant. Just because something feels, looks right or sounds right to us does not make it right. We must remember that our feelings do not always lead us to truth. Dialogue, no matter how much we have, can lead us to falsehoods. God’s Word calls us to live a holy life before God.
And we will talk more about this tomorrow…
Kim Jaggers Ministry 