False prophets and heresy hunters

The other evening I spent a couple of hours on the internet researching some dubious American preachers and self-styled prophets - notably Todd Bentley, Patricia King and Bob Jones (of Kansas City not of Bob Jones University). Just watching a YouTube video of the three of them chatting together was enough to set fifty-five alarm bells ringing - daily visits on demand to the Third Heaven, accompanied by the smell of vanilla? Satan's hooks in your life all being pulled out as you journey through the Second Heaven? Angel orbs and angel feathers appearing as you pray? Nutcases or frauds at best - perhaps something more dangerous.

However, what actually disturbed me more were the many Christian websites warning against these guys as false teachers. Not because I disagree, but because these same sites also warned against a vast array of other preachers whose views I might not share but who I certainly can't see as heretical - David Pytches, Mark Stibbe, Mark Driscoll, Nicky Gumbel, Tony Campolo, R.T. Kendall, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren... Indeed, the more I read, the more it seemed that no-one in the charismatic wing of evangelical Christianity is exempt from dangerous heresy and false teaching.

Of course it's important to think critically and be open to criticism - always to be ready to evaluate and re-evaluate the sources and validity of one's teachings and practices. It's also important not to put any teacher or movement on a pedestal as 'God's anointed', above reproach or question. I suspect that all Christian teachers and movements are wrong in some aspects of teaching and practice, however closely they try to stick to the Bible and however open to the Spirit they are. We need to health-check ourselves and our teachers regularly.

But... it does seem to me that there's an opposite and perhaps even greater danger in heresy-hunting and sin-hunting, as represented by the many sites I visited condemning Purpose-Driven Rick Warren et al alongside nutty Third-Heaven daytrippers Bob Jones and Todd Bentley.

For a start, there's a strong danger of setting up your own views or interpretation of the Bible as the Ultimate and Infallible Standard of Truth, which I can assure you they certainly aren't. Secondly there's the danger of plank-eyed judgementalism, not something Jesus greatly encouraged. Thirdly there's often an overridingly negative focus - always on the lookout for the bad rather than the good. And finally there tends to be a Pharisaical obsession with so-called 'sound doctrine' and external behaviour above all other aspects of the spiritual life. In the end, all you can see is heresy and sin - but in everyone else, never in yourself.

Of course most of these ultra-condemnatory sites are from the fundamentalist end of evangelicalism, so if you can't tick all their self-prescribed boxes of belief in Biblical inerrancy etc - as I can't - you will fall straight away into their increasingly over-populated 'heretic' category and be summarily written off.

I ended my two-hour internet research not enlightened but confused and disturbed. My own silly fault really - if I can't recognise an obvious bunch of nutbags without having to consult professional heresy-hunters, what do I expect?

Selfless Genes and Zennish Prophets

I've just finished Charles Foster's The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin. I was expecting a straightforward Christian defence of theistic evolution, but what emerged was both more fascinating and more frustrating and raised as many questions as it set out to answer. Read my review here.

Unrelatedly, except that I was given them both for Christmas, I've also just finished Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Profound spiritual genius or meaningless New-Agey nonsense wrapped up in impenetrably poetic prose? In this it reminded me strongly of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist and also of William Nicholson's Wind on Fire and Seeker trilogies. Maybe I've still got too much evangelical baggage to be able to handle books which mix up Christianity, Buddhism and Islam quite so freely (though I loved Life of Pi).