From the Editor/President

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A Jehovah's Witness struggling with his faith finds a Christian Web site that challenges the teachings of the Watchtower with biblical and historical evidence. He calls a phone number provided on the Web site and over the next several months a caring Christian helps him break free of the Watchtower and find salvation in Jesus Christ.

A Christian who left her church because of the teachings of Harold Camping reads an article that exposes Campings errors. Now shes not only back in her church, but she has learned some important lessons about Bible interpretation.

The above two examples only begin to illustrate how discernment or countercult ministry makes vital contributions to both evangelism and the church. If only the story ended there. As I pointed out in the previous issue, however, discernment ministry too often is a mixed blessing.

Consider the following example: a team of Christian evangelists positions itself outside a Mormon temple, holding up signs that denounce and mock Mormonism. How effective do you think this evangelistic approach would be? If you think it would generate more heat than light, you're right; unfortunately, this strategy is being used again and again by a minority of the Christians witnessing in Salt Lake City and elsewhere, and some of these protestors have even derisively taken to displaying Mormon temple garments (underwear), which Mormons consider sacred. Responsible Christian evangelists often have to first overcome the offense these tactics create before they can make any headway with Mormons.

Such inappropriate conduct in discernment/countercult ministry is best explained by simple carnality. If discipleship, accountability, and spiritual maturity are expected before people venture into other avenues of Christian service, it should be all the more so with discernment ministry, which faces exceptional challenges. Apologetics requires the Lord's servant to contend for the truth, but in doing so he or she should not be contentious (2 Tim. 2:4; cf. Eph. 4:15). Apologetics requires the accumulation of knowledge, but this poses a pitfall: knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (1 Cor. 8:1 NIV). The Christian engaged in discernment ministry should never forget this.

Alienating the very people we are trying to reach is not the only problem plaguing discernment ministry. Many ministries, without realizing it, divide Christians who should be united and promote simplistic rather than nuanced thinking. They do so by advocating positions such as the following:

    Covenant theology (disdainfully called replacement theology by its critics) is heresy. (To this example could be added the opposite position, that dispensationalism is heresy.)

    The slightest degree of evangelical acceptance of Roman Catholicism or psychology is not only misguided, but constitutes apostasy.

    Belief in day-age creationism (an old earth) is a capitulation to evolution and an abandonment of the Bible.

    Seeker-sensitive churches are not only at risk of compromising Christian faith but have already betrayed it, simply by being seeker-sensitive churches.

I noted in the previous From the Editor that Christians exercising doctrinal discernment need to distinguish between three degrees or levels of error: (1) errors that overthrow Christian faith (i.e., heresy; the pseudo-Christian cults are in this category), (2) errors that seriously impair but do not destroy it (i.e., aberrant theology), and (3) errors that no doubt have consequences but do not seriously undermine orthodoxy (i.e., errors the likes of which we all unknowingly hold). Even if some of the beliefs bulleted above are in error, the vast majority of people who hold them remain faithful Christians, committed to orthodoxy, and thus such errors belong in the third category.

For example, despite their differences over Israel and other issues, advocates of covenant theology and dispensationalism both know, love, and serve the same Christ and deal with the same vital issues in their sanctification process. Evangelicals who attribute some degree of validity to Roman Catholicism rarely end up praying to Mary or confusing sanctification with justification. Adherents of day-age creationism seldom slide into a belief in evolution; indeed, many of todays most effective opponents of evolutionism believe in an old earth.

Christians need to beware of the either-or fallacy: it may seem that one must either oppose all forms of psychotherapy or one will be corrupted by the many ungodly beliefs that are present in that field, but it may rather be possible to discern and avoid those false elements while learning something from the elements of truthderived from general revelationthat are also present in it. It may seem that any effort to make ones church seeker friendly necessarily means pandering to nonbelievers at the expense of the gospel, but it may rather be possible to remove unnecessary offenses to nonbelievers without removing the necessary offense of the cross. Even if some Christians efforts to sift truth from falsehood in these areas are imperfectly executed, it doesnt necessarily follow that the resulting compromise rises to the second or first levels of error. The wise Christian will learn to know the difference.

There can be no wisdom, of course, where there is no knowledge. Proper discernment of error presupposes adequate understanding of truth. This is why the Christian Research Institute is forever stressing that Christians need to learn the essential doctrines of their faith. To further this end we are launching in this issue a two-part feature article by theologian and apologist Norman L. Geisler. Few writers in the church today are as qualified to identify and analyze the essentials as is Dr. Geisler, and so we encourage you to take advantage of this outstanding educational opportunity.

One would like to think that if Christians understood which doctrines are essential and how to distinguish between the three degrees of error, the defects in discernment ministry would disappear. I noted last issue, however, that the situation is more complex than that, and weve already seen one reason why: spiritual immaturity.

A further problemnot unrelated to the problem of carnalityis that there is a contingent within the larger discernment community whose criteria is not strictly the essentials at all. These are Christians who are committed to particular scenarios of end-time prophetic fulfillment involving how the Antichrist, Babylon the Great (the Great Whore of the book of Revelation), and the final apostasy of the church will emerge and converge. Such Christians tend to believe that Christs return within a matter of years is not only possible but assured, and thus they assume that the final apostasy is already underway.

This groups version of discernment ministry is to look throughout the church for signs of this apostasy and speculate as to how all these disparate elements will merge together to usher in the Antichrist. In this way, true examples of compromise and error (e.g., indiscriminate use of psychology; modern-day apostles and prophets claiming new revelation) take on an added, ominous dimension of evil, and even inherently innocent activities become tainted with possible connections to the Antichrist (remember the rainbow scare of the 1980s?¹). Books, conferences, Web sites, and entire ministries are devoted to identifying which people and trends in the body of Christ are contributing to the Great Apostasy.

This particular approach to discernment ministry often gets ugly. A certain paranoia and pessimism can set in about almost anything new in the church. Christian leaders are monitored carefully for any suspicious words, deeds, or associations, and rare is the leader who has not been accused of apostasy or compromise on one Web site or another. If someone seems to be heading down an expected pathway to Antichrist (e.g., advocating implantable identification technology), then this person is evildont confuse the discerning Christian with the facts.

All this goes to show that when commitment to end-time scenarios rather than commitment to essential truth becomes the basis for discernment, truth itself often becomes a casualty. Newspaper eschatology is sensational, highly speculative (not only assuming one of many possible eschatologies is correct but also assuming a particular scenario for its fulfillment is correct), continually under revision, and unsupported by sound biblical exegesis (as even the majority of dispensational-futurist scholars would acknowledge).

The only proper basis for discernment ministry is apologetics: to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints (Jude 3 NASB). When this contending is done with wisdom, humility, love, and a commitment to the unity of faithful Christians (Eph. 4:23), discernment ministry can fulfill its potential and truly become a thoroughgoing blessing to the church.

— Elliot Miller

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NOTES

1.        Author Constance Cumbey (Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow [Huntington House, 1983]) cast suspicion on Christians who put rainbow bumper stickers on their cars, because these stickers supposedly signaled involvement in a New Age conspiracy to usher in the Antichrist within a matter of months.