The Truth War (13 page)

So apostasy is a fact of all history, and there is never any kind of armistice in the Truth War. Our generation is certainly no exception to that rule. Some of the greatest threats to truth today come from within the visible church. Apostates are there in vast abundance—teaching lies, popularizing gross falsehoods, reinventing essential doctrines, and even redefining truth itself. They seem to be everywhere in the evangelical culture today, making merchandise of the gospel.

But false teachers aren't necessarily even that obvious. They don't wear badges identifying themselves as apostates. They usually try hard not to stand out as enemies of truth. They pretend devotion to Christ and demand tolerance from Christ's followers. They are often extremely likable, persuasive, and articulate people. According to Jude, that is what makes apostasy such an urgent matter of concern for the church. It produces people who can infiltrate the church by “[creeping] in
unnoticed
” (Jude 4, emphasis added).

Paradoxically, people sometimes imagine today that there are no such things as false teachers and apostates, since Christianity has become so broad and all-embracing. There is no need to engage in a battle for the truth—since truth itself is infinitely pliable and thus capable of making room for everyone's views. Some have even suggested that truth is broad enough to accommodate all well-intentioned ideas from non-Christian religions. The problem of apostasy, then, is especially acute in the radically tolerant climate of today's postmodern drift.

Many Christians today are weary of the long war over truth. They are uneasy about whether doctrinal disagreements and divisions are a blight on the spiritual unity of the church and therefore a poor testimony to the world. These and similar questions are constantly heard nowadays: “Isn't it time to set aside our differences and just love one another?” “Rather than battling people with whom we disagree over various points of doctrine, why not stage a cordial dialogue with them and listen to their ideas?” “Can't we have a friendly conversation rather than a bitter clash?” “Shouldn't we be congenial rather than contentious?” “Does the current generation really need to perpetuate the fight over beliefs and ideologies? Or can we at last declare peace and set aside all the debates over doctrine?”

FALSE TEACHERS AREN'T
NECESSARILY EVEN
THAT OBVIOUS.
THEY DON'T WEAR
BADGES IDENTIFYING
THEMSELVES AS
APOSTATES. THEY
USUALLY TRY HARD
NOT TO STAND OUT AS
ENEMIES OF TRUTH.
THEY PRETEND DEVOTION
TO CHRIST AND
DEMAND TOLERANCE FROM
CHRIST'S FOLLOWERS.

Of course, there is a legitimate concern in the tone of such questions. Scripture commands us: “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18). “Pursue peace with all people” (Hebrews 12:14). “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23). Taken together, these passages make it clear that what Scripture demands of us is the polar opposite of a cantankerous attitude. No one who exhibits the fruit of the Spirit can possibly take delight in conflict. So it should be plain that the call to contend for the faith is not a license for pugnacious spirits to promote strife deliberately over insignificant matters. Even when conflict proves unavoidable, we are not to adopt a mean spirit.

But conflict is not always avoidable. That is Jude's whole point in writing his epistle. To remain faithful to the truth, sometimes it is even necessary to wage “civil war” within the church—especially when enemies of truth posing as brethren and believers are smuggling dangerous heresy in by stealth.

WHEN IT'S TIME TO GO TO WAR

Jude's words stress the pressing urgency and the absolute necessity of the Truth War: “I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith” (v. 3). The expression “contend earnestly” is translated from a strong Greek verb
epagonizomai
, literally meaning “agonize against.” The word describes an intensive, arduous, drawn-out fight. There is nothing passive, peaceful, or easy about it. Jude “exhorted” them—meaning he urged and commanded them—to wage a mighty battle on behalf of the true faith.

Jude himself says he felt the necessity to write this command. He employs a verb that speaks of pressure. In other words, he sensed a strong, God-given compulsion to write these things. He was not writing them because he took some kind of perverse glee in being militant. He was not responding to a momentary whimsy or personal anger. This was critical, and since the writers of Scripture never wrote by human self-will, but only as they were moved by the Spirit of God (2 Peter 1:21), the extreme urgency of Jude reflects the sovereign influence of the Holy Spirit, and therefore also the mind of Christ.

We thus have an urgent mandate from God Himself to do our part in the Truth War. The Holy Spirit, through the pen of Jude, is urging Christians to exercise caution, discernment, courage, and the will to contend earnestly for the truth.

Notice what we are supposed to be fighting for. It is not anything petty, personal, mundane, or ego related. This warfare has a very narrow objective. What we are called to defend is no less than “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

Jude is speaking of apostolic doctrine (Acts 2:42)—objective Christian truth—
the
faith, as delivered from Jesus through the agency of the Holy Spirit by the apostles to the church. As he says in verse 17: “Remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Notice: no one discovered or invented the Christian faith. It was delivered to us. It was not as if someone mystically ascended into the transcendental realm and drew down an understanding of the truth. We don't need an enlightened guru to open the mysteries of the faith for us (cf. 1 John 2:27). The truth was entrusted by God to the whole church—intact and “once for all.” It came by revelation, through the teaching of the apostles as preserved for us in Scripture. Jude speaks of “the faith” as a complete body of truth already delivered—so there is no need to seek additional revelation or to embellish the substance of “the faith” in any way. Our task is simply to interpret, understand, publish, and defend the truth God has once and for all delivered to the church.

That is what the Truth War is ultimately all about. It is not mere wrangling between competing earthly ideologies. It is not simply a campaign to refine someone's religious creed or win a denominational spitting contest. It is not a battle of wits over arcane theological fine points. It is not an argument for sport. It is not like a school debate, staged to see who is more skilled or more clever in the art of argumentation. It is not merely academic in any sense. And it is certainly not a game. It is a very serious struggle to safeguard the heart and soul of truth itself and to unleash that truth against the powers of darkness—in hopes of rescuing the eternal souls of men and women who have been unwittingly ensnared by the trap of devilish deception.

WE MUST NOT TAKE OUR
CUES FROM PEOPLE WHO
ARE PERFECTLY HAPPY TO
COMPROMISE THE TRUTH
WHEREVER POSSIBLE “FOR
HARMONY'S SAKE.” FRIENDLY
DIALOGUE MAY SOUND
AFFABLE AND PLEASANT. BUT
NEITHER CHRIST NOR THE
APOSTLES EVER CONFRONTED
SERIOUS, SOUL-DESTROYING
ERROR BY BUILDING
COLLEGIAL RELATIONSHIPS
WITH FALSE TEACHERS.

This is a battle we cannot wage effectively if we always try to come across to the world as merely nice, nonchalant, docile, agreeable, and fun-loving people. We must not take our cues from people who are perfectly happy to compromise the truth wherever possible “for harmony's sake.” Friendly dialogue may sound affable and pleasant. But neither Christ nor the apostles ever confronted serious, soul-destroying error by building collegial relationships with false teachers. In fact, we are expressly forbidden to do that (Romans 16:17; 2 Corinthians 6:14–15; 2 Thessalonians 3:6; 2 Timothy 3:5; 2 John 10–11). Scripture is clear about how we are to respond when the very foundations of the Christian faith are under attack, and Jude states it succinctly: it is our bounden duty to contend earnestly for the faith.

Notice carefully: Jude is not suggesting (nor am I) that Christians should contend among themselves over every petty disagreement or divide into factions over every personality conflict. In fact, that is the very thing the apostle Paul condemned in 1 Corinthians 3:3–7. Divisiveness and sectarianism are terrible sins that hurt the church when major divisions are manufactured out of petty differences over trivial, doubtful, indifferent, or less-than-vital matters (Romans 14:1).

Now, you might think that the difference between a picayune disagreement and a serious threat to some core truth of Christianity would always be obvious and clear-cut. Usually, it is. Most of the time, it is easy enough to see the distinction between a peripheral issue and a matter of urgent and fundamental importance. But not always. And here is where mature wisdom and careful discernment become absolutely crucial for every Christian: sometimes serious threats to our faith come in subtle disguise so that they are barely noticeable. And false teachers like to surround their deadly error with some truth. Therein lies the seduction. We must never assume that things like the teacher's reputation, the warmth of his personality, or majority opinion about him are perfectly safe barometers of whether his teaching is really dangerous or not. We also shouldn't imagine that common sense, intuition, or first impressions are reliable ways of determining whether this or that error poses a serious threat or not. Scripture, and Scripture alone, is the only safe guide in this area.

As we are about to see, that is one of the key lessons church history has to teach us.

4

CREEPING APOSTASY: HOW FALSE TEACHERS SNEAK IN

For certain men have crept in.

—Jude 4

Y
ou can't necessarily tell a false teacher by the way he or she appears. Every false religious leader is, after all, “religious” by definition. Looking saintly is practically part of the job description. Jesus referred to purveyors of false religion as wolves in sheep's clothing (Matthew 7:15), and “whitewashed tombs . . . beautiful outwardly, but . . . full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27). In other words, their religion is an effort at clever camouflage.

Like the Pharisees whom Jesus targeted with those words, most false teachers are experts at feigned piety. Their masquerade can be quite convincing. They maintain a carefully polished veneer of charm and innocence—and at least the appearance of some kind of “spirituality.” They usually come with permanent smiles, gentle words, likable personalities, and vocabularies full of biblical and spiritual words.

There are notable exceptions to this rule, of course. Grigory Rasputin, for example, was a licentious Russian Orthodox mystic, religious healer, and self-styled “holy man” whose influence corrupted the court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and helped bring about the downfall of the Romanov Dynasty in the early twentieth century. Rasputin looked and acted the way we might expect an overtly evil man to be. He rarely bathed, by all accounts he smelled bad, he was loud and rude, and his lascivious appetites were legendary. Yet he still managed to accumulate a large following of mostly female admirers, many of them coming from the highest ranks of regal St. Petersburg's society.

And who could forget Gene Scott, the eccentric televangelist from Southern California whose trademarks included a fat cigar, the lavish use of profanity and off-color remarks (even in his televised teaching), an extremely autocratic style, and a perpetually surly attitude, which he wore on his sleeve? His lifestyle was as flagrantly self-indulgent as his preaching style was crass. Donors to Scott's “church” signed pledges granting him sole authority to use their contributions any way he pleased. He was the polar opposite of what most people imagine a spiritual leader should be. He nonetheless attracted a significant following and amassed millions in personal assets.

If someone so plainly debauched and unspiritual can gain a large following of clueless disciples, imagine the dangers false teachers pose when they try to seem genuinely devout. Just picture what an enemy of the truth could do if he pretended to be a sincere believer and gained a reputation in the church as a respectable teacher.

As a matter of fact, most false teachers are not so conspicuously unspiritual as Rasputin or Gene Scott. They usually do a passable job of imitating the fruit of the Spirit. They disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness (2 Corinthians 11:14–15). They seem quite sincere. They look and sound and seem harmless enough. They know how to use spiritual-sounding language. They can even quote Scripture with some degree of skill. They know the truth well enough to use it for their own ends—sometimes taking cover behind one truth while they attack another. They know exactly how to gain trust and acceptance from the people of God.