Tag Archives: brian mclaren

False teachers

Brian McLaren = false teacher

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Levi has a thorough take-down of Brian McLaren’s “A Generous Orthodoxy.”  McLaren is even worse than I thought — and I already thought he was pretty bad.  I read that he just performed the ceremony for his son’s same-sex union.  Ugh.  One more reason to consider him a fraud.  I go between feeling sorry for his deceived followers and realizing that, a la Romans 1, God has just given them over to their sinful desires.  Here’s an observation that applies to McLaren and countless other false teachers:

 McLaren’s theology contradicts itself when he consistently claims that we should follow Jesus’ example but also denies the validity of the witness accounts of Jesus’ life and teaching. How do we follow Bob’s example when everything we know about Bob is written by men whose writings are decidedly fictional?

McLaren and the like think it is wrong to be sure of something, even though they are sure of what they claim about the Bible and they are sure that it is wrong to be sure.  Consistency isn’t their strong suit.

Bible, Christian worldview, Politics, Sexuality

Tony Campolo & homosexuality

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I appreciated this analysis about Adventures in Missing the Truth: Campolo and Homosexuality*.  Many years ago, our Sunday School class read a book by Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren (noted “emergent” type false teacher) called Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel.  Someone picked it as a book that, in theory, would have conservative and Liberal views on various hot topics.  The problem was that we didn’t realize Campolo wasn’t really conservative.  So the book ended up being a “debate” between a theological Liberal/moderate and a drunk-naked-running-down-the-streets theological Liberal, which meant it wasn’t a debate at all.  McLaren was presented as a Christian, even though his core views mock the cross.

Sadly, many in the class liked their views even though, as outlined in the link, the book was a train wreck of unsupported claims, bad logic worse theology.  Not one person asked, “So what does the Bible have to say about this?”

Run, don’t walk, from teachers like Campolo and McLaren.  Campolo is actually more dangerous because he poses as being orthodox.  He also is involved with the “red-letter Christian” movement that ignores a rather obvious point: Jesus is God, and He authored all of scripture.

* It is a 3-part series.  The link has them out of order, but you’ll be able to follow it.

Bible, False teachers, Politics

From the tolerant, loving religious Left: “Screw St. Paul, screw him!”

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Via Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD) – Chasing the Religious Left’s “Wild Goose”.

A recent festival convened by Religious and Evangelical Left leaders served as a mixing pot of liberal political advocacy and emergent church theology. Over the weekend of June 25, over 1,000 self-identified “progressive” Christians flocked to the Wild Goose Festival situated in the rolling hills of North Carolina. This mix of old time hippies and young idealists enjoyed an eclectic blend of art, music, talks, and general dissatisfaction directed at traditional evangelicals.

“Paul, in the Bible, tells my wife to be silent in church, screw St. Paul, screw him!” shouted a visibly angry Frankie Schaeffer during one session of the festival. Schaeffer, son of deceased author and evangelical leader Francis Schaeffer, lamented his family’s role in building the “religious right”, and the gathered audience of disaffected former evangelicals and other religious left groups affirmed his message. Schaeffer’s presentation seemed intentionally designed to offend traditionalists, leading to gleeful claps of approval from the audience.

They clapped for him?  Let’s be clear: The Bible is the inspired word of God, with the original writings turning out exactly as God and the writers wanted them to be.  Therefore, when Schaeffer says, “Paul, in the Bible, tells my wife to be silent in church, screw St. Paul, screw him!, he is really saying, “Screw God, screw him!”  Note to Frankie, the organizers, the other speakers and the audience members who agreed with Schaeffer: Christianity may not be your forte’.

While festival organizers proclaimed a “big tent” of inclusion, speakers repeatedly criticized a wide field of supposed adversaries ranging from political conservatives, evangelical Christian leaders, the United States government and even contemporary praise band leaders. Especially singled out for disdain were Southern Baptists, who were openly ridiculed by almost all of the major speakers.

Ah, you can really feel the love and tolerance!  Makes me want to be a Southern Baptist.

. . . Hoping to attract young evangelicals drawn to biblical teachings to care for the widow, the orphan, and the broken, festival speakers repackaged socialism and called it Regenerate Economies, while daydreaming about ending the nation-state through global environmental governance.

Yep, just your usual socialist / communist politics disguised as religion.  We get the parts about caring for widows and orphans, and do it with our own money.  We also get the parts about not shedding innocent blood, what marriage really is, etc.

Happy for the government to push the Church away from her responsibility to the poor, Sojourners chief Jim Wallis was on hand to offered a healthy dose of fear-mongering.  As I sat in the searing heat of the morning sun, I listened to his lecture, entitled “The Sky is Falling on the Poor.”  Wallis showed that he is well versed in the intricacies of the evil Republican budget but ignorant as to how the debt was created in the first place. Wallis boldly stated to the applause of the audience that “the debt arrived through two wars and tax breaks for the rich.” In classic Wallis style, class warfare is good, but actual warfare, even against terror, is always of the devil.

That’s what you get from false teachers include people like Jim “the Gospel is all about wealth redistribution” Wallis.

Emergent Church purveyor Brian McLaren picked up where Wallis left off. Standing in the middle of a geodesic dome made of branches and twine, he lamented the lack of global environmental regulation and argued that “we must talk about the joy in paying taxes.”

Go ahead, champ!  Pay all the extra taxes you like.  Just don’t covetously ask Caesar to raise them on others and call it giving on your part.

He raged about the “myth” that the church could take over the care of the poor from the government, calling those who believe such so “stupid and idiots…and that’s being nice.” Over 40 years of failures in the federal government’s “War on Poverty” should convince religious statists least to question whether government is always the solution. But few such doubts arose at The Wild Goose.

Yep, just like Jesus taught: Ask Caesar to solve all your problems.

As usual, while usually misinterpreting the verses on giving (they seem to ignore the part about giving “what you have decided in your own heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion”), they ignore calls to sexual purity.  And these “social justice” types are uniformly pro-legalized abortion, the ultimate injustice.

. . . Using a combination of emotionalism and revisionist hermeneutics Peggy Campolo concluded unscientifically “gay people don’t have a choice.”

That’s a fact-free statement on her part.  She is ignorant of ministries like Gay Christian Movement Watch that have helped countless people.

Going to criticize those “hateful arguments that people have change, they actually haven’t. Those people are confused about their sexuality and are probably bisexual.” Not to be outdone by his wife, Tony Campolo stated plainly that since the Church has “become welcoming and accepting” of divorced people and not restrictive to ordination, eventually homosexuality will be accepted as well. Ironically, Peggy and Tony were rebuked by a young gay activist for not affirming those who chose to be LBGTQ.

Run, don’t walk, from the religious Left.

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Methodist pastor fired for teaching false doctrines. Yea!

“The people at my church are good, decent people,” he told FoxNews.com. “They’re simply feeling a little threatened by a pastor who is asking questions that they don’t want to ask right now. I hope some seeds are planted and that God will bring some good about it.”

Here’s another angle, sport: These good, decent people aren’t stupid.  They aren’t threatened by your lack of belief in God, they just want a pastor who actually worships the one true God who inspired the original texts of the Bible.  God already did bring some good about it: He got rid of a false teacher.

I pray that many other churches will follow suit.  It would be better to be led by some authentic lay people than a false teacher with a seminary degree.

“We do these somersaults to justify the monster god we believe in,” he said. “But confronting my own sinfulness, that’s when things started to topple for me. Am I really going to be saved just because I believe something, when all these good people in the world aren’t?”

Gee, the “pastor” called the God of a the Bible a monster.  How could someone like that possibly offend the authentic Christians paying his salary?  And his assessment that all these other people are “good” (on God’s terms) is further proof of his bad theology.

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Obama’s favorite CEO gets GE out from paying any U.S taxes – hope and change, baby!

A review of company filings and Congressional records shows that one of the most striking advantages of General Electric is its ability to lobby for, win and take advantage of tax breaks.

Over the last decade, G.E. has spent tens of millions of dollars to push for changes in tax law, from more generous depreciation schedules on jet engines to “green energy” credits for its wind turbines. But the most lucrative of these measures allows G.E. to operate a vast leasing and lending business abroad with profits that face little foreign taxes and no American taxes as long as the money remains overseas.

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Apple Pulls Ex-’Gay’ iPhone App after Lobbying Campaign by Hateful Homosexual Activists – Yet they leave the Grindr gay hook-up app.  Considering that the rate of syphilis and HIV for gays is more than forty times the rest of us, it seems like the truly hateful thing would be giving people tools to indulge their fix of anonymous sex.

They are “grinding,” the latest verb in the gay lexicon, which refers to the new gay dating app for the iPhone called Grindr. A revolutionary way to meet gay men, Grindr has eliminated the need for “gay-dar”; it uses GPS technology to download hundreds of pictures of available men within walking distance.

Alex and Sean can click on a man’s picture to start a text conversation, send pictures and, if they so desire, make arrangements for a rendezvous. There’s a number on each man’s photo, indicating how many feet away they are at that instant.

Keep Grindr in mind when the mainstream media is telling you how most gays just want to have “traditional” marriages.

Apples’s rejection of Christian apps like the Manhattan Declaration and the Ex-Gay app is just another example of how thin-skinned the LGBTQ lobby is.  Deep down they know they are wrong, so they have to fight to silence every last criticism of their worldview.  But it still won’t work.

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Another thorough review of Rob Bell’s false teachings on Hell in his book “Love Wins” – An Open Letter to Rob Bell – after noting the hypocrisy of Bell’s defenders, he explains how Bell cheats in saying the New Testament “only” mentions Hell 14 times.  Bell was being a literalist in only including passages where the word is mentioned while ignoring it when it was clearly described.

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He wants a Weiner waiver (to Obamacare) – Could someone be more hypocritical than to take responsibility for the Obamacare debacle and then ask for a waiver to it?

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An open letter to Brian McLaren (a Rob Bell-type false teacher)

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Arizona Republicans ban race-selection and sex-selection abortions – Yea!  Elections count, people.  Abortions kill innocent but “unwanted” human beings and are a moral evil.  We need a three-pronged approach on the pro-life issue:

  1. Support Pregnancy Resource Centers – volunteer at, pray for or donate to them to help save lives today and for eternity.  They help women and families in their time of need, all for free.
  2. Educate people in the art of pro-life reasoning.
  3. Elect pro-life politicians who will reduce abortions, protect women and children (i.e., parental notification laws) and ultimately make them illegal.

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Great – and accurate – send up of Liberal hypocrisy on Libya.  Hat tip: Ironic Surrealism

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At the risk of being an Egypt buzzkill, What do Egyptians really want? Apparently all Sharia law, all the time . . .

• 49% of Egyptians say Islam plays only a “small role” in public affairs under President Hosni Mubarak, while 95% prefer the religion play a “large role in politics.”

• 84% favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim faith.

• 82% support stoning adulterers.

• 77% think thieves should have their hands cut off.

• 54% support a law segregating women from men in the workplace.

• 54% believe suicide bombings that kill civilians can be justified.

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Afghan Red Cross worker set to be hanged after converting to Christianity — this is tragic.  The reason you don’t hear about this on the media is that he isn’t in the right minority group.

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The laws of unintended consequences kicks in regarding the passenger “Bill of Rights” for airline delays.  As one should have suspected, airlines are changing behavior to avoid fines – only the behavior change is canceling flights early, and often unnecessarily so.  Yes, there was a problem and no, this wasn’t the right solution.

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France and Germany agree: Multiculturalism is a failure.  When will the U.S. admit it?

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I think profit-sharing programs can be effective motivators, but if Obama Says Corporate Profits “Have To Be Shared By American Workers” — What About Losses?

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Reason # 1,978 that the free market works better than the government: Once again government subsidized projects still fail to reduce dependency on oil and free market solutions work well.

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Catch 22: The evolutionary explanation of religion

No matter where you go in the world you are confronted with the fact that mankind is a deeply religious creature.

. . .

This is a particularly difficult problem for materialists like Mr. Dawkins to deal with since the historical evidence speaks strongly against the notion that everyone is borne as an atheist, or blank slate per John Locke.

To answer this, many evolutionists like to suppose that notions of religion arose out of the overriding need for survival.

However this presents a problem for the evolutionist. If it is true that religion is merely a survival mechanism, then it demonstrates the fact that the primary goal is not the production of true beliefs. If it is false, that religion is merely a survival mechanism, then we cannot dismiss it as merely a delusion.

If the primary goal of evolution isn’t the production of true beliefs then that undermines their belief that they can discern truth.

I also like to remind these folks that if their worldview is true then their beloved Darwinian evolution is 100.000% responsible for my conversion from atheism to Christianity and my trust in the “false” evidence that Jesus really lived, died and rose again.  So why are they so upset if their trusted mechanism produced my views?

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From Glenn’s roundup, LifeWay Bookstores aren’t warning about emergent books anymore.  It was bad enough that they even sold these non-Christian books.

According to a Christianity Today article, LifeWay Christian Stores (resource department for Southern Baptist Convention) has decided to end their “Read with Discernment” labels program that began in 2007.1 Books that LifeWay was carrying at that time by emerging church authors such as Rob Bell and Brian McLaren were suppose to receive labels telling potential readers that they should used discernment when reading the books as the books “may have espoused thoughts, ideas, or concepts that could be considered inconsistent with historical evangelical theology.” But, says Christianity Today, LifeWay has decided to end the warning program. Chris Rodgers, LifeWay’s director of product standards and customer relations, said: “We have been thinking about doing away with them for some time . . . They have kind of become irrelevant.”

They are only irrelevant if you aren’t interested in the truth.

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The Arguments Gay Marriage Advocates Use – a good summary of the laundry list of fallacies used to advance their cause

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You’d think that mathematics would be free from the idiocy of postmodernism, but here we are.

And in New Mexico a recent graduate of high school tells of how a mathematics teacher labelled him a “bigot” for thinking it was important to get the right answer. As long as students worked together in a group and achieved consensus, the teacher insisted, the outcome was acceptable.

Wow.  We have a technical term for math teachers like that: Idiots.

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Abortion group’s music video targets kids, advises anal sex to avoid pregnancy – I am not making this up.  I wish I was.  The group in question is referred to as an “abortion charity,” which is my submission for the oxymoron of the year award.

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Coming soon to a country near you: Canadian Court: Marriage officials must marry homosexuals.  Religious freedom?  What’s that?

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False teachers

“Saving Jesus” project = Who’s who of false teachers

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False teacher Chuck “Jesus is not the only way” Currie is boo-hooing because listener complaints resulted in some progressive “Christian” ads being pulled.

Living the Questions is a respected resource of video curriculum for progressive Christian communities around the world. The Portland radio spots advertised a new series called “Saving Jesus” with the seemingly balanced introduction:

“Ever feel like Jesus has been kidnapped and taken hostage by the Christian Right? Or maybe even worse, simply cast aside as irrelevant by those on the secular left?”

via Why Are Portland Radio Stations Banning Progressive Christian Advertising?.

If you can watch the video at his link (the FDA has approved it as a substitute for Syrup of Ipecac) you’ll find fakes like Brian McLaren, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg and others making up a god then pretending to worship it.

See the comments section where Chuck says that if you don’t vote for oxymoronic “same-sex marriage” — which, of course, is nowhere to be found in the Bible — then you have kidnapped Jesus and held him hostage.  What a self-parody.

It is almost comical watching people dismiss the virgin birth because that somehow takes Mary’s power away.  That’s the kind of thinking you get when they worship radical feminism instead of seeking the real God on his terms.

In fact, that’s the core problem with all these false teachers and seriously confused people: They refuse to seek God on his terms and instead they make up their own god.  They are either members of the “Jesus Seminar” or ideological siblings who think they get to literally vote on which verses of the Bible belong there.  But just because they find a few verses they agree with doesn’t make them Christians any more than finding a few verses they like in the Quran makes them Muslims.

I respect the religious freedom of these fake Christians to make and publish all the ads they like, and I respect the freedom of the radio stations to pull them if their customers are offended by such nonsense.

I just wish that Chuck Currie et al weren’t so dishonest and would just make up a new name for their religion.  They are the ones who “stole” the name of Jesus.  The real Christians accept the Jesus of the Bible whether we like all the verses or not.

Jesus doesn’t need to be saved, we do.  Jesus doesn’t need to be saved, He does save.  And these fakes will never tell you that.

False teachers, Politics

God’s politics?

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Jim Wallace of Sojourners  is a theological liberal who pretends to play to the middle.  He and his fellow writers on his God’s Politics blog like to say that God is not a Republican or a Democrat.  Fair enough, right?  But once people’s heads start nodding they segue into what they view as God’s positions on various issues — which are in remarkable alignment with far left politics.  Center?  What center?

The passive-aggressiveness is really annoying.  Time after time they pretend to be speaking to the middle ground while they are really just setting up digs about conservatives and calling us racists.

As expected, they consider it charity on their part to ask the government to take money by force from neighbor A to give to neighbor B.  It is their new-and-improved version of the Good Samaritan parable, only in their version they become the heroes on the sideline.  They have Caesar force the Samaritan to help with his time and money, which makes it impossible for him to truly give and be “good.”  Meanwhile, they congratulate themselves on their goodness and release some endorphins.  And they pretend to be kinda-sorta against abortion but do nothing about it.

I’ve enjoyed commenting on some of their posts because they actually permit dissenting views and they don’t delete your comments and then lie about their content like some false teachers.

This health care post was interesting.  I pointed out to several commenters that they should be supporting the Stupak Amendment if they were really more interested in helping others get health care rather than increasing taxpayer-funded abortions.  One woman kept insisting that the amendment was unnecessary and a gimmick.  I just kept reminding her that if she really wanted the health care bill passed it seems bizarre to say that an allegedly superfluous amendment would make a 2,000 page bill too large to support.   They are willing to gamble the whole health care bill just to try for taxpayer-funded abortions.  And they claim to be Christians.

I also appreciate the opportunity to remind her that the people she was accusing of being deceptive and gimmicky were the pro-life Democrats, not the eeeevil Republicans.

If you have some time be sure to visit and keep them in line with some serious thinking.

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If Obama fails, it isn’t his fault— the excuse making has begun in earnest.

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Evangelical Christians now thanking Allah— Just more evidence that Emergent “Christians” like Brian McLaren are just flavor of the day false teachers.

On McLaren’s personal blog, he recently announced his intentions: ‘We, as Christians, humbly seek to join Muslims in this observance of Ramadan as a God-honoring expression of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness.'”

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Chastity matters — a lot.

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Sex change vs. sexual orientation change — why do worldly psychologists endorse one but not the other? 

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Obama & Co. want the (un)Fairness Doctrine reinstated to silence their opposition.  How Orwellian.