Musing 68
In my college and early career days, I was an avid participant in online debate. In part because it was fun since it was something I could mostly do on my own time on my lunch break at work, in between classes, or whenever, and because it was a way to sharpen my faith.
Over that time, I saw a lot of fads and interacted with a number of cults that targeted Christians (a few which were obscure, and some of the more well known ones). To be clear, I was never a big name or anything. Just a random guy arguing on the internet.
But combined with being an admin for SGS for most of the 2010s, and I gathered a LOT of experience with seeing various red flags for bad preaching, heresy, etc.
Some of the most frequent ones I saw in bad preaching or talks given by cultists (note - I refuse to call the twisting of God’s Word preaching, though in a general technical sense, cults often do preach) were :
1) speed prooftexting, while ignoring the arguments Scripture was making.
One of Satan’s most effective weapons in our day with our short attention spans is that of the drive by prooftexting. Because we can only focus for 30 seconds, we become easily convinced that something is “biblical” if you can stuff as many Bible quotations or references as possible in a short time frame. And because we are keyed into listening for Scripture, our guard becomes lowered because “well, it’s Scripture, can’t go wrong there!”
And yet, it is in that moment when we are most vulnerable to subtly imbibing false doctrine. Because we hear 10 Bible citations in an argument all in a row, especially from someone we trust, we easily accept whatever false teaching may be given because the fast moving references leave us giving a shallow “yeah, that sounds right” before we have to move on so we can keep up with what’s being said.
But because of this, there’s a counterbalance - cults of all sorts often cannot let themselves stay in a given text and be organized in their talks. And that’s for a simple reason - they can’t. Either by design of their training, or through active suppression of the truth, they have to jump around in order to obfuscate the uncomfortable (for them) reality - Scripture contradicts them. Sometimes that has obvious consequences - the Ebionites (and many modern Hebrew Roots folks, though not all of them) ejected Paul from the canon. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and other cults add new revelation to be co-equal in authority or even fully supercede the Scriptures so that any clear contradictions can be smoothed out or explained away.
At least at the time I was an avid debater, it was not uncommon to see many people be shaken in their first exposure to the talks given by cults. They were expecting there to be little or no Scripture, and yet because of the emotional blitz of prooftexts with assumed meanings and fast pace of movement, they find that sometimes cults make more references to Scripture in their talks than we hear in the sermons of faithful preachers. And so it’s not until they realize “oh, that Scriptural application makes no sense”, and “wait, you didn’t actually tell me what this passage of Scripture meant” that newbies would start to re-ground themselves.
2) numerous appeals for emotional responses.
Especially towards the end of the debating era of my life, I noticed an increasing frequency of what used to be talks that were technical were now much more “fluffy” - that is, they don’t go in depth but instead use emotional appeals like “isn’t that grand”, or “how amazing!” or some other such appeal.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with calling out the emotions to engage them. Where it becomes a problem is that when you remove the emotional appeals, you lose 30%-50% (or more!) of the talk.
Of course, if you’re preaching on how to have biblically grounded emotions or some similar topic, this percentage may be appropriate. But the reason this becomes a problem is that the emotional manipulation becomes a tool to shut down thinking about what’s being said.
A biblical pastor will engage the emotions not to shut down analysis, but to expose where we are letting our emotions be sinful, to bring them into submission to Christ, and to be a means by which our hearts respond in true worship. And in all of those areas, the intellect should be engaged as well.
3) just enough true criticism to validate that “oh, I’m actually one of the good guys”
Few things unite people more quickly than a common enemy. And to be clear, sometimes good preaching requires the calling out of people saying or doing bad things.
Similar to point 2, the issue here is in how the criticism is handled. If the common enemy is pointed to and it is said “look, we need to be careful because this person has fallen, and so can we apart from God’s grace. and here is how this person has fallen into error/heresy”, it is likely a good usage.
But when the framing is more akin to the Pharisee’s criticism of the repentant tax collector (no matter how it’s dressed), there’s a problem. At the absolute best, it is an unintentional error the pastor/speaker will be ashamed of. At worst, it’s just a coded way for the cultist to feel pride in themselves. After all, “those bad people don’t have the blessings of knowledge that we have. So they should be pitied. We have the fullness of God’s blessing because of XYZ.”
The other problem with the usage of criticism is that cults especially will choose a target they know their audience will automatically disagree with, say “this person bad, we’re not like them” so as to again distract the listener and get them to implicitly make the thought “that bad person is X, I am not X, therefore what the leader said is right”, and so shut down critical analysis of the leaders own points.
While there were other tactics that I noted, I think these 3 are sufficient for today.
I’ll close with a couple practical tips on identifying when you have someone who is preaching badly or like a cultist.
1) Read what was taught. Don’t listen to it.
For a lot of reasons we tend to be more lenient on people’s incoherence when we listen to them speak versus when we read something. Things we miss because a speaker has a motor mouth that is > 150 words per minute become blatantly obvious when we stop and read what was said.
many things that feel profound when we listen t oir became ash in the mouth because of their inanity when read.
2) don’t be moved by the number of Scripture citations. be moved by walking through the text and letting a given author’s argument be the driving point home.
Especially in the face of people who just want to flood you with misused quotations to drown you out, part of being a good witness is to simple say “oh, hey, I understand you think all those citations are relevant, but can you show me how the NT is using them for a coherent point?”
One of the hard parts is that the sharper of our spiritual enemies sometimes have thought through the errors of the cults and made tried to fit it together with Scripture. But the cults always have to distance themselves from the parts of Scripture that make their heresies obvious. I mentioned the Ebionites earlier, who ejected Paul from Scripture because Paul’s writings condemned them and they knew it. But there’s still modern Judaizers, who seeing the clear language of scripture just choose another thing to add to the gospel and hope they won’t get called out for what they are.
The other hard part is that we have ever shortening attention spans, and so the blitz of a dozen scripture citations, no matter how irrelevant (or even contradictory) to a given point, is often more effective than walking through a single text from beginning to end for many people.
Just remember that is our job to be faithful in our handling of the Word and trust that the sheep will hear the Shepherd’s voice. For the lost sheep, the Shepherd will go get them if they are caught in a cult or are in a church that has fallen away. Our only role is to give a defense for the hope that is in us and in a way that honors Christ, trusting that He will lose none of what the Father has given Him.
3) be mindful of what rhetorical techniques are in play.
A basic logic class or book on informal fallacies is often enough to spot many emotional manipulation techniques that leaders of all sorts use. While the drawback is that once you’re intimately familiar with the logical fallacies and rhetorical techniques, you can’t help but hear them all the time, which can negatively impact your enjoyment with many things (either because you get distracted identifying the fallacies, or the knowledge of them being used keeps you from enjoying the talk at all).
4) be grounded in Scripture and be in depth in your understanding.
The final point should be the most obvious, because it’s the most important. It just often happens that we do not actually study in depth. We become content with a surface level knowledge of things and so when we encounter novel (to us) viewpoints, we can become easily shaken.
Of course, no one can know everything. But strive to be at a place where you can recognize the true gospel at a glance, be offput when false teaching is even mentioned, and unphased when you realize that you don’t know something, but your trust is in God, not your own understanding.