Paul's Passing Thoughts

The Four Models of Discipleship Introduction  How can Christians change if we don’t even know whether we are changeable are not? On the one hand we are supposed to be evangelizing the world, but on…

Source: Romans 12ff. Through the Eyes of a Disciple: The Four Models of Discipleship

In addition to the good points made by Andy Young here on Bible reading, I would like to chime in as well. There is an epidemic of non-Bible-reading among professing Christians that is longstanding and the reason is simple: the church caste system predicated on truth as authority. Find truth on your own in the Bible if you will, but it is only legitimate if confirmed by elitist scholars. Protestant scholars say it all the time: the church has the final say on what is true or not true. “Authority” has been “vested in the elders of the local church.” So, why not just get it straight from the horse’s mouth? Whether Protestant or Catholic you don’t need your Bible; Protestantism merely skins the cat in a different way.

How does one define a biblical “disciple.” The word simply means, “learner.” Wait for it; this is the crux of the issue…does one learn directly from God, or mediators? While the Protestant philosopher kings themselves bemoan Bible illiteracy in our day remember this—this is the end result of hundreds of years of orthodoxy and God’s people being drowned in oceans of Protestant ink coming from the pens of church scholars. Like socialism, people keep doing it even though the results speak for themselves. And as the saying goes that’s the very definition of “insanity.” As Ronald Reagan once asked, “After four years are you better off?” Four years? The Reformers have had over 500!

Everybody agrees: professing Christians are biblically illiterate. Why? Because Christ’s assembly is a family body NOT an authoritative institution. The body works like all bodies: it’s a collective effort with ONE head. Elders are “overseers” who protect the body through the gift of discernment not multiple heads. Elders attend to prayer and the ministry of the word as watchmen on the wall—not the usurpers of Christ’s headship over the body.

Body wisdom, growth, God’s glory, and body joy will come only ONE way: a collective effort by all members in learning directly from the head! This is also known as the priesthood of believers. EVERY learner is to learn directly from the head and edify the rest of the body. That’s what a true disciple does. In group settings where God’s people come together in order to edify each other, elders lead that effort because they are gifted with discernment but are far from being the final word on all edification. They lead by example and stimulate edification from all members of the body.

That’s who you are as a disciple. You are to do your part in edifying the rest of the body. You are to study in order to show yourself approved. The present state of God’s body as reflected in the institutional church reminds me of the clients I serve; many have few body functions working properly. Spiritually speaking, the institutional church is full of dialysis machines, nebulizers, and wheelchairs. It not only depicts a one-star nursing facility, it actually claims that such decrepitness is the hallmark of spiritual maturity. Pastors of Protestant temples proclaim proudly Sunday after Sunday that Christians are a “train wreck” and “broken.”

In contrast, the Bible calls us to be a man that walks strongly in good health. In my line of work, we call this “homeostasis.”

That’s why you must study your Bible. It is your primary way of edifying others. You must see for yourself that a teaching is true. This is why orthodoxy denies a permanent indwelling of the Spirit that leads the INDIVIDUAL in “all truth.” If you are merely regurgitating orthodoxy, you are spreading disease in God’s body in contrast to edifying it.

That is our motivation for independent Bible study. This is our calling.

paul

Tullian Tchividjian is a good example of Protestant pastors who must resign when their “Glorious Ruin” becomes too ruinous. Tchividjian recently wrote a post on a website devoted to pastors who got caught with both hands in the cookie jar.

Apparently, the only logical conclusion to be drawn from the post is that while Tullian was a “celebrity pastor” he was not free until he got caught. Hence, thousands of Protestants were following after a man who by his own estimation was in bondage.

He also wrote a very popular book titled, “Jesus + Nothing = Everything.” According to his own testimony in the post, during the time that thousands, perhaps millions were falling all over each other to follow him he had everything, but only now is free since he has lost it all because he got caught.

And as the purpose of expastor.com unfolds so does a very familiar pattern: most of these guys are restored to the ministry. Is this over the top or what? Tullian is all but telling people outright that he duped them, but like all of these guys, they get back into ministry by waving the magic Grace wand. Seriously, the word “grace” seems to put Christians en masse into some kind of catatonic trance. However, what it really boils down to is authority as truth. Since God does not make mistakes, and his past celebrity status confirms that he was originally God’s anointed, the fix is in.

But it begs a question that we will ask soon. By his own testimony, Tullian confesses that he preached the following gospel for years:

I never pretended to have it all together. In fact, one of the reasons people listened to my sermons and read my books and came out to hear me speak when I was traveling is because I was honest about my brokenness and the amazing grace of God that covers us at our worst. I was known for saying that God loves bad people because bad people are all that there are. So I knew I was bad. I just didn’t know I was THAT bad.

The truth is, though, that we are very good lawyers when it comes to our own mistakes, but very good judges when it comes to the mistakes of others. As one of my counselors told me early on, circumstances don’t create the condition of the heart. Rather, circumstances reveal the condition of the heart. And what was revealed to me about my heart in the fiery hotness of dire circumstances was scary and destructive.

This brings us to the illustration we often use here at TANC Ministries to explain the Protestant gospel. This is a Reformed illustration, not one formulated by this ministry. Note the primary role of the believer; sin-sniffing and “finding the sin under the sin.”

Tullian’s case in the post goes like this:

How did I get to this point of total desperation? How did I arrive at that dark place where I actually wanted to kill myself?

What I see now that I couldn’t see then is that this explosion had been building for a few years. The shift from locating my identity in the message of the Gospel to locating my identity in my success as a messenger of the Gospel was slow and subtle. It came on like the slow creep of the tide rather than a sudden tidal wave. I painfully learned that the more you anchor your identity and sense of worth in something or someone smaller than God, the more pain you will experience when you lose it all.

My confidence was severely misplaced: Confidence in status, reputation, power and position, the way I spoke, the praise I received, financial security and success. In other words, confidence in things that were smaller than God and his grace—confidence in things that were unstable and fleeting and easily taken away. Because I had existentially located my significance in things smaller than God, my loss did not simply usher in grief and pain and shame and regret. It ushered in a severe identity crisis. Without these things and people that I had come to depend on to make me feel like I mattered, I no longer knew who I was. I felt dead. Therefore, I might as well be dead.

In other words, he stopped focusing on the downward trajectory that makes the cross bigger and people smaller. According to him, fame did this, but note who he subtly blames for that; his followers who showered him with cash and praise—it’s their fault. Look, Protestants fall for this every time.

But now we get to our question. At what point in the downward trajectory is a pastor disqualified? While making the cross bigger, does he invariably disqualify himself? And, is the question really whether or not he acts on what he sees? So, in other words, it’s ok if this stuff is in his heart but he doesn’t act on what he sees in his heart? By the way, the Bible states that it is impossible to not act on what is in our heart unless we repent and take action against it. But wouldn’t that make the cross smaller?

Is all this ridiculous much? It begs yet another question: Is there anything goofier than a Protestant?

paul

@JohnPiper At what point on the Cross Chart is a pastor disqualified? And for sin or making the cross smaller? pic.twitter.com/brBA0963CY

— Paul M. Dohse (@PaulMDohse) October 27, 2016

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In keeping with Protestant insanity, pastors who get caught with both hands in the cookie jar must resign after preaching the total depravity of the saints for years while long-term affairs were running in the background. You can even read their exiled musings here: expastors.com. Again, we owe the Australian Forum a great debt of gratitude for inspiring a visual illustration published by a Reformed missionary organization that concisely depicts the Protestant gospel.*

And to further the madness, pastors who do not get caught and lack discovery of sufficient sin must also resign because lack of “seeing the sin under the sin” results in lack of “deep repentance” and shallow repentance makes the cross smaller.**

One such example is Pastor Pete Wilson of the multi-campus Cross Point Church in Nashville, Tennessee. After preaching for years that Christians are “broken,” he is resigning because he is, well, “broken.” However, if your local Baptist church produced anything else but this kind of confusion it would probably confuse us.

And now, more than ever before — I really need your prayers and I need your support. We’ve said that this is a church where it’s OK to not be okay, and I’m not okay. I’m tired. I’m broken, and I just need some rest.

But according to what these guys preach Sunday, after Sunday, after Sunday, doesn’t this better qualify him to be a Neo-Protestant leader? Um, note that he says it’s ok to not be ok, and he is not ok, but it is no longer ok for him to be the pastor. Huh?

Question: Folks, why do you go to church and give the god of confusion your God-given time and hard-earned money? My advice: just stop it.

But no good Neo-Protestant hack stops at that level of absurdity; it gets better. On the one hand, if you had a nickel for every time one of these guys said we are “broken” you would be a millionaire, but on the other hand, he is disqualified from ministry because he is broken. You see, it’s ok to not be ok and he is not ok so it’s not ok that he is still a pastor.

While people go to church and listen to this stuff without even blinking we wonder why people don’t take the gospel seriously anymore. They might start if we reject the whole tradition in totality. It’s spiritually bankrupt.

And lastly, one of the major pillars of Protestant progressive justification is John Calvin’s Sabbath Rest Sanctification; ie., doing any work in our sanctification leads to death just like it did on the Sabbath Day during Old Testament times.***

So, apparently, regardless of the fact that this guy has been working his sanctified butt off since the beginning of this church’s founding, his church becomes one of the “fastest growing churches in America” by doing it completely wrong?

Right. After all, if it’s not a paradox, it can’t be Protestant.

paul

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*** The John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.8.29, 30.