The Danger of Teaching “Principles”

For the past couple of months or so my house group was working through a book by Dr. Henry Cloud, entitled: 9 Things You Simply Must Do to Succeed in Love and Life: A Psychologist Learns from His Patients What Really Works and What Doesn't. I think it's actually a self-help book more than a Christian book.

I recall this guy on a few of Joyce Meyer's podcasts. Basically, this book and the podcast messages featuring these two people, focus on principles. Principles are compelling because it gives us the feeling of control over our lives, according to something that appears to be "doable" on the surface. However, it is a subtle form of getting you into the law. Bertie Brits defines "the law" as "by my efforts I will become".

I downloaded a total of 318 Joyce Meyer podcasts from 27/09/07 to 24/04/09 (U.K. date notation). I found myself resonating with Joyce Meyer's podcasts. I found that Joyce would say some really powerful things. Sometimes, though rarely, Joyce would deliver a pure grace message, focusing on our right-standing through Christ; as message that did not focus on rules and self-effort at all. But then the next time, she would say something along the lines of, "It's up to you, you've got to make an effort."

Sometimes, Joyce would be really patronizing and basically just mock people (in general, not specific people as such. Here is a link to a video in which she does her famous "What About Me" robot move (which I find rather patronising). You can see a video clip of this robot move here.

Even though I've been into the message of grace for several years now, I kept on downloading the Joyce Meyer MP3s. But this kind of preaching just subtly brings people into legalism. I wonder why I listened to it for so long. Sure, you can pick-up some nuggets of wisdom: Joyce preaches some great truths. But with such an availability of pure grace teaching - why bother with anything else? I wonder why I continued to listen to that mixture of law and grace teaching for as long as I did.

John Bevere is the same: he teaches some really good concepts such as the need to respect authority. But there is such an emphasis on what the believer must do, that the good news of the finished work is drowned-out. The end result is just frustration and guilt. Bevere teaches that there are many people he has known who have suffered hardship because they failed to respect authority.

This concept sounds rather plausible, but I wonder if there are further implications to this: perhaps the ability to respect authority was the result of not having a heart of love, which in turn was the result of not knowing they were loved by God, which all boils down to not truly believing that they are right with God through Christ. Making a rule out of respecting authority, backed-up by some horror stories, is not an effective way of eliciting respect of authority, as far as I’m concerned.

Conscious Awareness of Negative Mindsets

I’m still growing in the grace message and I don’t have it all figured out yet. I tend to vacillate between believing that it is good to make yourself consciously aware of negative mindsets, and not. The notes I have made in the past as a result of my own Bible studies tend to focus a lot on exposing negative mindsets - with a hint of basic Psychology. It is one thing, I suppose, to make yourself consciously aware of past mistakes and missed opportunities – it is another to make yourself aware of wrong, negative patterns of thinking.

But the Bible does mention the concept of our conscience being purged of sin in Hebrews 9:14, 10:22. Hebrews 10:1-4 relates how animal scarifies in the Old Covenant created a reminder of sin ever year, because the blood of animals covered sin, but could not take it away.

I believe it is important to highlight some of the common misnomers we tend to pick-up in church. But to a great extent, just the conscious awareness of something is insufficient in bringing about peace and a change of behaviour. The Ten Commandments were supposed to bring about a change of behaviour by making people consciously aware of what was right and wrong – but it in fact it had the opposite effect.

The Gospel Message is a Short Message

The more I soak in pure grace teaching, especially that of Bertie Brits, the more I come to realise that perhaps the only message that we really need to hear is that of our right-standing with God through Christ. Everything else, I believe, or to a great extent at least, flows from there. It amazes me all the junk and excesses the church has been through, including persecution and manipulation during the time of the early church and Middle Ages, right the way through to the excesses of the charismatic movement during the nineties.

To a great extent I believe that the only message that we need to hear is about what Jesus has already done for us on the cross and who we are in Him. I like what Bertie Brits says in that the Gospel message is a short message. Over the years, the church has made the Gospel message into something rather complicated by adding to it principles, formulas and outlandish, supernatural testimonies.

Bible Teaching Which is too Specific

I have found that as soon as Bible teaching focuses on specific circumstances and people – it can cause people to go off on a tangent (myself included). This is what happened to me when I read Kenneth E. Hagin’s books from 1997 to about 2005.  Hagin’s teaching has often been compared to that of E.W. Kenyon. In fact, some people have even accused Hagin of plagiarism (you can see an example of that here and here).

I have been exposed to Bible teachers I previously never heard of, on my journey into the grace message, such as Norman Grubb, Major Ian W. Thomas and so on. The concept of union with Christ has been reinforced in me as I have read or listened to their teaching.

I cannot help but think that the writing of such people is akin to that of E.W. Kenyon, who focuses on a revelation of the Pauline Epistles and who we are in Christ. Kenyon focuses on the power of Christ living in us, rather than principles and formulas that we can exploit in order to get God to bless us in some way – something that I see in Kenneth E. Hagin’s teaching. Therefore, as I have gradually moved out of Word of Faith teaching and into Grace teaching – I have found myself moving away from Hagin’s teaching and back to Kenyon.

Bible Teaching I Listen to Now

Just this year I decided to get rid of my large collection of Christian books, because they just did me no good whatsoever. I used to love books but now I find they just take up space. I noticed just how much my books weighed as well when I last moved house.

Now, I only listen to pure grace teaching that I download from the internet. Check out my Grace Preachers List for some great websites were you can download pure grace messages, often for free. I now tend to keep away from even a hint of law.

A couple of weeks ago I sent an email to the host of my church home group to say that I would no longer be attending and I told her why - in a pleasant, but assertive way, of course.