Oh, How I Love that Author!

Oh, How I Love that Author!

By Teri Ong

My son Baxter and I were discussing the relative merits of several Christian writers of the past who possessed marked theological quirks. Most of them had picked up on theological quirks that were popular in their own day– perhaps popular only in their day– but quirks, nonetheless. Did their quirks negate the true spiritual benefits one might otherwise derive from reading their works?

There is only one book that we hold to be inerrant in its original form– the Bible. The reason we believe it to be without error is that we believe it to be written by God through the instrumentality of human beings. Everything else that has been written or that will be written is strictly human. Even those works which seem to waft the most spiritual air in our direction are in the final analysis fully human. And being fully human in origin, they are all subject to a certain amount of human error.

I have said many times to students grappling with this problem, if we agree 100% with any human being, all it means is that we are wrong on the same points; we just don’t know which points those are. I believe that even the best of us will find out that we have been wrong about a great many things when we get to heaven and God fully enlightens us.

There are basically two ways to solve the problem of human error in media: 1) Don’t read (or watch or listen to) anything, or 2) Read (watch, listen) with discernment. In our society, in which mass media are ubiquitous, it is nearly impossible to go with the first option, even if you set your mind to do so. And if you do try to cut yourself off from all human teachers, you cut yourself off from the human teachers that God has given as a gift to His church. Not only that, you are in as much spiritual danger from the pride of your own autonomy as you would be from any potential error lurking about in the form of some teacher or author.

I don’t want to dismiss or diminish the danger to Christians, especially baby Christians, in taking into their minds what is out there. Reading, watching, and listening to the plethora of messages (mostly mixed messages) requires a great deal of discernment, and according to Pastor John MacArthur, discernment in the Christian church today is in short supply just when we seem to need it most. This is partly true because American Christians on the whole don’t spend enough time with the Genuine Article to be able to recognize the counterfeits, and we quench and grieve the Holy Spirit so much by our worldliness that we cannot expect much of His help in illuminating truth when we see it.

Reading (listening, watching) with discernment takes more work than either not reading at all, or reading without attempting to discern the Biblical merits of a particular work. In the end, however, applying our minds to discerning reading produces more true Biblical understanding and insight than the other options. Remember how the Apostle Paul praised the Bereans for being more noble because they measured everything they were taught by the straight stick of Scripture.

So, how much error should we tolerate if we discern that a particular author had some excess or theological misunderstanding (from our point of view, of course) or perhaps even expressed something we would consider to be heretical? We don’t want to grovel in a garbage pail looking for untainted bits and pieces when there is a good feast sitting next to it on the shelf. But on the other hand, a bit of mold on a brick of cheese isn’t necessarily bad, and can easily be cut off. When it comes to reading human authors, we always must “chew the meat and spit out the bones.” Let’s not forget that at the time of the crucifixion, saintly Peter told lies about his relationship to Christ while pagan Pilate proclaimed Him king.

My husband and I have had many literary discussions with people of all sorts of theological stripes. One of our favorite questions is, “What authors do you like to read?” Christian people almost always make qualifying statements such as, “I don’t agree with everything so-and-so says”, or “This author had this error or that error, but…” From my own understanding of total depravity, I think it is a good thing when we don’t agree with someone 100% for the reason I mentioned earlier. Sometimes we have felt that whoever we were talking to genuinely wanted to give a caution, but often it seems that people want to distance themselves for the sake of their own reputations. And sometimes it seems that people doing the warning have more fear for other people’s discernment than they do for their own.

Certain authors have made me look at Biblical truths in a new light, and I have been grateful that God gave the church such human teachers. But one does not have to read (or hear) very many human teachers to understand that not all are as astute or accurate. That does not, however, necessarily diminish the use God can make of them for the right person at the right time. Before he was born again, Charles Spurgeon had heard some powerful and Biblical preaching. But one dark and stormy night he stumbled into a little Primitive Methodist chapel where a lay preacher only had the presence of mind to read one verse of Scripture, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” He looked directly at Spurgeon and said, “Young man, you are in trouble. You will never get out of it unless you look to Christ.” He then lifted up his hands and cried out, “Look, look, look! It is only look!” God used that ignoble human instrument to open Spurgeon’s spiritual understanding and bring him to assurance of salvation.

There are certain human teachers who are full of poison and shouldn’t be touched. They cause their readers to doubt that God exists or to doubt that God is a good rewarder of those who seek Him. There are other authors who may not cross every theological “t” or dot every theological “i” the same way I would, but this one thing I know– when I’m done reading what they have written, I love God more and have more desire to worship Him by my obedience. When that happens, I exclaim with Oswald Chambers, “Oh, how I love that author!”

Reference:

Cook, Richard Briscoe. The Wit and Wisdom of Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon. Baltimore: R. H. Woodward and Company, 1892. p. 40.

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