(Continued from Christian myths, part 1: Cautions before busting and Christian myths, part 2: To bust or not to bust.)

What do you do if someone says music with a beat is evil? Or that anything except music with a beat is evil? What if you hear someone quote a verse and interpret it in a way that you know isn’t what the verse means at all? Or maybe a Christian friend keeps telling you (I hope gently) that you’re views are against the Bible. Is it always wrong to bring this up? Divisive? Unloving?¹

What I’ve found is that sometimes it can be, if love is not the main motive. Yet love doesn’t automatically mean you look past lies. Scripture presents both sides: love, and uphold truth.

As promised, to end this little series: three reasons, Biblically based, to bust Christian myths.

1. Much of Scripture specifically refutes wrong beliefs with the truth.

This is especially true in the epistles. With few exceptions (Romans, Philippians), most of them were written in direct response to falsities. They didn’t just write the truth and ignore the lies.

Paul penned Galatians because they were dealing with Jewish legalistic leaders, the Judaizers, who sought to add to the Gospel with new rules and regulations.

The Corinthian church got Paul’s scorchers (especially 1 Corinthians) because they were compromising with culture and buying into false beliefs about the body.

Jude’s short book would have been written only about what Christians had in common — salvation (verse 3) — but he switched and wrote about lies.

I could even suggest that God allowed humans to sin so that His perfection would be magnified even more. Though Scripture doesn’t say this exactly, I’m guessing that in the New Earth we’ll find the truth (if we ever do) is close to that, anyway. At the very least I can say this: for me, learning to debunk the lies makes the truth, and the God of truth, seem even more glorious.

2. We must know more about how to pick out Christian lies in our own lives.

Any Christian’s growth to be more like God comes from God. Yet we don’t just sit there like fatalists and wait for this to happen. The Bible still encourages us to try, though we know it is actually God working in us (Philippians 2: 12-13). God works His will through what we do.

Understanding about spiritual truth also comes from the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2: 14-15). Yet we’re still encouraged to fight for it. Paul’s encouragement to Timothy does say not to argue about mere words, and avoid “irreverent babble.” But the apostle also says to him, rightly handle the word of truth (1 Timothy 2: 14-16)! ² The apostle’s advice to him surely applies not just to young Christian pastors, for we find similar admonitions to all believers. Avoiding “irreverent babble,” including false doctrines, and seeking the truth takes action — action God enables.

Have you seen what I’ve come to see — that many Christians are very capable of knowing, receiving and loving God’s truth, even while carrying on in beliefs that are contradictory? Might it be God’s grace that enables them not to see the contradiction and be mostly okay anyway?

But it might also be God’s grace that brings a caring friend, a firm correction from a pastor, a well-placed book, or a web-article that happens by, to show what Scripture really says.

Sometimes it takes a direct word about a specific belief to show how it doesn’t match the Bible.

Figure A:

When I was younger, I had the default view many Christians have about following God’s will. I thought that very likely the most “spiritual” thing to do in seeking God’s will was to get a Still Small Voice in my head that would say so. Or there would be a sign to confirm that a decision was the right one. Or it would somehow be so spiritually obvious what school major to choose, which job was the right one, whom God wanted me to marry, that sort of thing.

The difference was, I actually never followed that method exactly! I just thought something like this: well, if I did live that way, that would be so much more Spiritual, wouldn’t it?

I was not a false Christian. I believed the Gospel. I loved Jesus. But still I had the wrong ideas, buried deep down in my head. I don’t even remember anyone teaching them to me. And I had not read some book about it. They were just floating around, in church culture, unchallenged.

It took specific debunking of those ideas — including a bold little book by John MacArthur called Found: God’s Will — to show me how these subtle notions didn’t match the Gospel at all.³

3. We are better able to help Christian friends who still believe the lies.

Surely this isn’t just me whose afternoon can be ruined by hearing that someone I know — or a friend or acquaintance of someone I know — is getting deeper into some anti-Biblical belief.

• Based on what she has said, a young woman is very likely sure, based on church teachings or lack thereof, that suffering and trouble are almost always from the Devil.
• A young man without a father figure in his life is drawn to “patriocentrist” circles. By that I mean a false system of safety, family structure, culture influence and personal holiness at least as long as you follow the rules and become a “man” in the patriocentrist leaders’ way.
• Another teenage boy, raised in a strongly Christian homeschooled environment, brilliant and gifted, is kept from attending any college because he is convinced it might corrupt him.
• A woman on an internet forum is convinced there can be something called “Christian Deism” that denies the whole point of Jesus’ mission.

This site was partly started as a resource to reach out to such people. Whether it’s seemingly little lies like looking for God’s will in wrong ways, or bigger errors like Jesus-taught-a-“social-Gospel,” believing myths doesn’t just make as wrong academically. False belief hurts people. It ruins lives. In the worst cases, it leads to someone not having been a Christian at all.

So go myth-bust. Let’s labor to locate, target, and systematically destroy the lies, mostly in ourselves — errors and myths that don’t honor God and can hurt either us or others. It’s not just good for goodness’ sake. It’s to grow in God’s truth and glorify Him above all else.