America’s Pastor is all over the place.

Seeking to understand what he’s getting at in his Oct. 1 sermon-by-video at the Desiring God conference, I’ve continued listening. And it’s nearly impossible to tell what his point is. As many others who’ve heard the message have said, Warren is all over the place, issuing platitudes rapid-fire. First he’s talking about you-do-this, then do that, here’s a verse to support whatever, now here’s another one that sort of applies from another translation, then over here …

Quoth the immortal (as a character) Captain Jean-Luc Picard, from Star Trek: The Next Generation: “He just kept — talking-in-one-long-incredibly-unbroken-sentence-moving-from-topic-to-topic-so-that-no-one-had-a-chance-to-interrupt-it-was-really-quite-hypnotic.”

Perhaps I’ve previously left unclear why this bothers me so much. Let me summarize what may be two underlying issues with what Warren said. First, Warren’s kind of topical preaching rushes over or ignores foundational truths of Scripture verses, and equally problematic, assumes the Gospel. Second, and closely related, that results in more than imbalance, but legalism and lies.

1. Warren doesn’t follow basic Biblical hermeneutics.

Though I enjoy and learn so much of God’s Word through verse-by-verse exegetical preaching, sometimes I do like a topical sermon. More often I enjoy reading doctrine-intensive books that focus on a particular issue, such as Christ’s atonement, or Christian vocation, or predestination.

For example, recently I ordered and received a new book by Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible. Systematic theology on any Scriptural subject, by definition, tends to be topical. You collect all the Biblical texts you can find about a particular topic, such as how God uses civil governments to keep some order in a fallen world, and try to understand them all together.

Yet such understanding must be according to the Bible. And reading the Bible, exegetically or topically, requires certain “rules” of engagement. For example, you don’t take poetry and try to read it “literally.” That would actually be reading it nonliterally, like a liberal, for the Author (and authors) meant the text to be poetic, expressing truths in artistic forms that sometimes include metaphors. Another example: you don’t take a narrative meant to describe a historical event, and turn it into a “metaphor” for moral living, or a simple moral instruction for all Christians.

In his topic-surveying, Warren did not adhere to these rules of Scriptural engagement. That was probably the root problem of his talk: not that it wasn’t exegesis of a single Bible passage, but because despite appearances, his summary of verses and thoughts was not mindful of context. This includes the context of immediate verses, and Scripture’s main story-of-stories …

2. Warren did not even give passing reference to the Gospel.

Contrasting Warren with other pastors, whether they’re preaching topically or exegetically, will help to show and not just tell the difference more clearly. While other pastors, including those at the Desiring God conference, would constantly show how thinking about God constantly ties back to the Gospel — that Jesus, the perfect God-man, died for rebel sinners for His glory — Warren just assumed that.

Thus everything Warren said about discernment, ministry, bearing fruit, etc., became by default not a means of drawing closer to God for help, but a simple mantra to do-do-do more, try harder, here’s how I do it and you should too.

Perhaps without intending to be that way, Warren had lapsed into preaching legalism.

Without having inside information (thank God) about what the Devil is up to, it would seem one of his greatest successes is Christians assigning a certain image to Legalism, and then doing all they can to avoid that. In this view, the sin of Legalism is in behaviors or appearances: refusing to go to movies, “courting” instead of “dating,” wearing suits or dresses in church while also insisting every other Christian do this, preaching only Hell and damnation and not enough about God’s love, shunning non-Christians, homeschooling, and Pharisees (or Puritans) with beards, furrowed brows and hoods over their heads.

Avoid all those things, or looking like that, comes the assumption, and you won’t be a Legalist.

If I were the Devil, I’d be cackling and snorting sulfur at that. For without me even having to try, I’ve just seen a Christian, in the very name of “avoiding legalism,” act just like a legalist!

Author Michael Horton refers to Legalism is the “default setting” of any person. Even a Christian can fall back into this attitude. “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” Paul rhetorically asks the Galatians (Galatians 3:3). Treating the Gospel as assumed, or back in the past somewhere, after which point we can take over now and work, work, work to think better about God, ignore lies or even avoid legalism — all will lead right back to legalism.

And because the attitude of legalism is so inherent in our hearts, Christians in Christ must fight it constantly. I don’t think we’ll ever be free of it in this life. It’s like pride: constantly there, and annoyingly ready to claim one’s own awesomeness even at the thought of achieving humility!

But Warren did not focus his sermon on the Gospel. Overcorrecting, perhaps, for Christians who wrongly sit back and fatalistically wait for God to change them, Warren committed the opposite error. He pushed for work, work, work, succeed, bear fruit — all of the “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” parts but without Paul’s immediate reminder (in Philippians 2: 12-13) that “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

If Warren could somehow be assured that his audience had so completely mastered the Holy-Spirit-works-in-you-because-of-Christ’s-salvation part, and they only needed to hear the you-must-do-this stuff, he could be excused for simply emphasizing one truth over another.

But as with talking about subjects like Law and Gospel, or God’s wrath and love, showing only one “side” doesn’t become just an imbalance. It becomes a lie.

Yesterday commentator Kaci Hill, in reply to a previous column about Warren, remarked:

Either he’s spinning half truths or he isn’t, I suppose. And half truths are lies.

Reluctantly, I would say Warren was preaching half-truths, which can too quickly become lies.

Next week I hope to go through more of what he said, particularly about the topics of what God expects of Christian leaders, and how we ought to practice media discernment. Does God really expect more than simple “faithfulness” from Christians? And for those who watch TV shows that show violence— are they really sinning and giving the Devil free reign over the brain?

Yes, I’m sorry to say that those are among the notions Warren repeats. And they leave me curious, not about why Warren is so popular, but why this impression exists that he’s one of those “nice” loving guys, a more-enlightened Christian leader who isn’t into legalism.

(Read Monday’s column Purpose-driven ignorance of sin’s main source?)

One may wish John Piper had said more in response to Rick Warren’s address at the recent Desiring God conference. But in fact Piper did have some reactions, and seemed to question whether Warren’s strong emphasis on “here’s what you do” was necessary.

Yes, I wish he’d said something like: it can be worse than not necessary when you ignore man’s sin nature and assume someone already knows the Gospel.

But thank God Piper did say something.

And conversely, Piper simply acted as though the main issue with Warren’s talk is that listeners should remember different pastors do things differently. I don’t think his comparison of Warren with C.J. Mahaney was very fitting — Mahaney may be more application-heavy than Piper, but each pastor ties his topic back to the Gospel. Warren did not. As noted yesterday, he said many true things, but the whole theme of discernment, as well as many Scripture texts, were taken horribly out of context: the context of the verses’ full meanings, and the context of the Gospel.

Here’s my partial transcription of the Oct. 1 panel discussion audio/video (both available here).

Moderator David Mathis: So guys, let me dive in right away with the message that we just saw.

(Very noticeable audience laughter, joined by chuckles onstage. A few onstage look to Piper, who simply smiles and nods.)

Mathis: (Pauses for more laughter, then asks John Piper and Buck Parsons for reactions.

Buck Parsons: Well, David, um — I’m almost afraid to say what I think I should say, because I’m afraid of, uh, what people I love will think highly of me when I say that I was actually just amazed by how much, you know, Biblical content, and just helpful, simple straightforward, um, admonition and challenge we received from Rick this evening. I’d never heard Rick preach before. I don’t know if I’d ever heard him speak.

[…] I was blown away by a man and just on his simple, childlike faith and dependence on Christ. It was beautiful to see. […] That meant a lot to me as a young pastor.

(He describes more positive reactions, before the mic is handed to John Piper.)

John Piper: Oh my, um. It was a remarkable message in many ways. But I think the one thing I’ll say is how intimidating this must feel, to all of us. The guy is unbelievable communicator. Right? What he means by application is something he does like nobody else. He’s got everything broken down — just five steps here, and three steps here, and five steps here, and they’re all insightful, and rooted in the Bible. And they make me feel utterly unable to do it.

So I think that what I should say to — he thought you were all pastors, you could tell he was talking that way. But a lot of you are. But what I want to say is: nobody believes that you should be you more than Rick Warren, and that you shouldn’t be him. And so if you come away from that feeling, “That was at ten o’clock last night, at a desk, quoting fifty Scriptures from memory, and having alliteration and having lists? I’m quittin’. I’m just quittin’.” Then just take heart, because that’s the way I felt.

[…] Let me go at a little theological piece that might just explain that a little bit.

You know the part where he talked about application, and there were fourteen life applications in my week, and I can only manage one? And so — teach your people less, and work the application piece more.

Um — there is a certain approach towards application there, that isn’t me. Meaning: you give the message, give the doctrine, you give the content, and then you turn towards, “now, let’s make a covenant with each other, let’s get five things, and we’re gonna check on you next week.” And he builds an unbelievable effective ministry that way.

There is another way to think about transformation and it is that — if roots go down deep, and a tree gets healthy, it bears fruit. And that you might, week in and week out, so feed your people, so thrill your people, so deepen your people, that they’re bearing fruit in thirty years when the person who did the thing each week doesn’t.

If he were here, he’d get all over me about that, you know? And he’d say, “Oh oh no, no, I’m not excluding that! It’s both/and, it’s either/or.” And that’s right. But I’m saying, I’m on the or side here. And if C.J. Mahaney were here, he’d get on my case too. He’d say, “Piper, you need to apply more. Give another ten minutes of your sermon to application.” And I say: “Okay, that’s right, C.J., okay.” And I’d try, and I just never have time.

So, I just want you to be encouraged that if it feels like Saul’s armor, to try to imitate that, he probably is. He is him. He is him. And one of the big issues with any big shot that you put up, people tend to feel like, “Okay, to have a successful church, we’ve got to do it this way.” And I just want to say: it ain’t necessarily so. Just relax with who you are and just give it all to Jesus, and learn, learn, learn as much as you can from Rick.

I can’t help doubting the thoughts of most attendees were, “gee, I wish I could communicate as easily as that spiritual giant with all his lists and alliterations, Rick Warren.”

Warren has gotten way popular by assuming the Gospel — often doing the easier work of faulting the church for past ills (actual and otherwise), and talking about Gospel fruits in social justice and such, while leaving other Christians with the less-popular task of preaching about repentance, God’s holiness, Hell, etc. Why can’t Warren play bad cop for a while, for a change?

What little myths did Rick Warren, in his address at a certain conference, let slip through the cracks?

Many others, including Chris Rosebrough of Pirate Christian Radio, have already pointed out the biggest problems. Warren is a Pelagian, Rosebrough noted, and thus that assumption about human nature underlies all Warren teaches. His sermons, deeds, ministry, anything, assume the notion that humans can simply learn a truth and thus change their moral behavior.

But while listening to Rosebrough’s rundown of Warren’s message, I kept also hearing more little lies. It seems that even while trying to talk about the battle for Christians’ minds, Warren is allowing several wrong beliefs to influence his moral behavior and judgment.

What follows are some more errors, often very subtle, in Warren’s assumptions and quotations.

For the sake of time, I’ll mostly limit them to those I haven’t yet heard specifically rebutted.

Warren started with descriptions of difficulties in his life — the most recent of which was a family’s member’s illness, which prevented him from attending the conference live.

I’m confident that God has given me a message. I believe that Satan didn’t want me to teach it to you, and I believe that Satan didn’t want you to hear it.

Myth 1: We can make a good guess that the Devil is causing specific bad things.

It’s already hard enough to figure out what God’s up to, and He’s revealed so much about Himself. But we do know He is working despite whatever the Devil does, and even through what the Devil does. It is very risky to say “the Devil is doing this.” Why not cut out the middle man and try to discern why God is allowing difficulties to happen?

Myth 2: If it’s bad, hurting me, preventing ministry, etc., the Devil must be doing it.

The Devil is not even equally as powerful as God. Even if he is behind a difficult circumstance, shouldn’t we disclaim that God is more sovereign and not even partly endorse the subtle suspicion that God only causes good things to happen?

I have seen the face of mental illness. I have seen what it’s like to see people not able to hear God because their minds are broken and aren’t connecting to God even when they want to connect to God.

Myth 3: God often speaks directly to our minds.

This isn’t stated, but heavily implied. I hope Warren is not endorsing the belief that in addition to the final revelation of Scripture, God directs His people by use of inner “nudges” or subtle directions about His will. Warren could have easily said that it’s tragic when people undergo mental illness and aren’t able to study God’s Word or pray to Him in response.

I know that whatever gets your mind gets you. …

Myth 4: Our battle is primarily against evil’s assault from outside, not from inside.

“Jesus said, by the way, that sin comes out of a person,” Rosebrough cut in. “It develops inside of his heart. It comes from within” (Mark 7).

The battle for sin always starts in the mind. […] Every one of us has a mental illness.

This leaves out the truth that nonbelievers have sinful hearts, and even Christians fight most of the battle in their own hearts. (Even posters for the film Spider-Man 3 echoed this truth.)

Yes, the Devil is a liar and he causes temptations. Scripture is clear that much of our battle is external (cf. Eph. 6). But without understanding what’s in our hearts, sin, people will go around swatting at demons and imagining only external sources of sin, while the worst source festers inside. That applies to Christians, who still fight against sin-shrapnel, but even more so to non-Christians who must be first raised from spiritual death and resurrected to life in Christ (Eph. 2).

Why not at least distinguish between non-Christians whose chief problem is mainly in the heart, and Christians who are saved but who still fight wrong thinking? That would have been helpful.

But after so much damage done by Christians who assume if you aren’t a Christian, you must have simply not heard the right information! or even, non-Christians are basically good and just need to have their thinking corrected, it’s sad to hear Warren repeating these errors.

The reason we have so many ineffective Christians today is because they don’t know how to fight the battle of the mind.

Myth 5: We have so many ineffective Christians today.

That many people claim to be “Christians” and are ineffective is undisputed. Many others would dispute their claim to be Christians. Why not at least make allowance for false believers?

Myth 6: We must address battle-of-mind issues based on (a) perceived Problem(s).

Several times Warren goes on to talk about how Christians are failing, what the church is doing wrong, how we too often learn all this stuff but don’t apply it, etc. His rhetoric is all based on generalizations; he doesn’t even back up his claim with Barna surveys. Either way, this could be the result of Ministry Myopia. Here are the Problems I’ve seen in my ministry (views that often lead to more exposure only to these problems, because of a leader’s specific focus) so therefore they must be the same all over. Furthermore, we must do all we can to Fix the Problems.

Warren floats over several Scripture texts, emphasizing obedience, an implicit goal not of fixing our eyes on Christ, but Fixing the Problem. This leads to Law, either God’s true Law — which is fulfilled in Christ — or manmade Law, not the fact of dead hearts and our need for the Gospel.

Now the old cliché from the computer early days, GIGO, “garbage in, garbage out,” is still true today. The amount of garbage you put in is what you’re gonna get out.

Myth 7: Wrong thinking comes primarily from external sources.

This is very similar to myth 4. Warren has some good things to say about discernment, but citing this catchphrase without a foundation of humans’ sinful nature repeats a myth promoted by conservative and liberal professing Christians: if you put sin inside you, it will come out from you. Its implication: your main job is to avoid sinful Stuff. Its refutation: same as above, Mark 7. Jesus did not endorse that notion. He said garbage inside your heart comes out.

Warren even sounds like a dreaded “fundamentalist” when he talks about Christians needing to avoid junk in movies and on TV. He doesn’t say Christians do this mainly to honor God, but to Avoid Bad Stuff. Again it’s an emphasis on Fixing the Problem, not on glorifying God — and ignores the true source of sin, which doesn’t come from a Thing, but from the heart.

And here we thought it was only big bad Al Mohler and other “fundamentalists” who say this.

(Likely continued on Wednesday. …)

Here’s a sequel to my column from last tax day. But this time Rick Warren has come and gone (by video) at the Desiring God conference this weekend, leaving attenders and bloggers alike to discern — one might hope with grace — what he said, or didn’t say.

One in-depth summary of Warren’s address comes from a friendly source: The Gospel Coalition. Contributor Owen Strachan overviewed what Warren said, then offered some reflections. Based on those, it unfortunately seems that everyone who faulted Warren not for compromising or rejecting the Gospel, but merely assuming the Gospel, was close to correct.

[T]he talk would have been benefited from a stronger organizing principle, namely, the gospel.  The word was rarely mentioned.  Jesus Christ was quoted and noted, but His centrality in all things had less place in the talk.  This is not to say by any stretch that Warren does not love Jesus Christ and preach His death and resurrection.  It is to say, however, that greater connection to the gospel as the foundation of Christian thinking and spiritual effort might have been made in this particular talk.¹

For a crowd of pastors and theologians, Warren emphasized the need to battle for one’s mind. Yet some have noted Warren’s penchant for trying to find a way to agree with almost everyone — at the expense of ignoring disagreements. As Michael Horton noted in April:

Pastor Warren tailors his appeals to his audience.  To Calvinists, he stresses his support for the “solas” of the Reformation.  Yet he tells prosperity evangelist David Yonggi Cho, “I’ve read your books on Vision and Dreams – speak to pastors about how you hear the voice of the Holy Spirit?…What advice would you give to a brand new minister?…Do you think American churches should be more open to the prayer for miracles?” (“Breakfast With David Yonggi Cho And Rick Warren,” Pastors.com).

[…] When USA Today asked him why Mormon and Jewish leaders are involved in his pastoral training programs, Rick Warren reportedly said, “I’m not going to get into a debate over the non-essentials.  I won’t try to change other denominations.  Why be divisive?” (USA Today, July 21, 2003).

But if Satan is really after our minds, as Warren said, wouldn’t some “divisiveness” be fitting?

Near Strachan’s end, he concludes that still no one knows why Warren is so inconsistent — and perhaps even (I am saying this, not Strachan) hypocritical, switching between modes so easily.

The talk also failed to settle questions, some of them weighty, about Warren’s ministry.  Clearly, the pastor felt no need to pull his punches on such controversial matters as his church’s massive baptismal numbers, preaching to “felt needs,” and the Saddleback approach to ministry and the church more broadly.  It would be fair to say that many attendees would want to hear Piper and Warren cover some of the motivations of Warren’s ministry and the more noteworthy concerns of the neo-reformed community related to it.  For example, why, if Warren reads rich, largely gospel-driven theology does it seem, at least in some places and times, that his ministry eschews this kind of theology?

I need to listen to Warren’s message myself. I imagine that, per many people’s predictions, he will be engaging and indeed even Biblical. For someone who already assumes the Gospel, there will be plenty of positive points. But for me, it will be very hard to separate what I hear from Warren in Talking-to-Christians-at-a-Conference-about-Thinking Mode from Warren’s other modes that depend on his audience — and which assume audience members know the Gospel.

(Peels back the lid of a big can-o’-worms, and watches more worms fall out and start slithering across the floor, spewing slime …)

Surely it’s time to talk about the much-ballyhooed issue of evangelical megachurch leader and author Rick Warren, being invited by John Piper to speak at the 2010 Desiring God conference.

For Christians who want to speak the truth in love, balancing grace and truth the way Jesus did¹, Warren is a tricky case. Yes, he does a lot of the “unity, unity” stuff,², but he does seem to truly believe the Gospel. There was a lot of talk when Piper said he had checked out Rick Warren, saying he’s sure Warren is a truly deep guy who believes in repentance and faith and adheres to strong Christian orthodoxy.

I’ve no cause to doubt that. But does Warren preach what he practices?

A while ago I read some of Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life³, and I found very shallow. Christians who were eating it up as “deep” made me sad. (It was like those who said they read The Da Vinci Code and said they didn’t buy all the heresy stuff, but that it was “a great story”!)

But even for “baby” Christians, oughtn’t they hear more along the lines of Warren’s correct and famous “It’s not about you” statement at the front? Instead, the rest of the book ended up being all about you after all: God and the church as a means to your Purpose-Driven™-ness.

Plot hole

Let’s imagine a famous preacher who’s built a church, written books and so on. He actually does get almost everything right about the Gospel: even the repentance-and-faith parts. He doesn’t minimize sin. He dares to mention Hell and manages to do so lovingly.

But — what if he rarely if ever mentions the hope of Heaven, and much less the promised New Earth?

Maybe it’s not intentional. Maybe I as this hypothetical famous preacher simply assume it’s not part of his unique presentation of the message. Maybe he believes people will pick up that part elsewhere. And it’s true that technically, one can be saved without being taught about the hope of Heaven, and the New Earth, and how they fit into Christ’s eternal plan to redeem His saints and His creation as well.

But why keep skipping over that part? It’s important! And especially if he’s all famous and leaderly, people will follow his example and base their preaching and programs on the leaders, likely also ignoring that part of the truth!

That’s similar to the issue with Warren: only with him, it’s not that he doesn’t emphasize Heaven.⁴ The worse problem is Warren doesn’t talk about the seriousness of sin and how it’s an offense to God. Without comprehending that truth on a heart level, more people will be filling churches, thinking themselves saved because they “asked Jesus into their hearts,” but did not repent of sin.
Continue reading …