When I am visiting someone’s home for the first time, if their bookshelves are visible, I find myself irresistibly drawn to look over them… not just because I love books, but because what people read or collect tells me so much about their perspectives on everything.
This week I happened upon a collection of books from an estate. Of course when I see bins of books, I can hardly wait to dig in and search for treasure, but this collection was different than I had hoped. Every bin contained a monoculture of a specific genre of religious teaching, one that was unknown in Christianity until the last 30 or 40 years. When I realized I would find only a handful of “old-fashioned” mainstream material, I pondered the phenomenon of being totally given over to a specific teacher or religious movement.
Having been there myself at one time, I remembered what this was like, and how it affected my own library shelf for awhile. I remember as a child we did not have any books published by any authors outside of our denomination which claimed to have “special truth”. I distrusted books from Christians outside our realm, and considered them inferior even if they did have some good points. They didn’t have ALL the truth. And not only did we have just one source for books, there were many of them. Many. Our publishing houses churned them out as quickly as people would buy them.
Here I saw these same characteristics with the singular type and quantity of books as I sifted through bin after bin… losing hope of finding treasure and becoming increasingly sick as I surveyed some downright astonishing book titles and author’s claims. A few verses came to mind.
This verse speaks to the thirst for only one kind of teaching; something “new” or “restored” (if Jesus, Paul, and the other Apostles didn’t proclaim it, it doesn’t need to be restored), and considering it superior to “that which we have received from the beginning… which was once and for all, delivered to the saints” (I John & Jude).
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 2 Timothy 4:3,4
I don’t know when I have ever seen a more clear example of this in a collection of books since I left home. The sad, obvious fact: the owner had no interest in anything unrelated to this new and exciting teaching. Even books with subjects that seemed Biblical – such as “Forgiveness” – revealed chapter titles that brought this subject back around to the same falsehood. Everything centered on the falsehood, not the truth.
As to the overkill in quantity, exactly how many books do you need that say essentially the same thing? I’m sure the profits from book sales are intoxicating for these teachers. Write the same thing, give it a different title, repackage it 100 different ways, and people keep buying them! Where can you find a better business model of repeat sales and residual income? Rock stars maybe?
But the sad characteristic of feeding on spiritual falsehood is that you never have enough. You never quite get to that place they promise, so you need one more book, one more DVD, one more reassurance that you have found the truth. But this is not a new development. We are told from long ago that the last days would be full of false teachers, and I find it interesting that this quality of a continuous stream of “learning” is described.
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
2Timothy 3:1-7
False teaching is like junk food. Once you start to take it in, you develop cravings and lose your taste for healthy food. Broccoli and apples look boring and tasteless. (think…simple truth of the Gospel!) The craving and addictions can become intense, but for all the quantity of food you consume, your body is not being nourished. It seems the spiritual appetite can also be perverted in a similar way, with even worse outcomes.
In contrast, Jesus said..
Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
John 6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
John 4:14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Rev 21:6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.
Revelation 22:17 The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.
Who are we thirsty and hungry for?
So much deception plays on our desires. We are led away by them. Someone dangles a carrot and we blindly follow an empty promise, because they are offering something we want. This isn’t the whole picture, but most of it. Eve began in this error, and most of us walk in it too before we find the Narrow Way.
If what we want most in this world is anything but Jesus, we are our own worst enemy, and the world offers us so many appealing alternatives. This is why the FIRST commandment is to LOVE the LORD with all your being.
When we want HIM with our whole heart, it won’t matter what else we have or don’t have. We WILL seek Him and find Him. He has promised this. These teachers love to quote the Bible, and their books are full of verses to prove out what they say. But unless you are willing to prayerfully take the Word by itself, verse by verse, passage by passage, to see for yourself – any false thing can be made to sound “Biblical”.
My collection of spiritual books I will actually read is narrowing down, as I find the Word of God itself has more treasure than any human teacher can offer. I do enjoy what the Spirit has taught through many great brothers and sisters through the ages, and it always resonates with what He has shown me through His Word. But if all I had was the Word, it would be enough. Jesus is enough. His Word is enough – through the Book and His Spirit.
My hope is that the owner of the collection I saw this week also found that peace and Living Water in Jesus Christ alone.
8thDay4Life 