For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (the first week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.
We’re getting closer and closer to the most-viewed post in the history of my blog! This month in the Top 12 Blog Posts at Covered in His Dust, we’ll look at the fifth-most-viewed post. It was a post titled “JUDE: False Teachers” — and you can find it here.
In this series, as we look at each post, I want to ask three questions: why, what, and what else? Why do I think this post got so many views; why were others drawn to it? What do I hope people found when they got here; what do I hope they heard? Finally, what else have I learned about this; what else would I say about these ideas?
WHY THIS POST?
For me, seeing this post on the list makes sense on many levels. While I don't know if there is a single reason that predominantly drove the number of views, I would guess it is a combination of both of the following (and maybe others).
First, I think Jude is a book shrouded in mystery for many Bible students. This short letter raises so many questions for those who dare to dig in to the details that it has to be a book people are Googling and searching for left and right. What is this reference about the body of Moses? Why the fascination with Enoch? Why does it feel like there are so many things going on “behind the scenes” with the book of Jude? While we talked about much of this in the original post, I’m sure it’s driving a lot of interest in finding posts and articles discussing the content of Jude.
Second, I think anytime you write a post titled “False Teachers” in our day and age of Evangelicalism, you are going to get some views. We have such an unhealthy (most of the time) fascination with doctrinal correctness and those who color outside the lines that Christian readers go a little gaga over the need to categorize people into one group or another. As we’ve chatted about before, the concern, as we are familiar with it, is not one that existed in the apostolic age and mainly arose as the result of losing our Jewish roots as a movement and dealing with the impact of the Gnostic Crisis in the second century and beyond. But let’s pull some of that apart below.
WHAT DO I HOPE THEY FOUND?
Some might ask, “How in the world can you say this wasn’t a concern in the apostolic age when the book of Jude (and others!) write about the need to be aware of false teachers?!”
This is where the irony runs thick. In the New Testament, a thoughtful examination of the arguments against false teachers will reveal that the danger is not in its orthodoxy, but in the orthopraxy. Obviously, the orthodoxy is important; without a doubt, the content of teaching drives our behavior. But the danger of the teaching is not in what it gets wrong, but in how it leads us to live. Consider the constant rebuke that exists from the Evangelical Doctrine Police of the world today. Is there any concern for the “living out” of a theologian’s position? Do we write posts ad nauseam about whether or not a teacher demonstrates the fruit of the Spirit in their life?
No. Too often, the lifestyle of a teacher and the fruit that comes out of his or her ministry is not the source of critique or the concern of those so driven to a flurry. They are worked up about the theological accuracy of a belief. They are worried about how it lines up against a creed or a statement of faith. But this is not what concerned the authors of the New Testament. What concerned them was that a person’s theology led them to be exclusive and inhospitable. It caused them not to show love to others and led them to pursue self-indulgence rather than selfless generosity. This kind of behavior was seen as a grave threat to the gospel. In the letters of John, this criticism was about whether or not a teacher led his students to be more loving. In Jude, the concern is that the teaching leads to debauchery and self-indulgence.
In all instances, the writers spend zero time critiquing the theology that lies behind the behavior; they spend their time critiquing the fruit of the tree itself. This is a thought that I hope people found when they got to this post.
WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY?
I’m not sure I would add much else to this post over I’ve said above. I really do wish we (in the world of western theology) can demonstrate a greater ability to navigate this conversation in a way that mirrors the teaching of the Apostles and writers of the New Testament. This isn’t just an idea that shows up in writings about false teachers. It’s not just a theme we find in John, Peter, and Jude. As mentioned above, it’s also present in the teachings Paul. But maybe most importantly, it was a theme in the teachings of Jesus.
Jesus told us himself that you cannot pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles. Jesus said that something can look one way on the outside, but the fruit is what gives it away. It might look like a chicken, but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and lays duck eggs — we have a duck. It appears that his disciples understood this and later applied it to their experiences with false teachers. They were not primarily concerned with whether the words were right. They were more concerned with whether or not it (i.e., the teacher and his students) looked like Jesus.
It seems we have a lot to learn about whether or not our actions look like Jesus; Evangelicals are having to spend more and more time trying to explain why they are right because the words are correct. We seem to be spending an awful lot of time arguing about appropriate interpretations of Romans 13 and visions of heaven with walls. I think people like Jude would look right at it and say, “That’s easy. I don’t care what your words say; however you’re living out the words doesn’t look at all like Jesus.” I think Jude would find a lot of false teaching.
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