“If the object of education is the improvement of men, then any system of education that is without values is a contradiction in terms. A system that seeks bad values is bad. A system that denies the existence of values denies the possibility of education. Relativism, scientism, skepticism, and anti-intellectualism, the four horsemen of the philosophical apocalypse, have produced that chaos in education which will end in the disintegration of the West.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899-1977) was the dean of Yale Law School, the president of the University of Chicago, and one of the more influential philosophers of education in the 20th century.
In a stirring passage from a series of lectures he gave in 1951, Hutchins identified four intellectual trends that had been absolutely disastrous for modern education. He called these trends “the four horsemen of the philosophical apocalypse”:
“If the object of education is the improvement of men, then any system of education that is without values is a contradiction in terms. A system that seeks bad values is bad. A system that denies the existence of values denies the possibility of education. Relativism, scientism, skepticism, and anti-intellectualism, the four horsemen of the philosophical apocalypse, have produced that chaos in education which will end in the disintegration of the West.”
Here are brief descriptions of each of “the four horsemen” and their impact on education:
1) Relativism:
The idea that notions of true and false, right and wrong, are purely subjective. Generally speaking, you can see its impact on education today through the exaltation of “tolerance” as the highest virtue, in addition to the changing of the purpose of education from helping students to pursue truth to the pragmatic goal of making them “college- and career-ready.”
2) Scientism
3) Skepticism
4) Anti-Intellectualism
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I thought I had heard and seen the most horrific sins of licentiousness in the world of false teaching until I met a man we’ll call, “Chris.” He was a gracious and kind brother who picked me up from the airport when I arrived in a southern state for a ministry trip in the US almost ten years ago now. After a warm welcome and some small talk, “Chris” began to share his testimony. He had been active in the inner circle of a major prosperity gospel ministry and climbed the ladder of leadership. One day, upon being invited into one of the highest levels of leadership he was given the pre-requisites. To join the highest levels of leadership and thrive in the inner circle, he would be required to share his wife with other men, engage in homosexuality, and be a loyal leader at all costs.
For “Chris,” the cost was too high. He was not willing to engage in that type of lifestyle to be in leadership. Just like that, after years of building relationships, trusting his leaders, and nearing the moment when he would become one of them, he was out. Worst of all, this falling out caused major division in his marriage because his wife was unwilling to leave the church at that time. When he concluded the story during that car ride, all was not reconciled and there was deep heartache. Still, “Chris” was optimistic because Christ had saved him from the filthiness of what false teaching breeds. He was owned by Jesus now, no longer a slave to sin (Romans 6:1-7).
This story may be shocking for some of you, but it is all too common in the world of false teaching. This story is precisely why we can say that false teachers are not merely an abomination to Christ because they smear His message. They are also an abomination because they mock Him with their lifestyles of sin. In this article, I want to lay out some biblical truths to remind you that false teaching presents a variety of shady deceptions, namely, sins of licentiousness.
False teachers don’t only need to repent of their teaching, but their lifestyles of sin as well.
False Teachers and Licentiousness
In Jude 4 we read a sobering description of not merely sinful teaching, but the sinful lifestyles of false teachers. Jude writes, “For certain people have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into indecent behavior and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
The word for licentiousness he uses also translates as “sensuality” and means “lack of self-constraint which involves one in conduct that violates all bounds of what is socially acceptable.”(1) False teachers don’t only go too far with their doctrine, they always go too far with their deeds. They are marked by sins of “self-love” which is precisely why Paul warns Timothy that in the last days, men will be “lovers of self” (2 Timothy 3:2).

Jesus came into this world to rescue us from sin and death, including the sins that fuel rage-driven ministry. He is our hope and our strength. No darkness will overcome Him or prevail against His church.

A cursory reading of the Bible reminds us that God really, really doesn’t take kindly to those who stir up division and dissension among His people. He wants His people to be united in love and truth.
This isn’t a new idea, and it shouldn’t be shocking. It isn’t the sort of insight that comes from years of faithful study, or a careful exploration of the languages, the context of the text, or anything like that. It’s an observation that literally anyone who is functionally literate is capable of making.
And yet, it’s one that we keep failing to really be mindful of, isn’t it?
Two Kinds of Divisive People
There are two sorts of divisive people, of course. There are the contentious and overt false teachers, the people that Paul warned about in so many places, like:

This is who we typically think of when we think about division. But they’re certainly not the only kind we’re cautioned against. The second is actually much more damaging. We are warned against:

Those among us who stir up foolish controversies (Titus 3:9 )
People who incite unrest and factionalism (2 Tim. 2:23 ; 16:17 )
Fools who sow discord and say they were only joking ( 26:19 )

The difficulty with this group is that, in many cases, they’re not teaching overtly false doctrine. In fact, many paint themselves as Defenders of the Truth; the last bulwark, the Spurgeons and Luthers of our day, here for a time such as this to hold back the encroaching darkness of theological liberalism.
And yet, perhaps ironically, their approach to defending the truth too often results in a different sort of falsehood—error based in both doctrine and practice. They bite and devour one another (Gal. 5:15 ), turning on an ever-decreasing set of allies until, eventually, none can meet their standard of orthodoxy.
The Fuel of Rage Driven-Ministry
No doubt, a list of names comes to mind as you read that sentence. No doubt some of them would cross over with the list I have in mind. I don’t feel the need to address those people specifically by name in this article, because naming names isn’t the point here. But those names you can think of should serve as a warning against what might be called a rage-driven approach to ministry, one that has embraced the way to get attention on the social Internet:
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