When someone comes along claiming to be some sort of authority on Scripture, but it is obvious that he knows nothing about it, or worse yet, is quite happy to ignore or reject most of it, then you know you got a real problem on your hands. Sadly there are far too many folks claiming to be believers who think and talk the same way. The biblical advice is to have nothing to do with them, or to rebuke them sharply! 

There’s never a dull moment when you have an interactive blogsite. Every day you get all sorts of folks sending in comments. Often they are terrific comments sent in by terrific people. But nearly as often you will get nutters, trolls, secular lefties, atheists, militants and haters coming along as well. That always make things interesting.
I would have posted thousands of comments from the latter group and tried to interact with them. But many of these comments can only go straight into the bin, given that they fail my commenting rules. But all this keeps me off the streets I guess.
Here I want to speak about those who come seeking to argue about Scripture and theology. Some are well-meaning and care about sound doctrine. I will leave them out of the discussion here. But there are those who come here saying the most ludicrous, brainless and unbiblical stuff.
I am always amazed at how they can manage to get things so very wrong. And over the years I have discovered that there are at least three groups of these folks. Some are just angry atheists who will attack any Christian for any reason. Some are clearly not Christians but they come here pretending to be. But as soon as you see what they have written it is obvious where they are coming from.
And then there is a third group who do indeed appear to be Christians, but they nonetheless are so woefully biblically ignorant and so theologically mixed-up that you do not know if you should laugh or cry when you see their stuff. Sometimes it is not quite clear which of the three groups a person is a part of.
But I sure get lots of these sorts of comments coming in. Let me deal with just one of them that was sent in a while ago. It had to do with a piece I wrote called “Still You Have Not Returned To Me.” That was about how God will often use various means to try to get our attention, to get us to return to him, and so on. That piece is found here: billmuehlenberg.com/2021/09/19/still-you-have-not-returned-to-me/
Some of these divine means include things like plagues or other calamities. I mentioned some biblical examples of this, and asked whether the current covid outbreak might in part be how God is trying to waken a sleeping world and get us to get our priorities right.
Some good comments came in, and helpful discussion ensued. However, one guy sent in a real doozy of a comment. It was so bad that I figured it was worth writing an article about one day. And so here it is. And I still do not know if this is one of the more biblically illiterate Christians around, or just some troll pretending to be a believer. Anyway, this is what he sent in:

It’s a very dangerous belief system that some Christians have, of giving God credit for deaths and disaster. What you’re saying is that some people deserve to be punished and God is causing them pain and death. This not only is in contrast of a God that is defined by love, but it also takes away the power of the Cross. Jesus has paid in full for our sins and has taken on our punishment himself. If we start giving God credit for disasters, what we are saying is that “What Jesus did is not enough, and that God needs to hand out extra punishment”

Oh dear – how can a guy get so much wrong in such a short space? Where does one even begin in trying to reply? Well, let me make that attempt. First, to defend what Scripture clearly and repeatedly teaches is a “dangerous belief system”? Really?
And “some Christians”? I would have thought that all genuine Christians who accept the Bible as the authoritative word of God would of course hold to what it so patently teaches.
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But, alas, I find what many term “social gospel” to be somewhat prohibitive to that end in that it relegates the central message of the gospel, namely, deliverance from the spiritual bondage of sin through faith in the propitiatory and substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ as secondary to a temporal “deliverance” defined primarily in terms of the socio-economic empowerment of black people (also known as ‘black power‘) and the embracement and affirmation, particularly by white people, of black social and cultural normativity.

The business of Christianity is not simply to make us feel happier or even to make us live a better life, it is to reconcile us to God.– D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

There is a movement afoot, particularly within black evangelical circles, to extol, if not exalt, social justice as the raison d’etre, that is, the most important reason and purpose for the existence of the church today.
I say “particularly” because the aforementioned movement is not restricted only to the realm of black evangelicalism. The truth is there are also certain elements within white evangelicalism which, being motivated to some extent by a collective acquiescence to the idea of “white guilt,“ have attached themselves to this movement like a caboose to a locomotive.
The problem with movements, however, is they invariably beget labels (e.g. “social gospel”, “liberation theology”, etc.). And labels tend to subtly, though eventually, reorient our focus from that which is of utmost importance, namely, the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world, to an ethno-centric “gospel” constructed from a collective worldview espoused by “woke” theologians and philosophers who are considered by many to be the most socially and culturally aware on matters of social and liberative justice.
Again, this mindset is not exclusive to black evangelicalism, and yet it is within that milieu that this movement, I believe, is doing the most harm.
I make that statement neither lightly nor disparagingly. I was raised in the Black Church. The affinity I have for its history and traditions is borne not only from education but experience. I appreciate the invaluable sacrifices and contributions to black ecclesiology of figures like Absalom Jones, Morris Brown, Jarena Lee, John Marrant, Betsey Stockton, Henry Garnet, and Richard Allen.
I spent half my life, into my early 20s, as a member of Chapel Hill Missionary Baptist Church, located in Atlanta’s West End in the shadows of such venerable HBCUs as Morehouse, Spelman, Clark-Atlanta, and Morris Brown, where I worshiped alongside many family members and friends to the music of black gospel stalwarts as Walter and Edwin Hawkins. In fact, to this very day, the Hawkins-penned Changed, a powerful testimonial of spiritual redemption in Christ, remains one of my all-time favorite gospel songs.
It was at Chapel Hill that I witnessed people of all ages “catch the Spirit” during high points of what often seemed unending worship services. It was at Chapel Hill that I watched royally accoutered choirs march slowly into the sanctuary to the uplifting refrains of ‘We Are Soldiers In The Army‘. It was at Chapel Hill that I passed those faux gold-plated offering plates – you know the ones – with the red crushed-velvet matting, to congregants sitting next to me in pews that, likewise, were fashioned with red crushed-velvet padding as if to match the aesthetics of the offering plates.
It was at that small church on Northside Drive that, Sunday after Sunday, I listened to the verbum Dei, the Word of God, preached – from the King James version of course – from behind an old wooden lectern with the letters ‘IHS’ engraved on the front. And it was at Chapel Hill Missionary Baptist Church that “the doors of the church” were always open, inviting sinners like me to step out from those crushed-velvet cushioned pews, walk that red-carpeted aisle, sit down in the lone wooden chair placed front-and-center of the sanctuary by a white-gloved deacon or deaconess, and “get saved” as it were.
All this to say that there is nothing about the so-called “Black Church experience” to which I cannot personally relate. Which is why, though I am Reformed – and, thankfully, Reformed theology is slowly but steadily gaining exposure within contemporary black evangelicalism – there will always be a place in my heart for the Black Church and, likewise, an equally heartfelt desire to see a recovery of biblical orthodoxy as its primary raison d’etre.
But, alas, I find what many term “social gospel” to be somewhat prohibitive to that end in that it relegates the central message of the gospel, namely, deliverance from the spiritual bondage of sin through faith in the propitiatory and substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ as secondary to a temporal “deliverance” defined primarily in terms of the socio-economic empowerment of black people (also known as ‘black power‘) and the embracement and affirmation, particularly by white people, of black social and cultural normativity.
It is an ideology that is more anthropocentric (man-centered) than theocentric (God-centered). As Dr. James H. Cone, whom many regard as the founder of black liberation theology, explains:
“Black Theology is a theology of black liberation. It seeks to plumb the black condition in the light of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, so that the black community can see that the gospel is commensurate with the achievement of black humanity. Black Theology is a theology of “blackness”. It is the affirmation of black community that emancipates black people from white racism, thus providing authentic freedom for both white and black people. It affirms the humanity of white people in that it says no to the encroachment of white oppression.” – Black Theology: A Documentary History, Volume 1: 1966-1979
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We seek to do the church good while hoping others do more good than we ever could. Threats become brothers to us again when we learn to long for others’ success where we have failed, when we long for others to take God’s people across the Jordans we never could. When we begin to pray, “Feed the sheep by any hand.” This love for Christ’s bride shakes us free from posturing for her attention and admiration. We play our parts, knowing that loving her is loving him, as Jesus himself reminds us: “Pastor, leader, minister, do you love me? Then shepherd my lambs” (John 21:15–17).

I often need to check myself as to whether I am placing the emphasis on “the Lord’s ministry through me” or “the Lord’s ministry through me.” I suspect most pastors and leaders know what I mean.
The weed grows quietly. How are my articles doing? How is my small group maturing? How is my book selling, my podcast rating? Are my Sunday-morning prayers especially encouraging? Is my preaching, my marriage counseling, my evangelistic effort particularly effective?
I am not talking about the holy ambition proper to a minister who loves souls and the glory of Christ (Romans 15:20). I am talking about a self-congratulatory spirit that pats oneself on the back and thinks better of the work simply because it is his. I am talking about tangled motives. The silent smirk or sunken shoulders. The slipping of some glory into one’s pocket. The temptation captured in John Bunyan’s response when someone told him he had preached a delightful sermon: “You are too late; the devil told me that before I left the pulpit.”
The success of others, even close friends, can reveal the drift. The warm sensation that washes over when they excel in the area where your strengths also lie. The gnawing suspicion, the feeling of threat, the envy, the bitterness, the embarrassment, the self-pity. Instead of rejoicing that God has advanced his own name and benefited souls, all is not well simply because the eternal God chose to use them instead of me.
The temptation stands to full height, however, when others succeed in the very place that we have failed. Someone else takes the people higher than we could climb, leads them farther than we could walk. We, like Saul, have conquered our thousands, yet the people sing of another who has conquered his ten thousands. We are the lesser light. The comparison drove Saul mad. He hurled a spear at David to kill him (1 Samuel 18:10–11). What is our response?
We might pray, however much ministry still lies ahead of us, that we have the shepherd’s heart that Moses did in his final days.
Looking at the Promise
Let’s appreciate the difficulty facing Moses at the end of his ministry. After Moses had “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter”; after he had chosen rather to be “mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:24–25); after bringing Egypt to its knees, leading Israel through the Red Sea, climbing Mount Sinai, and wandering for decades in the wilderness, his journey ends overlooking — but not overstepping — the boundary to the Promised Land.
Old age, you may remember, did not bar the prophet from the land of milk and honey. “Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was undimmed, and his vigor unabated” (Deuteronomy 34:7).
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