Who Are the "False Teachers"

When it comes to who is right about what the Bible says is the true Christian faith, there is a shortage of people who admit they are not certain and a surplus of those who are certain absolutely their version of the faith is the true faith. It would be helpful if someone could come up with an iron clad information about what constitutes the true faith. This has not happened and, of course, never will.

There is no shortage of advice about how to sort through the various claims. The link provides ten warnings of false teachers. It then cautions against taking a few of them, not all, and making judgments. We've had many comments of this blog from those we feel infinitely qualified to judge the validity of the faith of others. 

One of the warnings tells to beware of those who are "quarrelsome." Man, do we have readers that are quarrelsome. And, of course, I'm quarrelsome too so why wouldn't readers be the same?

Then there are the word correctors, people who are obsessed with the use and definition of words. We have that in spades. I do a little of that too. To me, when someone has a big vocabulary of theological words it convinces that person he/she knows more about the topic than those with a lesser vocabulary. There is no reason whatsoever to think that is correct. The vocabulary is not about ideas, it is about shortcuts to talk about ideas. In my academic discipline there is a joke that the more Latin one can drop into an article of conversation the higher his salary.

In the end, everyone who talks about religion is a false teacher. That is, someone else will be able to claim their own view of religion is the correct one and all others false. These days, there are news stories every week about blocks of churches leaving the home organization of the Methodist church. They claim to be leaving because they know better what it is to be a "true Methodist." Statements by those leaving is almost a parody of the entire Christian faith. Each spin off groups should have the same title. That is, each new group should be called the "We Know Better Methodists."