Many believers agonize over false teaching found in otherwise faithful teachers. What should our response sound like, look like? Polemics is hard. Polemics is also necessary (Acts 20:28-30; Jude). There may be a time to cast an author’s books into the fire, to give up altogether on a teacher gone bad (1 Timothy 1:18-20). There are other times to distinguish between what is praiseworthy and rebuke-worthy (1 Corinthians 11:2, 17, 22). Such a vocally clear method of distinction does not require total rejection.
Much of our difficulty in calling out false teaching, bad practice, unfaithfulness in celebrated preachers and teachers has to do with our deeply-rooted appreciation for the ways in which these men and women have instructed us. (I say women, meaning those women who teach other women. This parenthesis is made necessary by the widespread lack of polemics in evangelicalism.) Can we say that some teaching is bad without castigating the whole doctrine of a man? Can we deny an error while honoring the truth?
Many false teachings arise in time of famine. When there is a lack of clear teaching and biblical thinking on a matter, preachers and teachers tend to grab the nearest idea and run with it. The sheep are hungry. They need pastoring in this wilderness. By way of analogy (and not allegory) consider the following story from the days of Elisha:
2 Kings 4:38-41
When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the sons of the prophets were sitting before him, he said to his servant, “Put on the large pot and boil stew for the sons of the prophets.” Then one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine and gathered from it his lap full of wild gourds, and came and sliced them into the pot of stew, for they did not know what they were. So they poured it out for the men to eat. And as they were eating of the stew, they cried out and said, “O man of God, there is death in the pot.” And they were unable to eat. But he said, “Now bring meal.” He threw it into the pot and said, “Pour it out for the people that they may eat.” Then there was no harm in the pot.
Water was in the pot. Herbs were in the pot. Who knows what else they put in the pot. One man in desperation decided to throw whatever gourds he could find into the pot. When it became clear that the stew was poisoned, the prophets all cried out “there is death in the pot!” They do not malign water, herbs or even the desperate man who was only trying to help. They must cry out “death is in the pot.” If they do not, people will die. Elisha, by a miracle ensures the food will be safe.
Will we cry “there is death in the pot” when in fact there is death in the pot? We live in a wilderness of bramble teaching. There is a famine of clear, biblical preaching. Many in desperation grab at the wild ideas of the devil and the world and attempt to feed the hungry sheep. But if there is death in the pot, there is death in the pot, and this must be declared loudly for the good of everyone.
