IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED (PART III)

“People Don’t Go to an Abattoir for Brain Surgery”

By Akin Ojumu

God’s Word is sustenance for the soul. It is the bread that nourishes the heart and provides the essential vitamins, minerals, nutrients, and calories the spirit needs to be healthy, strong, and active. The Word of God protects against spiritual and physical chronic communicable and noncommunicable diseases. A well-balanced diet of God’s Word keeps us spiritually alive and well.

Given the importance of the Word of God for the salubriousness of the soul, it’s imperative that the truth of Scripture be handled with accuracy. In order to fully enjoy the spiritual nourishment that it offers, the essence of the Prophetic Word Made More Sure must be preached with great care.

For the most part, people care a lot about their physical well-being. Even those who engage in risky lifestyles and are given to all kinds of foibles put great premium on their healthcare. When it comes to choosing a physician, they’ll break the bank to get the best. Rarely would you find anyone who’d deliberately consult a quack who never attended medical school to have a brain surgery. No woman goes to an Obstetrician with a woeful track record of maternal mortality.

This tendency to find the best physician to attend to our physical health applies to other areas of life as well. We always want to hire the best professional to take care of our day-to-day problems. When the roof is leaking, we look for the best roofer for the repair. If it’s our vehicle that’s acting up, we go to the best mechanic around. Is there an electrical issue at home, we call the best electrician. Nobody touches our hair unless they are the finest hairdresser or barber in town. We even make sure only the best tailor sews our fanciful dresses.

As fastidious as we are in employing the services of the best professionals to attend to our everyday concerns, we fail, miserably, to apply the same level of rigor when choosing whom we sit under to teach us the Word of God. When it comes to what matters most in our life, i.e., our spiritual well-being, we drop the ball, big time. 

Instead of seeking the most competent people, who are skillful in exhorting in sound doctrine, we often entrust our spiritual nourishment to just about anyone who is able to tickle our itching ears.  Recklessly, we surrender our eternal destiny to false teachers who propagate abominable heresies. The result is that many of us end up as Biblical illiterates, blown to and fro by every wind of doctrine and incapable of discerning the truth.

False teachings have devastating effects. Handling the Word of Truth in a manner inconsistent with the Spirit of Truth has catastrophic consequences. Erroneous teachings poison the heart. Bad theology leads to the destruction of those who consume it. This is the reason we are warned in Proverbs 4:23 to: 

“Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow springs of life.”

That a preacher gives an impassioned sermon, excitably hollering till his voice becomes hoarse, and with rivers of sweat gushing out of every pour in his body, is not proof that he is accurately handling the Word of Truth. There are people who are sincere in the message they preach but are, nonetheless, sincerely wrong in the content of what they preach. God doesn’t give brownie points for passion or sincerity in our preaching of His Word. What He requires of us is to handle His Word accurately.

Assault on the Word of God is nothing new. Ever since Lucifer led a rebellion against God and was cast out of Heaven along with a third of the angels, there has always been a concerted effort to undermine the credibility of the Word of God. When the serpent tempted Eve in the garden of Eden, what he did was to impugn the integrity of God and His Word.

“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1).

False teachers like Kenneth Copeland exploit the trust, gullibility, and intellectual incuriosity of their followers. The palpable fear to engage their mind is a common trait among people who fall for false doctrines. Such people completely shut down their brain and their mind. And once the critical thinking tap is turned off, they become susceptible to whatever it is the false teachers say and want them to believe.

“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” (Exodus 20:7).

Twisting God’s Word is tantamount to breaking the third commandment. Those who teach error take the Name of the LORD our God in vain and guilty of idolatry. To profane God’s Name is to invite the wrath of God.

Bible illiteracy leads to catastrophe. It leads to the ruin of the hearer. Bible illiteracy leads to shipwrecked faith. The effects of false theology are devastating. You can’t worship God right if you don’t understand the Word of God. You don’t know God if you don’t know the truth of His Word. For the well-being of your soul, study the Bible yourself.