For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves! –2 Corinthians 11:19
That’s a third degree burn, right there. The window in which the false teachers in Corinth slithered through was the door of pride. And the Corinthians didn’t just leave that door cracked it was wide open. They were so convinced that they could sniff out error and walk in truth (being so wise themselves) that they left the door wide open for false teachers to come in.
But it’s not just that they were opening wide the door for false teachers they were shutting the door on the apostle Paul. They reasoned that because he was preaching the gospel for free he must not be worth much.
If you have a guy who charges $10,000 to speak at a conference and another guy will do it for free or for a “love offering” (that’s Baptist for “nowhere near $10,000). Which one of those guys is a better speaker? It’s likely the guy that demands 10K, right? This is precisely what was happening in Corinth. In fact some would even charge exorbitant rates to make it seem like they were a big deal. It’s a common marketing strategy.
Paul loved them. The false teachers were abusing them. But they chose the false teachers over Paul because “wisdom”. Love gives people what they need and not necessarily what they want. That’s why real love isn’t always the most popular. If given the choice we’ll take the fake stuff any day. We will pick the self-serving teacher who talks all about himself, uses and abuses us, charges exorbitant amounts, but makes us feel good about ourselves every stinking time. That’s how abusive celebrity pastors can keep going for so long.
It doesn’t matter if the false teachers come from Corinth or Chicago their modus operandi is the same. They aren’t dumb, they’re self-serving. They know how to give their followers just enough to red-meat to keep them their followers. The Corinthians didn’t just receive these false teachers into their community, they made them their leaders. And they began tethering their own identities and successes to these teachers. So that their successes became their own. They ended up enslaved by them and didn’t even know it. They couldn’t get out because to call their leader to the carpet as a failure in ministry would mean that they too were failures. It’d have to mean admitting that they weren’t so incredibly wise.
A culture such as ours which is inundated with Bible truths and great Bible teachers is incredibly susceptible to these things. Our “wisdom” turns us into idiots who follow men who reject heresy but are dripping with heteropraxy. They’ve convinced us that the greatest issue of our time is faithful believing (straining gnats) and their entire ministries are based upon being hard-hitting truth tellers. But all the while they’re modeling for us camel-swallowing anger, rage, partisanship, insincerity, hypocrisy, slander, and self-centeredness. But we’ll swallow it whole because we too are truthers.
Those in my particular theological circles wouldn’t for a moment make a leader out of a guy who taught false doctrine. Even if he was a really nice guy who loved his wife and children in an exceptional way. But we’d happily crown a guy as a leader who taught the Bible like a champion even if he didn’t do so well in the nice guy category. We’ll give him a crown and assume that eventually his good Bible teaching and doctrine will cause his character catch up. After all correct theology always leads to correct living, right?
It doesn’t.
So don’t let your “wisdom” make you an idiot who follows a “faithful Bible teacher” who is going to ship-wreck your soul on the rocks of pride.
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