A great tragedy has occurred in our churches over the past few decades: Congregants have a passing familiarity with the Bible, but few have read it, and fewer still are familiar with the vast swath of Christian theology that is our inheritance. We have been lulled into complacency and distracted by our daily cares.
The devil has persuaded humans for centuries that the words in the Bible are suggestions, and therefore they do not have to believe every jot and tittle because Scripture is not infallible. This is an infernal lie, but some churches make it their entire selling point to people seeking faith.
Back in 2003, our Mark Alexander discussed the fundamental fracture between the World Anglican Communion and the American Episcopal Church. He wrote:
To understand why most Episcopal clergy rebuff the World Anglican Communion, and Bible-based Christian denominations in the U.S., a widely distributed church pamphlet entitled, “The Episcopal Church, A Faith for Thinking People” provides the answer. Elitism. This publication notes that if “you want to serve God in a realistic, meaningful way,” the Episcopal Church provides “a thoughtful approach to religion.” Regarding the Bible: “literal or fundamentalist interpretations are tolerated, but do not represent the understanding of most Episcopalians.” In summary, the pamphlet notes, “Basically, it might be said that it is a church which asks not for blind faith, not for unthinking obedience, but for thoughtful, responsible commitment.”
The fact of the matter is, Christians must believe that the Bible is inerrant, infallible, and true. Otherwise, they cannot really call themselves Christian. Perhaps that is my Reformed upbringing coming to the forefront, but God has given us the Bible for guidance, virtue, and structure, and when we as fallen human beings decide that our selfish thinking and conditional obedience — i.e., the sins for which Jesus died on the cross — are what God asks of us, we are not yet followers of Christ.
In a famous sermon, the late Dr. Adrian Rogers imagined the devil being willing to join the church. The devil says that he believes in God (as all demons do and tremble), that the Bible is true, and that he’d even be willing to preach for the church. The catch is that when the congregants ask the devil if he’d bow his knee in submission to King Jesus, he responds, “No, I’ll not do that.”
The churches that describe themselves as “for the thinking Christian” are not just insulting what it truly means to be a thoughtful Christian (because they aren’t talking about a foundation based upon Thomas Aquinas or other great thinkers); they are admitting a level of belief on par with the devil. They, too, may believe in God, the existence of Christ, and serving the church — but they will not surrender their pride and bow before King Jesus. They will not take the final leap of faith and die to self.
As Alexander so eloquently put it, “There are many thousands in Christ’s flock who continue to worship corporately in the Episcopal Church, though many Church leaders have forsaken God’s Word and substituted their own.”
This leads me to the story I touched on yesterday about a gender-confused Episcopalian priestess who goes by the name Father Flourish Klink. Clearly, this woman is living a life in direct conflict with Scripture (in Genesis, God made two genders, male and female), so it is not surprising that Klink decided to give a sermon on her argument for Jesus being transgender. In her own words:
When we trans people are born, folks assign us a gender based on what they see. Then, when we’re old enough, we realize that wasn’t right and we’re not, in our deepest selves, the gender that everyone thought we were, right? Reasonable working definition of a trans person, yeah? OK, good.
Alright, here’s why God is trans: when God, who as we have established is nonbinary, was born in human form as our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary said, “Oh look, a baby boy.”
God isn’t a boy — we have established this. God is beyond boy and girl. God was assigned a gender at birth, and later on it became clear that that gender wasn’t quite right.
So if you’re going [to] deny that God is trans, I think you’re going to be denying the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I have some notes about that.
Klink justified her theory by saying that Jesus couldn’t be a man because He acted unusually for a first-century male Jew based on the way He treated women.
She went on to say that after Jesus’s resurrection, his disciples didn’t recognize Him right away. Why? Well, because Jesus was no longer male or female; He had become his nonbinary God-form. Our Creator is outside of gender, but that does not make Jesus nonbinary — at least not in the sense Klink means it. Nevertheless, isn’t it still heretical to claim that you are on par with a God who is beyond gender by declaring the same? I digress.
Klink ended with this: “But based on everything else I know about God, I have an idea: I think Jesus was resurrected as Jesus’s true self, which is beyond male or female. I think Jesus was not only transfigured; I think Jesus transitioned.”
Being in a position of power and authority over a church while trying to justify your own mental delusions and still reconcile them with your religious beliefs is a contortionist act. Klink is trying so hard to retrofit the gospel into her worldview that she is making up things as she goes along. This is blasphemy. Pastors who think they know better than God and his Word — who begin peddling their own theories and miscasting them as great revelations of Christian thinking — fall into this trap.
This isn’t unique to Episcopalians. Methodists and even the Presbyterian Church (USA) are guilty of this tendency to think that the Bible is merely a suggestion.
Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico attends St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. One of his pastors, Reverend Babs Miller, a lesbian (homosexuality is a sin), called into question Jesus’s existence and smugly questioned the virgin birth. She added that the Bible was mythology and that Jesus was a political figure who was killed because Rome saw him as a threat.
That’s not what the Bible says. Then again, Miller, like Klink, clearly does not believe Scripture, which tells us what we know about God. How can anyone claim to be a Christian and not believe the very words of God written down in the books of the Bible? That’s like saying you love rock ’n’ roll, but you can’t name a single artist or song.
This is how we get pastors-turned-politicians like Talarico, who spouts just enough biblical truth for credibility but then diabolically twists it.
It is also a warning to churchgoers: If your pastor is not bending the knee to King Jesus, does not believe in the infallible Word of God, and bases his teaching not on Scripture but on secular beliefs — run. That is not the Church. It is a counterfeit, hollowed-out skin suit of a church, and God is not present.
