Identifying false prophets isn’t simply a matter of identifying truth and lies. While false prophets can lie (1 Kgs 22:23; Jer 14:14; 23:32; 29:31-32), lies are not the only tool in the false prophet’s tool belt—nor necessarily the most effective. Because prophets are often—though not exclusively—predicting one event or another as a means of (a) being God’s mouthpiece and (b) giving counsel to a king or a people, false prophets often speak for God even when God has not spoken. They deliver messages drawn from their own minds and hearts (Jer 14:14; Ezek 13:2) while assuming—or pretending—that those messages come from God.
False prophets and false teachers are not identical, but they are related. After affirming that true prophecy is given by God (2 Pet 1:20-21), Peter reminds his audience that false prophets arose alongside the true prophets just as false teachers will arise among followers of Christ (2 Pet 2:1). The implication is that false teachers are captivating and self-serving. They operate against God’s authority and use deception to twist the doctrines and teachings of the church to suit their own interests, which means they often appeal to the misdirected desires of others (Rom 16:18; Col 2:4; 2 Tim 3:6; 4:3; Jude 8).
As such, we might say that false teachers distort God’s word to root us more deeply in cultural and ideological values and perceptions of the world rather than calling us toward an unqualified allegiance to the Triune God that requires us to redirect our misdirected desires. False teaching tempts us toward self-determination when we are called to live under Christ’s authority even when doing so requires us to suffer the “light momentary affliction” that cannot compare to the glory that is to come (2 Cor 4:17). We want to avoid teachers who tell us what we want to hear rather than challenging us to follow God’s instruction. So, how do we spot false teachers and false teachings?
Identifying the Terribly Simple
Outright lies—false assertions—can be relatively easy to identify. However, there are other ways to distort reality. For instance, in Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley notes, “Abbreviation is a necessary evil…He [the abbreviator] must learn to simplify, but not to the point of falsification.” Leaving out too much information provides opportunities for deception. It is possible to oversimplify—or, as historian Jacob Burckhardt argues, to be a terrible simplifier.
In Thinking Christian, I suggest that terrible simplification involves “limited information to craft a coherent story that conveys a convincing view of the world.” That “convincing view” is compelling precisely because of what it omits. Terrible simplification doesn’t concern itself with offering the best version of the truth possible at the time. It drains topics of nuance in service to a more narrow and specific agenda.
For instance, I recently served on a panel discussing Christian nationalism. One of the other panelists claimed that the term “Christian nationalist” had been developed and employed by the liberal media in an attempt to keep Christians from participating in the political realm. He went on to say that he would be proud to be called a Christian nationalist. His comments were met with applause from the audience. Unfortunately, they didn’t tell the whole story—his comments were, in my estimation, terribly simple.
In suggesting that Christian nationalism is simply a phrase used by liberal media outlets to dissuade Christians from participating in politics. He scratched the ears of the audience. However, minimizing the underlying theological convictions often associated with Christian nationalism, he left his audience vulnerable to a wrongheaded conceptualization of the relationship between church and state. As I argue in Serpents and Doves, a certain sort of Christian nationalism makes a number of false theological assumptions which Christians need to avoid (see also the following episode of the Thinking Christian Podcast).
In Scripture, we almost certainly see instances of terrible simplification in places like Jeremiah 7. The false prophets point to the presence of the temple as a sign of Judah’s security while ignoring—if not encouraging—the injustices that have become commonplace within the nation. The threefold refrain of “the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” is “deceptive” (7:4; cf. 8-11). The false hope produced by the narrow focus on the temple blinds the people to the sorts of reforms God requires (7:5-7). It also ignores—or brackets out—God’s destruction of Shiloh, which undercuts the assumption that the temple’s presence represents hope apart from the people’s repentance.
We also see the terribly simple in the book of Job. Job’s friends see the world in a relatively unnuanced way: the righteous are blessed and the wicked experience difficulty and hardship. This perspective is often referred to as the retribution principle and is represented by Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (Job 4-14). Because Job’s three friends can only see what is happening to Job as a result of Job’s sins, they continually press him to repent—advice that is terribly simple—would have prompted a false confession from Job. As Old Testament scholar John E. Hartley writes, “Because they encourage Job to repent primarily to escape his suffering and to receive God’s blessing, they unsuspectingly tempt him to use God for personal gain, the essence of sin. Therefore, if Job followed their counsel, he would confirm Satan’s proposition that human beings are totally self-serving in their worship of God.”
So, how can we recognize terrible simplicity? We need to ask ourselves how complex a given situation actually is. Often, we are facing complex—if not chaotic—situations. Commenting on complex contexts, David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone write, “In a complex context…right answers can’t be ferreted out…Most situations and decisions in organizations are complex because some major change—a bad quarter, a shift in management, a merger or acquisition—introduces unpredictability and flux.” Snowden and Boone also note,
“It’s like the difference between, say, a Ferrari and the Brazilian rainforest. Ferraris are complicated machines, but an expert mechanic can take one apart and reassemble it without changing a thing. The car is static, and the whole is the sum of its parts. The rainforest, on the other hand, is in constant flux—a species becomes extinct, weather patterns change, an agricultural project reroutes a water source—and the whole is far more than the sum of its parts. This is the realm of ‘unknown unknowns.’”
Once we recognize that we are not dealing with a simple or complicated context, we can be relatively sure that there are no easy answers.
Itching Ears and Shiny Things
Terrible simplicity isn’t the only sort of false teaching we see in the scriptures. We also see a sort of teaching that reorients our attention away from God and toward someone or something else. These teachers encourage us to believe that God is not infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor we may encounter—that God is not worthy of our full attention. The truth and God’s word are only employed when they (a) serve the purposes of the speaker and (b) appeal to the speaker’s audience.
Commenting on this sort of falsehood, cognitive psychologist John Vervaeke notes that this sort of teacher “does not appeal to any measure of truth outside of the needs of the moment. Instead, he tries to capture your attention with the catchiness of his claim and how much it provokes something inside of you: some desire, belief, or association that may not be fully conscious.” This sort of teacher “has no love or relationship with reality, only with appearance.”
Paul describes something similar in his second letter to Timothy. He looks to a time “when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Tim 4:3). These teachers cater to us so that we don’t necessarily recognize that we are being disloyal to the Lord.
For example, consider again the conference on Christian nationalism. One of my fellow panelists was encouraging Christians to vote so that Christians in the United States could continue to enjoy the freedoms of the American system. He then went on to quote 2 Corinthians 3:17: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” He drew applause from the crowd.
The problem is that 2 Corinthians 3:17 has nothing to do with political freedom. It speaks to a freedom Christians can exercise regardless of political freedom. They are free to behold the glory of God “with unveiled face” (3:14-16, 18). It is a freedom that allows Paul to be bold in his speech to the Corinthians because they are no longer under the Old Covenant, but the New. The presence of the Holy Spirit frees God’s people for transformation as Moses was transformed by God’s presence in the Lord (Exod 34:34-35), so the Spirit’s presence allows for the transformation of every believer.
Applying the verse to a conversation about political freedom may not have been done with pernicious motives, but linking the call to mobilize for political freedom to 2 Corinthians 3:17 is a misinterpretation at best and a subtle manipulation of God’s word at worst. Many in the crowd wanted their political participation to be biblically supported. They wanted biblical justification for their political perspectives and activities. While I would be hesitant to call my fellow panelist a false teacher, it seems clear that he was making the Bible subject to his own agenda (and that of much of the crowd). As such, it is a subtle means of scratching the itching ears of God’s people.
How Do We Identify and Counter False Teaching?
1. Recognize that anyone who seeks to teach must do so within the constraints of established doctrine.
They aren’t necessarily equipped to handle God’s word. Paul describes the false teachers plaguing Ephesus as “desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions” (1 Tim 1:7). To some degree, the Christian community today needs to reckon with the idea that we are too often guided by those who could be described in a similar way. Too often we are being given slogans instead of substance—empty rhetoric instead of transformative teaching.
2. Sit under sound, selfless teaching (cf. 1 Tim 6:2-10).
When Paul warns Timothy, that people will turn away from sound teaching, he encourages Timothy to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim 4:2). We need to sit under teachers who exhibit this pattern, as well as demonstrating the characteristics listed elsewhere in the scriptures (1 Tim 3:1-7; Tit 1:5-16). God has given shepherds and teachers—as well as apostles and prophets—“to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph 4:11-12). Teachers have been given to prepare us, as God’s people, to build God’s kingdom. As such, we should be diligent in seeking out faithful (though imperfect) teachers who teach as those under authority rather than those who assert their own authority.
False teaching takes many forms. As believers, we must take care in choosing our teachers. As New Testament scholar Phillip Towner notes, “Doctrinal subtleties, special interpretation, spurious claims to authority, controversy and dogmatism ought to make God’s people suspicious” because they reflect “a timeless portrait of the false teacher.” As God’s people, we commit to living under Christ’s authority—an unqualified allegiance to the Triune God—as we build the body of Christ. God gives us teachers to prepare us to do his work. As such, we need to recognize, respect, and honor those gifted people among us who teach the word of God even when that word isn’t what we want to hear.
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/AaronAmat
